22 Jun 2024

I’ve been documenting more about the life of William Hinksman, focusing particularly on what happened to his wife and family and have had a couple of potentially exciting breakthroughs.

Firstly, I was doing some idle searching on Ancestry for William’s daughter Maria and came across a tree that had the marriage of a Maria Hinxman to George Ponsford in Alverstoke, Hampshire in 1828. Upon further investigation I found her in the 1851 census¹ which stated that her date and place of birth was 1810 in Colchester. This fits William’s daughter exactly. Interestingly she was able to sign her name (as Maria Hinxman) whereas George could not.

George Ponsford, abode This Parish and Maria Hinxman, abode This Parish. Married by Banns. Groom could not sign name. Bride signed name. Witness: Edward Matthews (signed). Witness: Elizabeth Short (could not sign)[^mariamarr].

Alverstoke is just to the west of Portsmouth which is where, in 1812, a Jane Hinksman was buried. I’ve been speculating that this was William’s wife Jane Fisher but I have no supporting evidence.

The origins of Jane Fisher have been an ongoing mystery and I have wondered whether she was from Suffolk (where her daughter Jane Hinksman ended up) or somewhere in Hampshire. Finding Maria here in Portsmouth supports the idea that at least some of William or Jane’s family were in the Portsmouth area. If Jane did die in 1812 then her daughters would have been aged 3 and 2 and William, having returned from a long period of sickness in Portugal, and still an active soldier could not have looked after them. Perhaps Jane was sent to family in Suffolk and Maria was brought up by family in Hampshire.

Maria and George went on to have a eight children:

• George Edward Ponsford, b. 1828
• William Hinksman Ponsford, b. 1831
• John Thomas Ponsford, b. 1833
• Maria Jane Ponsford, b. 1835
• Louisa Ponsford, b. 1838
• Matilda Ponsford, b. 1841
• Harry Hinksman Ponsford, b. 1844
• Emma Ponsford, b. 1847
• Frederick Ponsford, b. 1849

The fact that two of the children were given the middle name Hinksman suggests that Maria was proud of her Hinksman heritage. Her second son was named William Hinksman the same as her father.

George Ponsford died in 1849 and in 1860 Maria seems to have got married to Richard Lucas. I have ordered their marriage certificate. It should name her father which will confirm whether this Maria is the daughter of my ancestor or not. However, being born in Colchester in 1810 is a very strong indicator that she is.

I also find it interesting that she signed her name as Hinxman rather than Hinksman. Although they sound the same they do appear to be used by quite separate branches of the Hinxman/Hinksman tree, which is actually quite a small number of people. The Hinxmans in Hampshire were landowners and gentry, centred mainly around Titchfield between Portsmouth and Southampton.

William’s name was always written as Hinksman across dozens of muster rolls, his marriage and baptism records or his children (although on Jane’s they were recorded as Inkman). Maria gave her children the middle name Hinksman and Harry and Frederick’s birth certificate record her maiden name as Hinksman.

My ancestor Jane, potentially Maria’s sister, was also able to sign her name and did so as Hinksman.

I want to be careful not to rely on this spelling distinction but it does seem that the families were very careful to keep their name as Hinksman despite Hinxman being more widely know in the area.

This is evident in the second of my breakthroughs, although this one is more of a hypothesis than a highly probable connection.

I’ve always believed that William and Edward Hinksman were brothers and that they originated from Hampshire. Both were members of the same regiment, the evidence suggests that William recruited Edward in Southampton and William himself was recruited from South Hampshire.

Back in 2021 I spent some time extracting all Hinksman, Hinxman and Hinchman baptisms from the Hampshire Baptism Index 1752-1812 and grouped them into families. I was looking for families that contained both a William and an Edward but I didn’t find any.

However I did find what looked like two separate families in Twyford, Hampshire, one with a William and the other with an Edward. The fathers name was Edward in both but the mother was Mary in one and Jane in another. Confusingly the baptism dates for the two mother names were intermingled so it wasn’t a case of Edward marrying a Jane and then subsequently marrying a Mary.

This is what I found during that search:

Edward & Mary (? Bailey, m. 1774 Avington)

• William HINKSMAN, 1777, Twyford
• Molly HINXMAN, 1779, Twyford

Edward & Jane

• Jane HINKSMAN 1776, Twyford
• Elizabeth HINXMAN, 1782, Twyford
• Edward HINXMAN, 1785, Twyford
• Amy HINXMAN, 1788, Twyford
• Julet Caroline HINXMAN, 1791, Twyford
• James HINXMAN, 1793, Twyford

I spent some time yesterday trying to follow up each individual in the families and discover what happened to them, particularly looking for a marriage for Edward and Jane and/or burials for the mothers. All my searching considered the various spellings of Hinksman.

• there were no burials of any person with a name like Hinksman in Twyford from 1713 until 1812, when an Edward Hinxman was buried. My feeling is that this is Edward the father.
• there were no other marriages of an Edward Hinksman around this time at all, across all Hampshire and UK records.
• there were no Hinksman baptisms prior to 1776 in Twyford and none after
• I found marriages for all of the children, except Elizabeth, William and Edward:
  • Jane, b. 1776, married James Isaac in Bishopstoke in 1793 then James Godwin in Twyford in 1795, Married as Jane Hinksman, could not sign
  • Mollie/Maria, b. 1779, married Charles Meeton in Twyford in 1802. Signed her name as Maria Hinksman although the vicar wrote Hinxman.
  • Amy/Emma, b. 1788, married John Hawkins in Twyford in 1808. Signed her name as Emma Hinksman although the vicar wrote Amy Hinxman.
  • Julet , b. 1791, married Thomas Clift in Twyford in 1807. Signed her name as Jule Caroline Hinksman although, once again, the vicar wrote Hinxman.
  • James, b. 1793, may have married Ann Honora Cocklin in St.. George in the East, Middlesex. He signed as James Hinksman.

Since (a) there is a lack of evidence of any other Edward in the area, let alone in Twyford itself and (b) the time between each of the children’s baptisms my hypothesis is that this is a single family of Hinksmans.

Furthermore since I can’t find any trace of the William and Edward from this family, I think this could be the family of my ancestor William. If that is the case then both William and Edward joined the 4th Regiment of Foot in or around Southampton.

How can the single family idea be reconciled with the two different mother names? There are a couple of possibilities:

1. Were Mary and Jane the same person? Those names often go together as a pair “Mary Jane” but I don’t believe it is common for them to be interchangeable. The only marriage I have found is between Edward and Mary Bayley in the nearby parish of Avington. She is simply Mary in that entry, not Mary Jane. She was of the parish of Brown Candover and there is a baptism of a Mary Bailey in 1755 in that parish which could be her.
2. Was Edward married to Mary Bayley first and then Jane afterwards? For this to be true the vicar would have had to write Mary’s name as Jane in the register, which is possible. The vicar would have written Jane as the child’s name and them may have accidentally written it again. It could also be that the couple were newly arrived in the parish and the vicar wasn’t completely sure of the mother’s name. However there is no trace of Mary dying between 1779 and 1782

To answer these questions I need to find some evidence of Mary and/or Jane’s burials, or some indication of Mary Bayley being associated with the name Jane.