Vital Statistics
John Pinsent: 1799 – 1858 GRO0508 (Farmer, Aller Barton, Abbotskerswell and Ware Barton, Kingsteignton)
Ann Brock: 1811 – 1866
Married: 1831: Abbotskerswell, Devon
Children by Ann Brock:
Anne Pinsent: 1833 – 1907 (Married John Hawkins Westall, Kingsteignton, Devon, 1876)
Martha Pinsent: 1834 – 1908 (Married John Souden Bridgman, Kingsteignton, Devon, 1868)
Eliza Pinsent: 1836 – 1837
John Pinsent: 1838 – 1916 (Farmer; Married Catherine Whidborne, Bishopsteignton, Devon, 1865)
Gilbert Pinsent: 1840 – 1918 (Farmer; Married Clara Bridgman, Newton Abbot, Devon, 1880)
James Pinsent: 1842 – 1902
Henry Pinsent: 1844 – 1894 (Farmer; Married Mary Langmead, Bovey Tracey, Devon, 1870)
Albert Pinsent: 1846 – 1846
Emma Louisa Pinsent: 1848 – 1926 (Married Frederick Lewis Crabb, Kingsteington, Devon, 1872)
Mary Isabella Pinsent: 1850 – 1935 (Married George Bowers Lansdale, Kingsteington, Devon, 1871)
Harriet Carlotta Pinsent: 1853 – 1895 (Married Henry Bibbings, Kingsteignton, Devon, 1880)
Family Branch: Hennock
PinsentID: GRO0508
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John Pinsent was the youngest son of Gilbert Pinsent by his wife Margaret (née Snow). John grew up on a farm in Kingsteington called “Ponswin” with two elder brothers Thomas Pinsent (who died in 1804, aged 14 years) and William Pinsent, and an elder sister, Mary Snow Pinsent.
In 1824, when John was still young and unmarried, his father moved to a larger farm called “Aller Barton” in Abbotskerswell. John seems to have gone with him. However, he may have spent a year managing some rental property in Modbury in 1828, before passing that particular task on to his brother William. His father was getting on in years, so John took over the farming at “Aller Barton.” While there, he seems to have rented land at “Sandford Marsh”, in Teigngrace, in his own name. It was owned George Templar Esquire (Earl of Somerset) and valued £1 0s 0d per annum. He held it in 1830 and 1831 (and possibly later – the tax records end around then).
John must have been running “Aller Barton” in all but name by 1831 when he married Ann Brock. Nevertheless, it was his father’s farm and it was Gilbert Pinsent who split the £24 16s 0d property land tax with William Bickford. This was a considerable amount. Presumably, they co-owned a considerable amount of land.
It was cheaper to import grain than to grow it in those days and there was considerable resentment, amongst unemployed “agricultural labourers” of affluent farmers who used machinery at the expense of manual labour. In 1831, John and Gilbert received threatening letters from people who clearly objected to their using a threshing machine. They were not alone. One of their neighbours received a similar letter and actually had his farm burnt down. “Aller Barton” was, at least, spared that fate (Hampshire and Sussex Chronicle: Monday 13th January 1831).
The Electoral Roll for the County shows that it was John (as opposed to his father) who was eligible to vote in 1832 and also in 1834. John formally took over the rental of the farm after his father died the following year. John Pinsent of “Aller Barton” applied for a Game Certificate in 1839. It cost him £3 13s 6d (North Devon Journal: Thursday 17th January 1839).
John and Ann had eleven children (five boys and six girls) over a period of twenty years and four of them (Anne, Martha, John and Gilbert) were living with them at the time of the 1841 Census. John’s mother (Margaret née Snow) and Martha and Amy Brock (two of his wife’s relations) were also in residence, as were eight servants. It was a substantial farm!
The Reverend George Baker, who owned the farm, put “Aller Barton”, “the well known Capital Barton of Aller, with the lands and appurtenances belonging …” up for sale by auction in June 1841 with Mr. John Pinsent as the sitting tenant.
