The Devonport, Hennock and (possibly also) Tiverton branches of the Pinsent family come from Hennock. However, in medieval times the family was also well established in the neighbouring parish of Bovey Tracey. Some of the Bovey Tracey lines are traceable; however, the links are hard to follow and there are many Pinsents born and/or married and buried in Bovey Tracey who are still left unclaimed – waiting to be assigned to a tree.
The Pinsent family that farmed at COMBE, in Bovey Tracey in the 1500s is an important branch that died out in 1765. It had a colourful history that is discussed separately [see The Pynsent Baronetcy: The Trials and Tribulations of a Litigious Family: 1687 – 1765]. Bovey Tracey is a county town and it has attracted its share of immigrants from surrounding parishes and some of the individuals named in the parish records clearly belong to external lines. For instance, Henry James Pinsent, (a member of the HENNOCK branch) farmed at Whitestone as late as 1901 and John Pinsent and his family (from the BRISTOL branch) worked in the clay pits in the 1800s.
However, there is one branch that clearly belongs to Bovey Tracey. The first reference to the Pinsents at Yeo, a farm located on the Wrey, a tributary of the Bovey River comes in 1602 when John Pinsent of Yeo and several of his neighbours disputed the right of the King to govern where they ground their corn. This John’s descent is far from clear just going by the Parish records – there are just too many John’s about – but, if Cecil Torr’s observations in “Wreyland Documents” are correctly interpreted and integrated with parish and other data, his descent is likely as discussed below. The family probably made it through to a Thomas Pinsent, who became a custom’s officer in Polperro (on the south coast of Cornwall) while still owning a significant amount of land at Yeo. Sadly, he seems to have died, without sons in 1798. Nevertheless, there continued to be Pinsents at Yeo as a junior line still held a small part of the property.
The following is a brief summary of the TEIGNMOUTH Branch of the Pinsent family. For a full of members visit the FAMILY BRANCH page and for more information on selected sons click through and read their biographies.
Yeo, Bovey Tracey
According to Cecil Torr (1910): John Pinsent (1) had a son John Pinsent (2) baptized in Bovey Tracey in 1607. John (senior) seems to have purchased “a fourth part of a tenement named Underhill in South Yeo” to add to his other (possibly rental) holdings in 1616 (Cal. Deeds Enrolled, 14 Jas. I: 1616). John Pinsent (2) most likely married Joan Mann in Lustleigh in 1637 and had a son, John Pinsent (3) baptized in Bovey Tracey in 1641. John Pinsent (2) wrote his will a couple of years later, while his children were still young. Perhaps he was concerned about the Civil War that was then raging around him. In it, he left £15 to each of his four daughters, when they “accomplish the age of nineteen years” and gave the above mentioned quarter part of Underhill to his son John Pinsent (3). In fact, John Pinsent (2) survived the war and lived until 1658. His will was probated in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury the following year.
John Pinsent (3) of Yeo seems to have died in 1675, aged 34 years. He too must have married (possibly to Maisey Pulsford in 1662 (?)), as there seems to have been a John Pinsent (4) baptized in Bovey Tracey, in 1668. The line clearly continued as “Wreyland Documents” show that a John Pinsent (4) purchased another quarter of Underhill in Yeo from John Merdon in 1712, and also bought a quarter part of Lower Yeo from Benjamin Harris in 1729. Cecil Torr claims that this particular John Pinsent died intestate and his property at Yeo passed to a son, John Pinsent (5) of Yeo, who had been baptized in 1715.
John Pinsent (5) married Mary Noseworthy in 1740. Mary had inherited an interest in at least two other parts of Lower Yeo, Culverslades and Forda from her father and the couple passed their respective interests on to their son, Thomas Pinsent (xxxx – 1798). Thomas sold his father’s portion, comprised of Higher and Lower Yeo and thirty-four acres of attached land, to Nelson Gribble, in 1788. However, he held on to his mother’s erstwhile property at Culverslade until he died in 1798.
