Sidney Alfred Parsons and his Ancestors

Elizabeth Giddings, previously Sly and Dunford, née Parsons (1832 to 1909)

Elizabeth was Sidney Parsons’ aunt. Her brother John was Sidney’s father and was the present author’s great-grandfather.


Elizabeth Parsons’  parents 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.

Southampton, where Elizabeth eventually settled, is towards the bottom right of the map.


Elizabeth and her twin sister Jane were baptised in Marston Magna in Somerset on the 9th of September 1832, daughters of Edward Parsons and his first wife Elizabeth Taylor. They were their parents’ first children. But, sadly, Jane did not survive infancy — she died just three months later, in December.

When she was old enough to work Elizabeth became a domestic servant in Yeovil, a town about four miles south of Marston Magna, and there, when she was about 18 years old, Elizabeth married Orlando Dunford, a son of a gamekeeper from the nearby village of Queen Camel. Their wedding took place in February 1850 in the South Street Chapel. Elizabeth placed her mark on the register rather than signing.

Orlando worked as a gardener in Chilton Cantelo, a village about a mile and a half west of Marston Magna, and he and Elizabeth lived there and in nearby Mudford. Three and a half years after they were married Orlando became ill with an infection of the skin on his face and hands. It worsened, led to meningitis, and, on the 7th of November, he died. He was only 22 years old and Elizabeth was pregnant. Their child was born in Marston Magna on the 26th of February and baptised the following day. It was a boy and he was called Charles Orlando Dunford. But there was to be a second tragedy. Less than a year later, on January 15th 1855, the young boy died.

After losing her husband and her son Elizabeth became a domestic servant again. She worked in Gillingham, in the household of a solicitor called Robert Freane. Her younger sister Mary also worked there as a nursemaid.

In 1861 Elizabeth married again. Her second husband, William Sly, was working as a butler in Bayford which is in the parish of Stoke Trister to the east of Wincanton. He was a widower. His wife Edith had been very much older than him and died of old age (or “natural decay” as the doctor recorded it) in April 1861. William married Elizabeth just six months later on the 24th of October. He was 45 years old and she was 29. Their wedding was in Gillingham and one of the witnesses was called J. Parsons — probably Elizabeth’s brother James or her sister Jane. In this, her second wedding, Elizabeth signed the register rather than simply placing her mark.

Elizabeth and William moved to Southampton where he became licensee of the Saint Mary Hotel and it was while they were living there that their only child, a son called William, was born. They remained at the Saint Mary Hotel, which was in East Street, until the early 1870s.

In 1865 a newspaper reported that:

“Kate Holdaway, a 16 year old servant of William Sly at the St. Mary's Hotel, was found guilty of stealing money from Mr and Mrs Sly. Mr Sly made a plea for leniency. She was sentenced to six weeks with hard labour.”

And in 1869 it was reported that: William Sly assaulted a 6 year old boy, John Punch, who had made a chalk mark below the window of the St. Mary's Hotel. He boxed the boy's ears, then took hold of them both and shook the boy, causing one of the ears to bleed. He was fined 10s and 7s 6d costs.

In 1869 or 1870 Elizabeth’s younger brother John Parsons left Marston Magna to come and live with her and William. But by 1872, when John married, he had left them and had his own pub in Southampton.

In 1874, on the 9th of March, William died of typhoid and pneumonia. Elizabeth had once again become a widow.

She and William had recently left the Saint Mary Hotel for the Oriental Arms, which was also in East Street. Elizabeth took over the licence and ran the pub on her own. Soon afterwards the pub’s name changed and it became known as the Anchor Inn. In later years it became The Anchor and Stores. Elizabeth might have been helped by her brother John Parsons whose pub — the Blue Boar — was in the same street. (The Anchor was at 33 East Street, the Blue Boar was number 76.)

Elizabeth ran the pub for many years. She lived there with her son William Sly and at times her deceased husband’s nephew William Emanuel Sly, a son of her deceased husband’s younger brother James Sly who had also moved to Southampton from Somerset.

In July 1886 Elizabeth and her son William attended the wedding of her brother James Parsons to Margaret Rogers in Eastleigh, a few miles north of Southampton, where James worked as a coachman and groom.

Also in 1886 Elizabeth seems to have married again, although no record of the marriage has been found. Her new husband was Alfred Giddings whose first wife had died three years previously. He had been employed as a ship’s steward but he moved in to the Anchor with Elizabeth where he helped her to run it for the next fourteen years or so until they both retired and moved to a house in Fanshawe Street, close to the Royal South Hants Hospital.

Elizabeth and Alfred continued to live in Fanshawe Street until she fell ill with bronchitis in May 1909 and was admitted to the Southampton Union Infirmary (now known as the Southampton General hospital). Alfred was with her when she died there on the 18th of May.

Alfred died three years later.

Elizabeth’s children

Elizabeth had only two children.

She was pregnant when her first husband, Orlando Dunford, died in November 1853. Their child, a boy, was born in February and baptised the following day. She named him Charles Orlando. Being baptised so soon was unusual and perhaps indicates that the child was unwell and not expected to live for long. He did, however, live for almost a year and died the following January. The certificate recorded that the death occurred after the child had been fitting for ten hours.

Elizabeth’s second child was with her second husband, William Sly, and they named him William Henry Francis Sly. He was born in Southampton in December 1863. His father died when he was just ten years old after which young William lived with his mother in the pubs that she ran. He became a tailor and in 1887 he married a girl called Catherine Dawkins. They lived in Southampton and he eventually gave up tailoring to earn his living first as a commercial clerk, and later as a meat-checker in the docks. He died in Southampton in 1913. He and Catherine had three children but only one survived, Caroline Phyllis Sly, who was born in 1907. Catherine died in 1945. Her daughter Caroline took up a career in teaching, never married, and died in Swaythling, Southampton, in 1984.

Ancestors of Elizabeth Giddings, previously Sly and Dunford, née 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.