The property was described as having “an excellent farm house, having all necessary and convenient outbuildings, offices and gardens …” two cottages, 73 acres (or thereabout) of water meadow, 47 of fertile pasture, 8 of orchard “famed for their superiority of fruit and cyder … ” and 172 acres of arable land. The property had a near “inexhaustible quantity of Potter’s Clay” that was suitable for brick manufacture and, presumably, paper manufacture as the property included an active paper making business at “Aller Mills” (Sherborne Mercury: Monday 10th May 1841). Despite its many assets, the property did not sell – and the trustees of the late Reverend Baker decided to subdivide it. In 1847, they put “Aller Barton” up for sale as thirteen lots (Daily News: July 2nd 1847). Presumably it sold that time and the farm seems to have been subsumed into a large pottery business by 1902. It was time for John and Ann to move on.
Accidents can occur on any farm and in 1843 one John’s apprentices’ at “Aller” was severely gored by a bull. John successfully distracted the beast by driving a pitchfork through its nose (Western Times: Saturday 5th August 1843). That would have got my attention too! There no mention of what the boy had said or done to the bull. John was a man of considerable standing in the local farming community and his ploughmen competed and did well in local, ploughing matches (Western Times: Saturday 1st March 1845). In his last year at “Aller” (1846) he was appointed one of Abbotskerswell’s Churchwardens. This is a surprise as he was probably a dissenter! Certainly, his wife Ann was a non-conformist and their daughters had chapel weddings.
Sadly, 1846 was not a good year for the family as Ann took ill and John had to have her admitted to to Bowhill House, a lunatic asylum near Exeter. She was admitted in July 1846 “rather feverish but in pretty good health” on grounds of “hereditary insanity.” She was discharged in June in the following year (Devon Heritage Centre: 3992F/H20/1: Findmypast). Presumably it was a temporary breakdown as there are no other indications of ill-health. Perhaps the loss of a son, Albert Pinsent – who was born in February and died in August 1846, and the stress of the upcoming move were too much for her.
John and Ann moved to “Ware Barton” (a.k.a “Wear Barton), a farm owned by Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, in Kingsteignton, in 1847. It backed onto the Teign River estuary a few miles east of Kingsteignton. On his arrival, probably as an act of good-will, he offered to host the eleventh annual ploughing match of the “Newton Abbot, Agricultural and Labourers’ Friendly Society” (Western Times: Saturday 26th August 1848). Perhaps he took his ploughman with him from “Aller” and felt that he could hold his own. The event seems to have gone well, and it was followed by a slap-up dinner at the Globe Hotel in Newton Abbot (Flindell’s Western Luminary: 7th November 1848). John served as a juror on the Manor Court at Kingsteignton in 1848 and again in 1851.
One of John’s sisters-in-law, Martha Vooght, died in Bishopsteignton in 1849 leaving his wife Ann as was one of her beneficiaries (Inland Revenue Wills: 1849). The 1851 Census data shows that “Ware Barton” covered 250 acres and that John and Ann worked it with the help of their elder children Martha, John, Gilbert, James and Henry Pinsent – all of whom were born in Abbotskerswell. There were also three resident servants and five other outside-workers. John and Ann’s three younger daughters, Emma Louisa, Mary Isabella and Harriet Carlotta were born and baptized in Kingsteignton.
In 1850, Mr. Pike, one of John’s outside workers, gave evidence against a Bishopsteignton gamekeeper who had been summoned for trespassing and shooting pheasants on “Brimble Hill” on Mr. Pinsent’s land. After considerable discussion, the local magistrates plumped for “mistaken identity” and told Mr. Pike to be sure of his identification next time (Exeter Flying Post: Thursday 31st October 1850)! I do not know who the gamekeeper worked for, but perhaps his employer had clout.
The following year, one of John Pinsent’s workmen saw one of the farm’s pregnant ewes being attacked by a bull terrier. He followed the dog home to Teignmouth where he discovered that it was owned by Rev. Dr. Richards. The sheep died, and the embarrassed Reverend gentleman dutifully paid up (Exeter Flying Post: Thursday 13th February 1851). John lost another sheep a month later, this time to a dog owned by Mr. Sanders of Kingsteignton. It was the third ewe that this dog had killed and compensation was not enough, it was put down (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette: Saturday 8th March 1851).
