Vital Statistics
Thomas Pinsent: 1726 – 1757 GRO1719 (Thomas of Leigh, Hennock and of Kingsteignton)
Mary Gildon: 1730 – xxxx
Married: 1752: Kingsteignton, Devon
Children by Mary Gildon:
Mary Pinsent: 1753 – 1772 (Married Robert Pinsent, 1771)
Elizabeth Pinsent: 1754 – xxxx (Married John Collins, 1774)
Margaret Pinsent: 1756 – 1757
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO1719
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Thomas Pinsent (1726 – 1757) was the younger of John Pinsent and Margaret Luscombe’s two sons. He was baptized in Hennock in 1726. He was eleven years old when his father died and he presumably moved to Crediton with his mother when she married Ambrose Rackett the following year. Thomas’s elder brother, John Pinsent, inherited their father’s soap boiling operation at Kelly and Thomas received his father’s tenement at Leigh. Two weeks before he married Mary Gildon, the daughter of Richard and Mary Gildon, in May 1752, Thomas conveyed Leigh, which was then described as being “2 messuages, 5 gardens, 8 acres of (arable) land, 4 acres of meadow, 5 acres of pasture, 2 acres of wood, and 3 acres of furze and heath.” to John Marsh (Wreyland Documents: Cecil Torr, 1910). This may have been part of a complex marriage settlement that saw Thomas acquire Gildon property in Kingsteignton. Thomas and Mary seem to have lived there.
Thomas and Mary had three daughters—Mary Pinsent, baptized in 1753; Elizabeth Pinsent, baptized in 1754; and Margaret Pinsent, who was christened in 1756 but died the following year. They had no sons. Thomas Pinsent died in 1757 and his widow, Mary (née Gildon), married George Bennett, an Inn Keeper in Kingsteignton, in 1762.
Thomas’s Will was destroyed in the bombing of the Exeter Probate Registry. However, we know that he left his two surviving daughters as coheirs. They seem to have split the income derived from Leigh and any land he may have had in Kingsteignton. The arrangement may have worked well while the girls were young but when they came of age to marry, the land had to be either sold or split. When the time came, their trustees decided to keep Leigh within the family. Wreyland Documents show that “On 2nd November 1771, one half of this property (Leigh) was brought into settlement on the marriage of Mr. Robert Pinsent of Tiverton with Mary Pinsent, one of the two daughters and co-heirs of Thomas Pinsent. And on 2nd October 1775, this half of the property was sold for L.165 0s 0d by the said Robert Pinsent to John Pinsent. On the same day, 2nd October 1775, the other half of this property was also sold to John Pinsent for L.165 0s 0d by Elizabeth Pinsent, the other daughter and co-heir of Thomas Pinsent”. Thus the ownership reverted to their uncle John Pinsent, who was by then living in Moretonhampstead. John Pinsent probably acquired the Gildon property in Kingsteignton in a similar manner as we find that his grandson and principal heir Thomas Pinsent held “Gildons” when he died in 1782.
It is not clear exactly who the above-mentioned Robert Pinsent was! Apparently he came from Tiverton, and one would have thought he belonged to that branch of the family; however, there is no obvious candidate. John either sold Leigh or passed it on to his heir, Thomas Pinsent, who coincidentally or otherwise lived in Kingsteignton. It had been sold by 1838. The “Agreement for the Commutation of Tithes in Hennock” shows that Leigh was owned by the Vicar, Sir Lawrence V. Palk, and occupied by a John Soper. The farm was approximately 59 acres in size, and it was assessed at a rent charge of £5 10s 2d. It included a piece of arable land covering 3 acres, roods and 20 perches that was, even then, known as “Pinsent’s Park”.
Family Tree
Grandparents
Grandfather: Robert Pinsent: 1661 – 1729
Grandmother: Elizabeth Delve: 1665 – 1729
Parents
Father: John Pinsent: 1690 – 1737
Mother: Margaret Luscombe: xxxx – xxxx
Father’s Siblings (Aunts, Uncles)
Julian Pinsent: 1686 – xxxx
Elizabeth Pinsent: 1688 – xxxx
John Pinsent: 1690 – 1737
Mary Pinsent: 1697 – 1711
Sarah Pinsent: 1701 – xxxx
Male Siblings (Brothers)
John Pinsent: 1723 – 1800
Thomas Pinsent: 1726 – 1754
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