Vital Statistics
Benjamin Pinsent: 1776 – 1819 GRO0945 (Carpenter, London, Middlesex)
Esther Best: 1773 – 1868
Married: 1792: London, Middlesex
Children by Esther Best:
Samuel Benjamin Pinsent: 1794 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1795 – xxxx
Ann Pinsent: 1797 – xxxx* (Married Thomas Hammond, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx)
William Pinsent: 1799 – xxxx
Sarah Lucy Pinsent: 1800 – xxxx (Married Conway McKiernan Reade, 1822, London, Middlesex)
Esther Pinsent: 1805 – xxxx (Married (1) James King, London, Middlesex, 1828; (2) George Charles, Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire, 1847; (3) John Cunningham, Clifton, Gloucestershire, 1855)
Benjamin Pinsent: 1805 – xxxx
Benjamin Pinsent: 1808 – xxxx (Married Mira Burgoyne, 1832, London, Middlesex)
William Pinsent: 1812 – 1893 (Married Mary Ann Bright, 1833, xxxx, xxxx)
Emily Pinsent: 1815 – xxxx
Amelia Pinsent: 1818 – xxxx (Married John Moffat, 1856, London, Middlesex)
* Mary Ann Sarah Pinsent: 1813 – xxxx: Illegitimate daughter of Ann Pinsent
** William Thomas George Pinsent: 1838 – xxxx: Illegitimate son of Amelia Pinsent
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0945
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Benjamin Pinsent was the younger of Thomas Pinsent’s sons by Anne Wright. He was baptized in Tiverton in April 1776 and may have had a twin sister, Elizabeth Pinsent – although it is also possible that they were near-age siblings who happened to be baptized on the same day.
Benjamin’s father was a “carpenter” and he was brought up in the same trade. He went up to London while young and married Esther Best in St. George’s Church, Hanover Square in 1792. She was from Oxford. They were both less than twenty years of age when they married and they had eleven children (six boys and five girls) in the years that followed. They seems to have been baptists and several of their children (including a twelfth that was stillborn in 1802) were born in the “Lying in Hospital” in Holborn (Non-conformist and Non-Parochial Registers: 1657 – 1970: Ancestry.com). Perhaps surprisingly – given the uncertainties of life in those days – there was a delay of twelve years between the birth of their daughter Sarah Lucy Pinsent in 1800 and her baptism in 1812. Perhaps they deferred the baptism of their stronger children until they were old enough to understand the meaning of the ceremony.
Relatively few children born in big cities reached maturity in the early part of the 19th Century. Nevertheless, four of Benjamin’s daughters and two of his sons seem to have made it. I have yet to find the death records for some of the others but it is clear from the re-usage of Christian names that deaths did occur. Benjamin and Esther (a.k.a. “Hester”) had three sons called William and two who were named Benjamin.
London was not a particularly pleasant place to live in around then. Baptismal records show that Benjamin and Ester’s eldest daughter, Ann Pinsent, had an illegitimate daughter by a “saddler”, Thomas Hammond when she was sixteen years old. She was baptized in St. Giles in the Fields, in Holborn in 1813. In 1826, this child, Mary Ann Sarah Pinsent/Hammond, found herself up on a charge of murder in “Hatton Police Court”. Evidently, she had been seen disposing of a bundle – which turned out to be an infant child – in a water closet. She was only thirteen and the evidence suggested that she was disposing of the body for another girl (Star (London): Wednesday 12th April 1826). Nevertheless, Mary Ann was remanded pending further investigations. Ann Pinsent’s youngest sister Amelia Pinsent had an illegitimate son, William Thomas George Pinsent who was baptized in St. Pancras Old Church in 1838 – although he was probably born ten years previously (London, England, Church of England Births, and Baptisms, 1813-1917: Ancestry.com). What happened to him is unclear. However, his mother married John Moffat, in Clerkenwell in 1856 and he may have became a “Moffat”.
Benjamin and Esther moved to Gilbert Street in St. George’s parish, Bloomsbury, sometime prior to 1808 and Benjamin died there, aged 47, in April 1819 (London, England, Deaths & Burials: 1813 – 1980). Benjamin’s youngest son, William and his wife Mary Ann (née Bright) seem to have lived in the family home after his father died. His mother, Benjamin’s widow, Esther (née Best) had moved in with her daughter Esther and her husband James King (an “appraiser” of some sort) by the time the Census was taken in 1841. They lived on Crescent Street in St. Pancras in Marylebone. James seems to have died sometime shortly thereafter and his widow (“Esther, junior” as it were) married a “solicitor’s clerk”, George Charles. They moved to Clifton near Bristol in Gloucestershire and Esther’s mother, Esther (née Best) had joined them by 1851. George Charles must have died in the mid 1850s sometime, as Esther “junior” seems to have married again. She married John Cunningham in Clifton St. Andrew’s Church, in 1855. Her mother, Esther Pinsent, was still living with her when the 1861 Census was taken! She died in Clifton in 1868.
Family Tree
GRANDPARENTS
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1709 – 1773
Grandmother: Mary Knott: xxxx – xxxx
PARENTS
Father: Thomas Pinsent: 1738 – 1825
Mother: Anne Wright: 1740 – 1815
MALE SIBLINGS (BROTHERS)
James Pinsent: 1769 – 1833
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