Letters in Lord Clifford’s archives at Ugbrooke show that John and his Lordship corresponded in 1846 over a parcel of land needed by the South Devon Railway Company. The point at issue seems to have been the amount of land he would loose to a sloped embankment. The line open as far as Teignmouth by then but under construction further west. It was slated to run from Exeter to Plymouth and would prove to be a valuable addition to the regional transit system. It was not all bad news. The farm remained productive. 1853 must have been a good year and the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (Saturday 13th August 1853) tells us, with hint of relief, that “a field of wheat belonging to Mr. John Pinsent, of Ware Barton in this parish, has been cut and saved in good condition …”
By 1854, John had obtained enough standing in the farming community to be asked to participate as one of three judges at the sixteenth annual ploughing match of the “Newton Abbot Agricultural and Labourers’ Friend Society”. After receiving a vote of thanks at the Annual Dinner at the Globe Hotel, Mr. Pinsent expressed “a hope that in their awards and prizes (the judges) had given general satisfaction” (Western Times: Saturday 4th November 1854. John was appointed to the Newton Abbot Board of Guardians, which looked after the Workhouse and administered social services in 1857 (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette: Saturday 13th June 1857).
John was a chapel-goer, and he attended the “Great Protestant Meeting” when it was convened in Newton Abbot in January 1852. It was held to encourage people to sign a Petition to “Her Majesty and both Houses of Parliament against a continuance of the Maynooth Grant, and any further Concessions to Romanism” (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette: Saturday 31st January 1852). The Maynooth Grant was a highly contentious cash grant that the British Government made to a seminary in Ireland in 1845. John was not alone in signing the petition. John Ball Pinsent – the son of John’s neighbour, Thomas Pinsent of “Greenhill” in Kingsteignton – another wealthy farmer also signed it. They were Baptists belonging to the DEVONPORT branch of the family.
John had died a few years before the 1861 Census. However, his widow, Ann (née Brock) had evidently stayed on and continued to run the farm with the help of her unmarried sons (John, Gilbert, James and Henry Pinsent), and also her daughters (Anne, Martha, Emma, Mary and Harriet Pinsent). According to the census, “Ware Barton” covered 300 acres. There were five resident servants and two day-labourers working there.
Ann received letters of administration for her husband from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in 1859; however, there were still matters outstanding in 1866 and her eldest son, John Pinsent, acquired additional letters relating to his father’s estate in 1868. By then, John had married Catherine Whidborne and had moved to a nearby farm called Middle Rocombe in Combeinteignhead. Later, he moved out of the County and farmed in Sherfield English, in Hampshire. This seems to have been the county his wife had come from.
John’s brother Gilbert Pinsent stayed on at “Ware Barton” after his parents died and was granted letters of administration for his mother’s estate in 1866. He (eventually) married Clara Bridgman in 1880; he was forty years old. They started their family in Kingsteignton but later moved to a farm in Newbury, in Berkshire. Henry Pinsent, John and Gilbert’s younger brother, may have acquired “Whitstone” farm in Bovey Tracey when he married Mary Langmead in 1870. The lives of all three of them are described elsewhere.
James Pinsent witnessed Wm. Horsham, steal a nosebag containing a quantity of oats valued at 5s while working at Ware Barton in December 1870. Mr. Horsham was brought up before the magistrates at Newton Petty Sessions and, after initially pleading “guilty,” he changed his plea to “not guilty, as he was too drunk to know what he was doing”. He then asked “his master (in this instance James) if, in the 20 years he had worked for him, he ever knew anything against him before. His master confessed to having heard reports, but never till then, having caught him in the act. In consequence of his already long incarceration (12 days), he was ordered to be further locked up until six o’clock and then discharged” (Western Times: Thursday 29th December 1870).
