Vital Statistics
William Abraham West Pinsent: 1872 – 1958 GRO0893 (Chief Petty Officer, Royal Navy, Brighton, Sussex)
Louisa Bristow: 1874 – 1958
Married: 1899: Plymouth, Devon
Children by Louisa Bristow
William Oliver Bristow Pinsent: 1900 – 1951 (Married Muriel Harriet Pretoria Yellop, Portsmouth, Hampshire)
Ethel Muriel Pinsent: 1904 – 1992 (Married Leonard Roy Merifield, Brighton, Sussex, 1927)
Charles Hubert Pinsent: 1909 – 2009 (Married Margaret Evelyn, Pettifer, London, Middlesex)
Family Branch: Bovey Tracey
PinsentID: GRO0893
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William Abraham West Pinsent was the eldest son of Samuel Pinsent by his wife, Sarah Jane née West. He was born in Plymouth, into a family of three boys and seven girls. His father was an “upholsterer.” However, William had three uncles, (John Pinsent , Thomas Pinsent and William Pinsent) as well as cousins who served in the Royal Navy and he followed them into the “senior service” – as it was known.
Census records shows that Samuel and his family was living at 31 Morley Street in Plymouth in 1891 and, presumably, William grew up there. He was a nineteen years-old “seaman” serving in the Royal Navy in 1891 he was also said to be a “seaman” when he married Louisa Bristow – the daughter of a fellow “seaman” – in Plymouth in September 1899. The couple moved to Oxford Place, in Plymouth, the first of their three children, William Oliver Bristow Pinsent, was born there in 1900. William had been promoted to “petty officer” by the time the census-takers caught up with them the following year.
William Abraham either joined or transferred to the Coast Guard in the early 1900s and he was stationed in Tenby, in South Wales, when his second child (Ethel Muriel Pinsent) was born in 1904. The family moved around a lot and his third child (Charles Hubert Pinsent) arrived while he was stationed at Breage, near Praa Sands and Marazion, on the southern tip of Cornwall in 1907. William Abraham and his family were still there when the census takers came visiting in 1911. However, his daughter, Ethel Muriel Pinsent, was away from home. She was living with one of her uncles, Bertie Gamlett, in Devonport. Perhaps she was going to school there.
What William got up to during the “First World War”, I am not sure; however, he was with the Coast Guard in St. Mary’s in the Scilly Iles when his eldest son, William Oliver Bristow Pinsent applied to join the Royal Air Force in September 1918. William found it hard to respond when, in 1921, the census takers asked where he worked! He said “no fixed place” and one can see why. The family was living at Porthallow, in St. Keverne in Cornwall at the time. He was still a Petty Officer in the Coast Guard; his wife Louise handled home duties and his younger son, Charles Hubert – who had been born in Breage – was still at school. William had retired from the Navy with the rank of “Chief Petty Officer” by 1927, the year that his daughter, Ethel, married Leonard Roy Merifield, in Brighton, in Sussex. At the time, he was said to be a “mariner.”
Ethel Muriel was a “grocer’s assistant” living with her employer, Mr. A. W. Pascoe, and his wife, in Coinage Hall Street, in Helston, Cornwall when the census was taken in 1921. How she came to marry Leonard Merifield in Sussex, I do not know. Perhaps she moved there to work.
According to the Electoral Rolls, William and Louisa retired to Brighton where they were living at #124 Hartington Road with their youngest son, Charles Hubert Pinsent, in 1933. Charles was studying to be a lawyer. William and Louisa were still were still living there when the Wartime Register was compiled in 1939. There were two people living with them at the time; however, their names are redacted. I am not sure who they were.
William Abraham West Pinsent a “retired Chief Petty Officer, Royal Navy” died in Brighton in January 1958. His son, Charles Hubert was a fully-fledged solicitor by then and he processed his father’s will. William’s effects were valued at £1,903 2s (England and Wales, National Probate Calendar: 1858 – 1966). Louisa (née Bristow) died in Brighton later that same year. Presumably he dealt with her estate too.
William and Louisa’s two sons both married and had children. Their lives are discussed elsewhere.
Family Tree
GRANDPARENTS
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1806 – 1839
Grandmother: Mary Mugford: 1808 – 1850
PARENTS
Father: Samuel Pinsent: 1839 – 1912
Mother: Sarah Jane West: 1946 – 1931
FATHER’S SIBLINGS (AUNTS, UNCLES)
John Pinsent: 1831 – 1908
Sarah Jane Pinsent: 1832 – 1916
Mary Ann Pinsent: 1834 – 1850
Thomas Pinsent: 1835 – 1884
William Pinsent: 1837 – xxxx
MALE SIBLINGS (BROTHERS)
Samuel George Caleb Pinsent: 1875 – 1951
Thomas Charles Pinsent: 1886 – 1889
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