24 Jun 2024

I’m on the hunt for more information about the Mary Taylor who lived with Mary Hinksman in the 1851 census. As I wrote yesterday I believe she is Mary senior’s daughter known as Molly or Maria.

I looked for her death certificate and thought I had found it, but then discovered there was another Mary Taylor of a similar age living in the same village Sutton Scotney in the parish of Wonston!

Here are their details:

Death in the Registration District of Winchester, Hampshire, 1853, no. 160. Died 13 Nov 1853 at Wonston; Mary Taylor; Female; age 74; Widow. Cause of death: Mortification of the leg (certified). Informant was Mary Munday (could not sign name); relation: Not known; residing at Sutton Scotney; present at death. The death was registered 16 Nov 1853.¹

Death in the Registration District of Winchester, Hampshire, 1851, no. 73. Died 7 May 1851 at Wonston; Mary Taylor; Female; age 70; Widow. Cause of death: Bronchitis certified. Informant was Betty Hatcher (could not sign name); relation: Not known; residing at Sutton Scotney; present at death. The death was registered 13 May 1851.²

There’s nothing on the two entries to distinguish them apart.

I found the other Mary Taylor in the 1851 census, living alone in Sutton Scotney:

Mary Taylor, head, widow, age 74, pauper, born Barton Stacey³

Barton Stacey is a neighbouring parish to Wonston.

Various trees on Ancestry mix up the two Mary’s but I found one that had a marriage in the parish of Easton between a Mary Gay and a Gabriel Taylor of Wonston. One clue that made me think this was Mary Hinksman was that one of the witnesses was Emma Hawkins, which is the married name of Mary’s sister Emma (baptised Amy). Easton is on the east side of Winchester, about the same distance from Twyford as it is from Wonston.

However the marriage entry does not mention that Mary was a widow.

After a little bit more research I’ve become more convinced that Mary Gay/Taylor was Mary Hinksman. She and Gabriel had one son Noah Mark Taylor born in 1824 who appears to have had a son in 1855 named Henry Hinksman Taylor

Noah Taylor was baptised in Wonston on 4 Jul 1824, son of Gabriel and Mary, abode Sutton Scotney

Gabriel Taylor was buried in Wonston on 14 Jan 1840, age 66, abode Egypt

This means Gabriel was 50 when Noah was born. There don’t appear to be any other children. Mary would also have been nearly 50 at the time.

So now I have an additional name in the mix: Gay. Currently the timeline I have for Mary looks like:

• baptised 1779, Twyford
• married 1802, Twyford to Charles Meeton (or Mecton) of Exton
• married ??? to Mr Gay
• married 1819, Easton to Gabriel Taylor of Wonston
• census 1841, living with mother Mary Hinksman, Egypt, Wonston
• census 1851, living with mother Mary Hinksman, Sutton Scotney, Wonston
• died 1851 or 1853 in Sutton Scotney, Wonston

Egypt is the name of an area near the mill in Sutton Scotney.

It strikes me that Exton, where Charles Meeton was from, could have been Easton. The record does look like Exton though.

I can’t find any trace at all of Charles or Mary Meeton or Mecton.

After much searching I finally found what I was looking for, sort of. Mary married John Gay on 14 Oct 1801 in East Stratton:

John Gay, abode This Parish and Mary Hinkman, abode This Parish. Married by Banns. Groom could not sign name. Bride signed name. Witness: Richard Gay (could not sign). Witness: Maria Hinksman (signed). Mary’s signature reads more like Marchy Hinksman

(this was indexed under Mary Winkman)

This answers some questions but opens new ones too:

• Who is this Mary Hinksman? She can’t be the same person who married Charles Meeton in 1802
• Who was the witness Maria Hinksman?

I compared the signatures of the Maria Hinksman witness and the Maria Hinksman who married Charles Meeton and I think they look the same. This would mean that Mary and Maria are separate individuals, but I don’t have two baptisms. The closest one I have is Molly Hinxman baptised 1779 in Twyford. Maybe there is an earlier baptism that I have missed.

It doesn’t help that the transcriptions in the Ancestry index are so poor. The Hinksman children were indexed as:

• Molly Hinman 1779
• Elizabeth Hinman 1782
• William Stinksman 1777
• Jane Strinman 1776
• Edwd Hintman and Edwd Hinxman 1785
• Caroline Hinxman 1791
• James Hinxman 1793

I think the Mary Munday who was the informant for Mary Taylor who died in 1852 might have been Mary Godwin, daughter of Jane Hinksman and James Godwin. She would have been Mary Taylor’s great neice. Although in the 1851 Mary Godwin was living in Wilsford in Wiltshire.