James Pinsent worked at “Ware Barton” but also had a sideline as a “manure agent” (fertilizer salesman). In the 1870s, he was the local agent for “Messrs. Law and Co. Manufacturers”. It was a sales position that had the side benefit that he got to attend annual meetings and dinners of the “Newton Abbot Agricultural and Labourers’ Friend Society” (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette: Friday 28th October 1870). James and a colleague also hosted the firm’s clients to a fancy meal at one or other of the Newton Abbot hotels every year (East and South Devon Advertiser: Saturday 27th November 1875). At one of them he was teased mercilessly for still being single. He ran for it! As far as I know, he never married.
James seems to have gone out to Australia, however, exactly when, I am not sure. I suspect he was the “J. Pinsent” who belonged to the Australian Jockey Club in Sydney in the late 1870s. If so, he raced a brown gelding named “Partisan” at, among times and places, the August track meet at Tattershall in August 1877 (Sydney Morning Herald: Friday 2nd March 1877). He was probably also James Pincent apprehended by the police for setting fire to a stable and shed at Temora, New South Wales, on the 27th December 1885 (New South Wales Police Gazette: February 18th, 1885). The Attorney General, for some reason, declined to prosecute. What that was all about, I have no idea. James would have been forty-three years old at the time.
James went on to become a miner in what is now Papua New Guinea. He died intestate (without a will) on Samarai Island in British New Guinea in 1902. The Deputy Curator for Intestacy processed his estate in the Northern Supreme Court (The Northern Miner: Thursday 23rd January 1902) and the Queensland Gazette shows that the State carefully invested his money while they sought a deserving legatee. The account had accumulated to £243 4s 2d by 15th September 1905.
John and Ann (née Brock’s) had six daughters but one, Eliza, died in infancy in 1837. The other five grew up in Abbotskerswell and Newton Abbot and were married in the Independent Chapel in Kingsteignton. The girls were well known in and around Kingsteignton and Newton Abbot in the 1860s and 1870s – and it is not always possible to distinguish which did what or attended any given event!
For instance, which “Miss Pinsent” was it that “contributed many articles of elegant needle work” at a Wesleyan Bazaar held in the Royal Public Rooms in Exeter in May 1865 (Western Times: Friday 26th May 1865)? Doubtless any one of them could have. Similarly, which was it that “kindly presided at the trays” at a Harvest Thanksgiving tea given to the locals at a chapel in Kingsteignton in November 1867 (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette: Friday 1st November 1867)? Also, which one of them served the tea at the testimonial celebration given to honour the Rev. R. W. Row on Good Friday in April 1870? We do know that the money collected to purchase a gold watch for him was “principally through the instrumentality of Mr. Pinsent of Were Barton” (Western Times: Friday 22nd April 1870)? This was probably the late John Pinsent’s son Gilbert Pinsent .
Anne married a dentist, Thomas John Hawkins Westall, in Newton Abbot, in 1876; Martha married a grocer, John Soudon Bridgman, from Torquay, in 1868; Emma Louisa married a farmer, Frederick Lewis Crabb, from Wellington in Somerset, in 1872; Mary Isobella married a draper, George Bowers Lansdale, from Newton Abbot in 1871 and Harriet Carlotta married a chemist, John Henry Bibbings, in Newton Abbot, in 1880. Their choice of chapel over church marriages almost certainly reflects the family’s Methodist leanings.
Family Tree
Grandparents
Grandfather: John Pinsent: 1728 – 1772
Grandmother: Susanna Pooke: 1730 – 1772
Parents
Father: Gilbert Pinsent: 1758 – 1835
Mother: Margaret Snow: 1756 – 1843
Father’s Siblings (Aunts, Uncles)
John Pinsent: 1751 – 1753
John Pinsent: 1753 – 1821
Robert Pinsent: 1753 – 1787
Thomas Pinsent: 1754 – 1785
William Pinsent: 1757 – 1835
Gilbert Pinsent: 1758 – 1835 ✔️
Charles Pinsent: 1765 – 1765
Charles Pinsent: 1766 – 1826
Samuel Pinsent: 1767 – 1775
Joseph Pinsent: 1770 – 1835
Male Siblings (Brother)
Thomas Pinsent: 1790 – 1804
William Pinsent: 1797 – 1882
John Pinsent: 1799 – 1858 ✔️
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