There has been an assumption made in multiple online family trees that the John Fenton who was born in 1785 in Sturton-le-Steeple, Nottinghamshire, England and the John Fenton who died in 1881 in the Union Workhouse in Clarborough, Nottinghamshire, England were one and the same.

However, when I considered the details, something didn’t quite seem to add up.

The John Fenton who was baptized on 06 May 1785 in Sturton-le-Steeple, the son of Benjamin and Zillah (Williamson) Fenton, had married Sarah Halcon in Bole, Nottinghamshire, England, in 1809. They had eight children together and spent their married life in Bole, where John was a shoemaker, or cordwainer. John and Sarah can be found there in the 1841 England Census; Sarah died as a result of “Bilious Complaint” in 1843, but John was still the head of a household in Bole at the time of the 1851 England Census, when he lived with his second eldest son, Isaac. Two years later, Isaac married, and in the 1861 England Census, John can be found living with Isaac and his family at the Brandywharf Public House of Waddingham, Lincolnshire, England.

This is where accounts of John’s following years diverge. While some initially attributed records of a John Fenton who appears with wife Ann in the poorhouse of Clarborough, Nottinghamshire, England in 1871 and 1881 to the aforementioned John, the 1861 England Census makes evident that these were in fact two different men. At the same time that our widowed John Fenton, seventy-five, a retired cordwainer and native of Bole, was a resident of Waddingham, Lincolnshire, England, another John Fenton, sixty-seven, a woodman and native of South Leverton, lived with his wife, Ann, in Treswell, Nottinghamshire, England.

With confirmation of two John Fentons in two nearby places at the same time, and spurred by the recent release of the General Register Office for England and Wales’ digital image collection, I decided to search for any John Fentons who may have died in Waddingham or in Gainsborough—where Isaac Fenton resided as of 1871, his father no longer a member of his household—between 1861-1871. And, in short order, a record was located:

Our John Fenton died on 27 July 1862 at Nottingham Place in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England, presumably at the home of his son, with whom he had resided in nearby Waddingham the previous year. Nottingham Place was what was known as a yard, or tenement housing, located near the banks of the River Trent. The death register noted that John had been seventy-seven years of age, that he was “Formerly a Cordwainer,” and that his death was a result of bronchitis. Present at his death was Frances Fenton; she was John’s daughter-in-law who had presumably cared for him throughout his last sickness.

This all makes much more logical sense than had our John Fenton died at the age of ninety-six—which would have been quite a feat for someone living in a poorhouse whom one can only assume was not receiving the best of care. Indeed, the idea that our John would have been in a poorhouse at all seemed suspect given his decades-long career as a shoemaker and his having at least one adult child who, as evidenced by the census, was able to take him in under his roof as necessary in his later years.

John in fact had three surviving children in England at the time of his death, and it is possible that he rotated between households in his later years. Five of his eight children preceded him in death, although one by a matter of mere weeks: his eldest son, John (Jr.), the only one of his children to emigrate from England, succumbed to typhoid fever while serving in the Union Cavalry in the American Civil War on 07 June 1862. It seems likely that John Fenton died unaware of his son’s fate.

Copyright © 2023 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCES

1841 England census, Nottinghamshire County, England, population schedule, Bole, p. 8, John Fenton; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing National Archives, London.

1851 England census, Nottinghamshire County, England, population schedule, Bole, p. 11, John Fenton; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing National Archives, London.

1861 England census, Lincolnshire County, England, population schedule, Waddingham, p. 25, John Fenton; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing National Archives, London.

1861 England census, Nottinghamshire County, England, population schedule, Treswell, p. 3, John and Ann Fenton; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing National Archives, London.

1871 England census, Nottinghamshire County, England, population schedule, Treswell, p. 8, John and Ann Fenton; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing National Archives, London.

1881 England census, Nottinghamshire County, England, population schedule, Clarborough, p. 50, John and Ann Fenton; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing National Archives, London.

“Nottinghamshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1937,” John Fenton and Sarah Halcor [Halcon], 16 February 1809, St. Martin, Bole; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023).

“England and Wales Death Registration Record,” John Fenton, 27 July 1862, death, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; digital image, General Register Office for England and Wales (https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp : accessed 08 July 2023), citing HM Passport Office.

“Gainsborough’s Lost Yards,” Gainsborough Lincolnshire (https://www.flickr.com/groups/689281@N23/discuss/72157616265811894/– : accessed 20 August 2023).

“Nottinghamshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812,” John Fenton, 06 May 1785, baptism, Sturton-le-Steeple; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 05 November 2023), citing Nottinghamshire Archives.

William White, History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Nottinghamshire (Sheffield, England: William White, 1832), 331; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 20 August 2023).