Six generations on from the dispute with the King over milling rights, Thomas seems to have had no interest in farming. If he wanted a more adventurous life, he certainly found it as a Customs Officer and a Game Warden in Polperro, which is on the south coast of Cornwall. Around the time he signed on, the government increased custom duties on tea, tobacco, wine and spirit – in order to pay off its war debts. Needless to say south coast fishermen saw this as a challenge and smuggling was rampant. Thomas lived in the world and times described in Daphne Du Maurier’s book “Jamaica Inn”.
Thomas moved to Polperro in 1766 and lived there for the rest of his life. In 1795, he was called as a key witness when several Polperro fishermen were tried at the Old Bailey in London. They were charged and convicted of smuggling and also of armed assault on a Customs Officer. Thomas was involved in the raid in question and, by all accounts, had done what he could to defuse an ugly situation but it had got out of hand anyway. Thomas married twice; firstly to Prudence Sawdy, in 1763, and secondly in 1788, to Philley Barret. However, As far as I know, he had no children by either of them. While living in Cornwall, he originally rented out his father’s land in Bovey Tracey – possibly in the hope of children, but a Mr. Gribble eventually induced him to sell it, for £800 (Cecil Torr, 1910). He kept his mother’s land until he died.
This linear description of the “house of Yeo” tells us some, but not all, of the story. The early linkages are still a bit conjectural and I have not been able to attach Thomas Pinsent’s line to other branches and twigs that seem to be “out of Yeo”. Thomas is presumably but not necessarily related to the Roger Pinsent described below. Thomas’s forebears may have gifted bits of the estate to younger sons, or other Pinsents may have bought their way in. It may be possible say which one-day.
Roger Pinsent the patriarch of the TEIGNMOUTH branch (see below) seems to have come from one of the smaller land holding at Yeo. Roger’s sons stayed in the Devon and the last survivor, James Pinsent, an interior decorator, died in Torquay in 1905: Read on: –
Bovey Tracey, Teignmouth
Roger Pinsent (xxxx – 1720)
Roger Pinsent (xxxx – 1720) (1) is the founding father of a branch (TEIGNMOUTH) of the Yeo family that almost made it through into modern time. Roger held land in Higher Yeo in the early 1700s. However, how he acquired it and his relationship to the Custom’s Officer, Thomas Pinsent (xxxx – 1798) mentioned above, is not yet known. They may be from the same family line – or they may not.
Cecil Torr’s transcriptions of Wreyland records show that Roger periodically served on the manor jury, and he was called upon to act as “tything man” in 1710. It was probably not one of the preferred village assignments – asking your neighbours and fellow parishioners to pay up would require a considerable amount of tact! However, it was likely an unavoidable obligation. Roger married Elizabeth Symons and they seem to have had two sons who later married: Edmond Pinsent (1692 – 1758) and Roger Pinsent (1703 – 1783) (2). In a vain attempt to avoid confusion, I have number the Roger Pinsents down the line of their descent.
The former, Edmond, married Mary Satterley and they too had two sons, Richard Pinsent (1718 – xxxx) and another Edmond Pinsent (1724 – 1726) – who seems to have died young. It is not clear what happened to Richard. If he did marry and have a son Richard born in around 1745, he could in-fact be the “founder” of the BRISTOL line described elsewhere. This is entirely possible as Bovey Tracey’s parish records were poorly kept between around 1740 and 1770 and there is a high probability of there are missing records. Otherwise, there were too many Richards around just then to make that determination. Interestingly, Edmond and Mary (née Satterley) also had a daughter Sarah Pinsent (1721 – xxxx) who married Daniel Kater in 1747. The couple were involved in a land transfer in 1767 what listed “the Blandwill, Furze Park and Higher Downs” at Yeo as being part of her then-late father Edmond’s estate (Devon Records Office: 4930/B/T/M). So we at least have confirmation of his linkage to Yeo.
Roger and Elizabeth (née Symons’s) second son, Roger Pinsent (1703 – 1783) (2) married Anne Edwards and had at least two sons: a third generation Roger Pinsent (1725 – 1803) (3) and a John Pinsent (1729 – xxxx). From what I can see, only the former married and had children.
