Sidney Alfred Parsons and his Ancestors

James Parsons (1841 to 1914)

James was Sidney Parsons’ uncle. His brother John was Sidney’s father and was the present author’s great-grandfather.


James Parsons’  parents, Edward Parsons and his wife Elizabeth, came from the south-west of England and for most of their lives they lived in the village of Marston Magna in the south-eastern corner of the county of Somerset. Its location is marked with an X on the map.

Marston Magna is about four miles north of Yeovil and is very roughly equidistant from Bristol, Exeter and Bournemouth.

Eastleigh, where James eventually settled, is just north of Southampton, towards the bottom right of the map.


James was born near Redlynch in the parish of Bruton in May 1841 and he was baptised in Bruton on the 2nd of June. His father was working as a gamekeeper on the Redlynch estate which was owned by the Earl of Ilchester. Redlynch is about ten miles north east of Marston Magna. James and his three older siblings lived in Dropping Lane. The family did not stay at Redlynch for long. By 1844, when James’s younger brother John was born, they were back in Marston Magna.

James lived with his parents in Marston Magna until he was at least 20 years old and worked as an agricultural labourer but by 1871 he was working as a groom and domestic servant for Dr. Samuel Newton Parsons, a surgeon and apothecary in Milborne Port which is about five miles from Marston Magna. James and Dr. Parsons were cousins once removed — their common ancestor was James’ great-grandfather William Parsons.

There seems to be no record of James’s whereabouts from 1871 until he appeared in the Southampton area fifteen years later in 1886. His employer Dr. Parsons had died just before the 1881 census and it is possible that James stayed with him until then and, in the confusion, was not recorded in the census. However by the time we hear of him again he was living in or near Southampton where several other members of his family had gone led by their sister Elizabeth whose second and third husbands both became publicans there.

In July 1886 James married Margaret Rogers in Bishopstoke which is close to Southampton. A copy of the certificate is shown below:

James and Margaret said they were resident in Bishopstoke, and the wedding was attended by James’s sister Elizabeth Giddings and her son William who was named after her second husband William Sly who had died twelve years previously.

Margaret had been born in Mottisfont in Hampshire. She had left home to work as a domestic servant in Southampton and her parents had moved some miles away to the Lyndhurst in the New Forest. When Margaret’s father died her mother moved back to Southampton and in 1881 she and Margaret were living together; Margaret earned her living as a dressmaker. The following year Margaret’s mother died and a year after that Margaret, by then about 36 years old, had a son. She named the boy Frederick &mdash. She did not record the father’s name when she registered the birth. James married her two and a half years later.

James and Margaret lived in Eastleigh, a small but growing town near Bishopstoke and a few miles north of Southampton. He worked as a coachman and groom and Margaret continued her dressmaking.

On Christmas day in 1893, when James’ father Edward Parsons died in Marston Magna, Margaret was with him and so, probably, was James. It was Margaret who registered his death.

In early December 1903 James’s wife Margaret died in the Southampton Incorporation Infirmary, as it was then known, of uterine cancer and exhaustion.

James developed Parkinson’s disease. At the time of the 1911 census he was an in-patient in Southampton Infirmary and three years later, on the 13th of February 1914, he died there. His nephew William Parsons, a son of his brother John who was a publican in Southampton, was with him when he died and registered the death.

James’ step-son Frederick Parsons

James had no children but his wife had a three year old illegitimate son called Frederick when they married, and he adopted the surname Parsons.

Frederick lived with his parents in Eastleigh and when he left school he worked in the railway workshops which were a major employer in Eastleigh at that time.

When Frederick was 20 years old his mother died.

In 1908, when he was about 25 years old, Frederick married a girl called Maria Maud Fryer. They lived in the Portswood district of Southampton and he had by then changed his career and become a steward in the Merchant Navy.

Frederick and Maud (as she was known) had at least three children. We know of Norman James Parsons born in 1911, Percy Frederick Parsons born in 1912, and Sidney Walter Parsons born in 1920.

Maud died in September 1964 and appointed her son Sidney (who was employed as a Works Foreman) as the executor of her small estate even though her husband was still alive.

Frederick died in 1965, a year after his wife.

Ancestors of James Parsons


Parents
Father — Edward Parsons, a gamekeeper, farm labourer and gardener from Marston Magna in Somerset
Mother — Elizabeth Parsons née Taylor

Grandparents
Grandfather — Charles Parsons, a wealthy farmer in Marston Magna
Grandmother — Ann Parsons née Jukes

Grandfather — John Taylor, the village baker in Marston Magna
Grandmother — Rosanna Taylor née Bond, who had been born in High Ham in Somerset

Great-grandparents
Great-grandfather — William Parsons, a publican and landowner who lived in Holton in Somerset, but had been born in Kington Magna in Dorset
Great-grandmother — Mary Parsons née West, baptised in 1753, the daughter of a farmer from Stowell in Somerset

Great-grandfather — Giles Jukes, who came from a village near Gillingham in Dorset
Great-grandmother — Elizabeth Jukes née Hill

Great-grandfather — Charles Taylor, who was born in Somerton in Somerset but lived most of his life in High Ham
Great-grandmother — Catherine Tucker, who came from High Ham in Somerset

Great-grandfather — John Bond, who came from High Ham which is near Langport in Somerset
Great-grandmother — Anne Bond née Read



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You are free to make use of the information in these web pages in any way that you wish but please be aware that the author, Mike Parsons, is unable to accept respsonsibility for any errors or omissions.

Mike can be contacted at parsonspublic@gmail.com

The information in these web pages comes from a number of sources including: Hampshire County Records Office, Somerset Heritage Centre; Dorset County Records Office; Southampton City Archives; the General Register Office; several on-line newspaper archives; several on-line transcriptions of Parish Register Entries; and several on-line indexes of births, marriages and deaths. The research has also been guided at times by the published work of others, both on-line and in the form of printed books, and by information from personal correspondence with other researchers, for all of which thanks are given. However, all of the information in these web pages has been independently verified by the author from original sources, facimile copies, or, in the case of a few parish register entries, transcriptions published by on-line genealogy sites. The author is aware that some other researchers have in some cases drawn different conclusions and have published information which is at variance from that shown in these web pages.