Sidney Alfred Parsons and his Ancestors

James Parsons and Sarah Newton of Milborne Port, Somerset



Milborne Port is a small town in Somerset lying on the border with Dorset, and not far from Horsington, the home of several of the Parsons families who are subjects of this web site.

On the 22nd of November 1798 James Parsons married Sarah Newton in Milborne Port. He was about 21 years old and she was only about 16.

James Parsons was baptised in West Stour in Dorset on the 12th of October 1777. He was a son of William Parsons. James’ younger brother, Charles, was a great-great-great-grandfather of the author of this web page. William had originally come from Kington Magna but after marrying James’ mother, Mary West, the family had moved to Horsington in Somerset where their first child, William, was baptised. West Stour, where James was baptised, is very close to East Stour where Mary had been baptised twenty years earlier.

As a young boy James lived in Horsington but by the time he was a teenager his parents had moved to Holton, near Wincanton, where his father owned the Old Inn and eventually became a churchwarden.

Sarah Newton’s family were prominent members of the Old Independent Meeting House in Milborne Port and her family had a large square pew on the right-hand side of the pulpit. They were not related to Francis Newton who had been the pastor for some 30 years until his death in 1785.

James Parsons and his wife Sarah settled in Milborne Port where they lived as committed non-conformists. James was a Deacon at the chapel there. It was reported that on the Sunday of the 1851 census there were adult congregations of 180 in the morning and 386 in the evening, with 120 Sunday school children at the morning service.

The Sherborne Mercury reported that James Parsons died in Milborne Port on the 30th of September 1854 aged 68 years. His wife Sarah had died in 1832 at the age of 50.

James and Sarah Parsons had two children, both were sons, and both were born in Milborne Port. They named them Samuel and William.


•  Samuel Newton Parsons, MD, MRCS was born in about 1804. As a young man he received an inheritance from his aunt Elizabeth Newton who had never married. He qualified as a doctor and was for many years a General Practitioner in Wincanton where he lived in North Street. He never married. He was, like his parents, a committed non-conformist and, in 1852, Samuel was one of a number of dissenters who took ownership of the Independent Chapel, situated on the north side of Mill Street in Wincanton “upon trust that the chapel be used by the congregation of Independent Dissenters as a place of religious worship”.

Samuel later moved back to Milborne Port and lived in the family home in the hamlet of Kingsbury Regis. He stayed there for the rest of his life until he died in January 1881. In his will, Samuel left most of his money to his brother William who was in Canada but, intriguingly, he also left £200 to Mary Ann, the wife of Uriah Parsons, an inn-keeper in Warminster. Uriah was Samuel’s cousin, a son of his uncle Charles.

The house in which Samuel lived was put up for sale by auction. The following newspaper advertisement describes it.

“A substantially built dwelling house, with two walled in gardens, orchard, court-yard, stable, groom's cottage, and other outbuildingd, containing altogether 2r. 29p., and late in the occupation of Mr. Samuel Newton Parsons, deceased. NOTE - The house, which was built in 1676, contains some fine oak woodwork, and is well capable of restoration in accordance with the original design, or of being converted into business premises. It commands a fine stream of water, 146 feet in length of bank, and is therefore most valuable for factory purposes.”


•  William Newton Parsons was born in about 1809.

William married Mary Bowers Lewis, who had been born in Sherborne, in about 1836. The family moved to Ringwood in Hampshire where William went into partnership as a beer and wine merchant and brewer. But in April 1842 the Salisbury and Winchester Journal reported that he took sole control of the business:

“NOTICE is hereby given, — That the PARTNERSHIP recently carried on at Ringwood, in the county of Southampton, by the undersigned WILLIAM NEWTON PARSONS and WILLIAM MILLS, as Ale, Beer, and Porter Brewers, Maltsters, Spirit Merchants, and Farmers, under the Firm of ‘Parsons and Mills,’ was this day DISSOLVED by mutual consent, that such dissolution will take effect as from the thirteenth day of April instant and that the said William Newton Parsons is empowered and has engaged to discharge and settle all Debts due both to and from the said Partnership concern. — Dated this twenty-seventh day of April, 1842,
    W. N. PARSONS,
    WM. MILLS,
Witness, - G. COTTMAN.

The above business will in future be carried on under the Firm of ‘Parsons and Co.’

William and his wife Mary had several children while they were living in Ringwood. Their first child, William Newton, died while still a baby. But then they had Albertina, Sarah Harriet, Henry, Mary, Louisa Newton and Ellen. William and his family moved back to Somerset in about 1846 where he farmed nearly 200 acres in Broomfield, near Bridgewater. They had two more children while they were living there — William Newton and Samuel Newton.

Some time in the 1850s, William and his family emigrated to Canada. They lived near Hamilton, Ontario, where William took a job with the Great Western Railway and became a station-master, firstly in Clinton, a lake-facing township to the east of Hamilton, and then in Beachville to its west. He died in Ingersoll (which is very near Beachville) in December 1888. His wife Mary died in 1898, also in Ingersoll.



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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.