Vital Statistics
Simon Pinsent: xxxx – 1744 GRO1793
Amy Puddicombe: xxxx – 1754
Married: 1701: Lustleigh
Children by Amy Puddicombe:
Julian Pinsent: 1702 – 1702
Julian Pinsent: 1703 – 1720
Thomas Pinsent: 1706 – xxxx
Hugh Pinsent: 1708 – 1755
Florence Pinsent: 1711 – xxxx
John Pinsent: 1714 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1717 – 1717
William Pinsent: 1721 – xxxx
Family Branch: Hennock
PinsentID: GRO1793
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Simon Pinsent seems to have been the eldest son of Thomas Pinsent and Ann (née Waters); however, without a clear birth record the connection is still circumstantial.
There was a Simon born to a Thomas baptized in Bovey Tracey in January 1652. However, this was five years before Thomas’s father married Julian Wilmead. It is a late entry interpolated into the register and, I suppose, it could have been inserted in 1652 in mistake for 1657. However, I rather suspect this particular Simon married Marie Harris in Hennock in 1684 and had at least two daughters there before moving to Kingsteignton. A note in the Clifford Archives at Ugbrooke states that Simon held a tenement in Kingsteignton Manor valued at £8, and that he was Reeve of the manor in 1714/15. Mary died in Kingsteignton in 1712 and Simon died there in 1716 – which does not match with “Simon of Slade.”
Thomas and Ann’s Simon seems to have worked at the family tannery at Slade, in Hennock, along with his (putative) father and grandfather and a younger brother – and he seems to have inherited the business when his grandfather died in 1701.
This Simon married Amy Puddicombe of Bovey Tracey in Lustleigh, in 1701. Why there, I am not sure. They had eight children who were born, or at least baptized, in Hennock between 1702 and 1721. Three of them were noted to be the children of “Simon of Slade.” Three died in infancy or while young. One, Hugh Pinsent, survived. What became of the other four is less certain. Simon’s sons, Thomas Pinsent, John Pinsent and William Pinsent seem to disappear. They may have died (like so many of their “cousins” in the early 1700s) or they may have left the parish. If they did leave, it is hard to know where they went as their Christian names were used widely by all branches of the family.
Hugh Pinsent was baptized in Hennock in 1708 and was a “tanner” by the time he married Elizabeth Carter, in Exeter, in 1734. They had two children – another Hugh Pinsent and an Elizabeth Pinsent who were both born in Chudleigh. Hugh Pinsent “junior” was apprenticed to a “woolcomber” in Chudleigh in 1750. What happened to him after that is less clear. Hugh “senior” meanwhile, died in Chudleigh in 1755 and his mother (Elizabeth, née Carter) likely married Joel Orchard of Chudleigh in 1759.
Simon Pinsent of Hennock signed the Devon and Exeter “Oath Roll” in front of the Magistrates at the Quarter Sessions at Ashburton, in 1723 (QS17/2/4/7c). This was an oath of allegiance to King George I required to be sworn in the aftermath of a Jacobite plot. He is also mentioned in Hennock’s Churchwardens’ Accounts with respect to “Slade” from 1728 (when the relevant register starts) to around 1731, when he seems to have transferred the business to his younger brother (?) Thomas Pinsent. Perhaps his own son, Hugh, was not deemed old enough to run the business.
Thomas paid the Hennock rates for “Slade” from 1733 to 1740. By then, he had married and had children of his own, and was running a farm at “Pitt” on the other side of the parish. He was a farmer, so he sold or otherwise disposed of the tannery. Certainly, it passed out of the family. Interestingly, there are records in the Devon Archives that suggest that the Hawkmoor family acquired “Slade and Pool Mill Down” in the 1730s [Southwest Heritage Trust: …4086/T/34-47] so there may have been some leasehold arrangement prior to the sale.
Simon and Amy retired back to Lustleigh where they died in 1744 and 1754 respectively.
Family Tree
Grandparents
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1633 – 1701
Grandmother: Julian Wilmeade: xxxx – xxxx
Parents
Father: Thomas Pinsent: 1657 – 1696
Mother: Ann Waters: xxxx – xxxx
Male Siblings (Brothers)
(?) Simon Pinsent: xxxx – 1744 ✔️
Thomas Pinsent: 1684 – 1685
Thomas Pinsent: 1691 – 1777
Robert Pinsent: 1693 – xxxx
Unknown Pinsent: 1696 – 1696
Unknown Pinsent: 1696 – 1696
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