Roger Pinsent (3) married Elizabeth or “Betsey” (unknown). They had two sons, Joseph Pinsent (1748 – 1837) and John Pinsent (1755 – xxxx). They also had a daughter Sarah Pinsent (1758 – xxxx), who married late. Beforehand, she may have stayed home to look after her parents. Sarah married William Dearin (a mariner) in 1793, and they are described as being the “occupiers” of her father‘s (Roger (3)) “part of Yeo” when he died in 1803. At that time, the property was saddled with a land tax of seven shillings and sixpence per annum, so it must have been a fairly substantial landholding. When Sarah’s mother “Betsey” died, in 1816, the same property passed to her eldest son, Joseph Pinsent – with his sister and her husband as sitting tenants. Presumably they moved out as he sold the property a few years later.
Joseph Pinsent lived at “late Clapps” in Bovey Tracey from 1780 to the early 1830s. In those days, it seems to have been a common practice to refer to a property by the name of its late occupant, especially if his family had held it for a while. Joseph may have farmed another “part of Yeo”, owned by Rev. Mr. Morgan, in the 1790s but, if so, he stopped after his father died in 1803. After that, Joseph seems to have become a property developer as Land Tax Records show him owning and renting-out relatively lightly taxed properties (presumably houses) in the immediate vicinity of Bovey Tracey in the 1820s.
Joseph married Mary Berry in 1773 and had two sons, John Pinsent (1773 – xxxx) and Thomas Pinsent (1776 – 1856). Their eldest son, John Pinsent, married Sarah Hill, in Lustleigh, in 1798. The couple lived in a house called “Carrols” in Bovey Tracey. John’s father, Joseph, bought the house around the time of John’s marriage and clearly meant it for him. John’s death record is missing but he probably died around 1810 – as Sarah (née Hill) paid the land tax on “Carrols” from that date on. The couple had a son, another John Pinsent (1799 – 1878), and two daughters, including one, Elizabeth Pinsent (1804 –1851) who died unmarried. Elizabeth was a dressmaker. She left a part of her (admittedly modest) estate to her brother John’s various sons and daughters “when they should attain the age of eighteen years” (Stamp Office Wills). We will meet them shortly.
John Pinsent’s brother, Joseph and Mary (née Berry’s) younger son Thomas Pinsent (1776 – 1856) trained as a carpenter and moved up to London, where he married Lucia Ferrers, in St. James’, Westminster, in 1806. He became a coal merchant in Ealing, in London, and stayed there long enough to have a family that included a son, Joseph Pinsent (1812 – 1820) who died young and three daughters. Lucia probably died in London in the 1820s as Thomas and his elder daughter, Emma Pinsent (1808 – 1881), moved back to Bovey Tracey where she married a local farmer, Robert Perriman French. Thomas was living with them on East Street in Bovey Tracey at the time of the 1851 census. He died a few years later.
John and Sarah Hill’s son John Pinsent (1799 – 1878) was a baker who married Susanna Morrish, in Kingsteignton, in 1829. They were Baptists. John and Susanna had seven children, including four sons Joseph Pinsent (1830 – 1840), who died young; John L. Pinsent (1833 – xxxx) and William Pinsent (1837 – 1881), who have yet to be traced, and James Pinsent (1839 – 1905). The children were baptized while the family was living in Kingsteignton the 1830s.
John must have had financial troubles in the early 1850s, as we find him in the debtors’ prison in Exeter at the time of the 1851 census. His wife, Susanna (nee Morrish), was living in Exminster, doing what she could to earn her living as a gardener. Their finances seem to have recovered; perhaps he sold off any residual interest he may have had in Yeo. After spending a few more years in Exminster, the family moved to Teignmouth where John became a schoolmaster running his own school. The local papers tell us that it had around 56 pupils.
Although John and Susanna (née Morrish) had four sons, only one, James Pinsent can be traced with any degree of certainty. What happened to the elder children, I am not sure. James became a house decorator and painter, in Torquay. He would have found work plentiful as Torquay, like several other coastal towns at that time, was in the midst of a housing boom following the arrival of the railway. People could now afford to escape from their smoky cities and enjoy holidays at the seaside. James married twice and had three children by his first wife, Mary Louisa Morrish. She may well have been related to his mother. Sadly, their one son, Arthur James Pinsent (1870 – 1870) died an infant and, unless one of his brothers proves to the contrary, the line must have ended when James had a heart attack and collapsed in Belgrave Road, in Torquay, in 1905.
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