Vital Statistics
Birth: 1865
Marriage: 1887
Spouse: Caroline Louisa Gloyne
Death: 1941
Family Branch: Bovey Tracey
PinsentID: GRO0912
References
William Thomas was the second son of John Pinsent by his wife, Frances Elizabeth (née Bennett). He born in Plymouth and grew up in St. Andrew’s parish with two brothers, John Samuel and Frederick Christopher (both of whose’ lives are described elsewhere ) and five sisters (three of whom were later to marry). William Thomas was a young “scholar” living at home on Wyndham Street in Plymouth when the 1871 Census was taken. He was fifteen years old and he had left school by the time they returned ten years later. He was probably working as a “mason” by then, but the 1881 Census does not actually say so.
William Thomas kept his feet firmly on dry land – unlike his two brothers who both took to the sea. He was said to be a “mason” living on Garden Street in Devonport in April 1887, when he married Caroline Louisa Gloyne in Holy Trinity parish church in Plymouth. I am not aware of any children.
William and Caroline had moved to Egg Buckland, in Plympton St. Mary, by the time of the next census, in 1891, and we find that William’s brother John Samuel was living with them. He was an “able seaman” (later “Petty Officer”) in the Royal Navy who was then serving on the cruiser “H.M.S. Aurora.” In later life John seems to have been assigned to Naval “depot-ships” and “shore stations” and he lived with his brother William and his and sister-in-law, Caroline, whenever he was stationed in Devonport. Despite this above-average amount of shore-time, he never married. John Samuel was with William and Caroline when the census takers returned, in 1901. Om that occasion, John’s entry states that he was a “pensioned naval man, an able seaman on the Dockyard Reserve” -which is consistent with his Service Record. William, meanwhile, was a “wall mason.” The family were, by then, living on Albert Terrace, in Laira, Plymouth.
The three of them were still there when the 1911 Census was compiled. By then, William Thomas as a “builder’s wall mason” and his brother John Samuel had a Navy pension but also filled his days as a “a painter’s labourer who worked in the Royal Dockyard at Devonport”. Ten years on, the 1921 census shows that William was a “bricklayer” employed by a contractor, “Mr. O’Brian” on Cobourg Street and his brother John was a (then unemployed) “motor assistant” intermittently employed at “H.M. Dockyards.” Caroline, meanwhile was busy with “home duties.”
John Samuel died in West Hampstead in Essex in 1931. William and Caroline, meanwhile, continued to live on in Albert Terrace (P.O. Directory, Plymouth & District: 1932-1933). The 1939 War-time Register tells us that they were still living there long after William retired. When he died in Plymouth in 1941, he was a seventy-four years old “retired bricklayer.” It was the probate court in Llandudno that that handled his estate – valued at £753 2s – and granted probate to his widow, Caroline Pinsent. Presumably the Court had moved out of Plymouth – which saw more than its fair share of the bombing during the “Second World War”. Caroline Louisa (aged 90 years) was the oldest resident at “Gunnerside Old People Home” when the Lord Mayor came to visit in December 1952 (Western Morning News: Saturday 27th December 1952). She died in Ernesettle, in Plymouth, in November 1957.
Family Tree
Grandparents
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1806 – 1839
Grandmother: Mary Mugford: 1808 – 1850
Parents
Father: John Pinsent: 1831 – 1908
Mother: Frances Elizabeth Bennett: 1834 – 1898
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
Samuel Pinsent: 1839 – 1912
Male Siblings (Brothers)
John Samuel Pinsent: 1861 – 1931
William Thomas Pinsent: 1865 – 1941
Frederick Christopher Pinsent: 1867 – 1890
Alfred George Pinsent: 1872 – 1872
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