Sidney Alfred Parsons and his Ancestors

William Sly and his Descendants

William Sly was a farm bailiff who lived in South Somerset in the first half of the 19th century. His eldest son, who was also called William, married Elizabeth Parsons who was an aunt of Sidney Parsons, the main subject of this series of web pages. William and Elizabeth moved to Southampton where they ran a public house. They were joined there by two of her brothers, John Parsons and Isaac Parsons both of whom also became Southampton publicans. Sidney Parsons, the main subject of these web pages, was John Parsons’ youngest son.

The chart shows a summary of those members of the Sly family in whom we are mainly interested. Only two branches have been expanded. They are William Sly’s (who married Elizabeth Parsons) branch, and his brother James Sly’s (husband of Anne Maria Hann). William and James both moved from Somerset to Southampton in the 1860s. Of the most recent generation the only person shown is Victor Sly, a son of William and Ruby Sly, who was a Southampton publican and a friend of Sidney Parsons’ son George.

William Sly, farm bailiff of Henstridge (c.1785 to 1843)

William Sly was born some time around 1785. His place of birth is not known for certain but a baby called William Sly was baptised in Purton in Wiltshire on the 6th of March of that year. Purton is 60 miles away from the area in which our William Sly lived but he might just possibly have been our William.

In November 1813 William married Jane Vining in the town of Wincanton in South Somerset. The bride and groom were not educated people — they both made their marks instead of signing the register. Their first child, William, was baptised in Wincanton in December of the following year but the family soon moved to the nearby village of Henstridge where they lived in the hamlet of Yenston, about a mile from the village centre. He became a farm bailiff and he and his wife remained in Yenston for the rest of their lives.

William died in July 1843 and was buried in Henstridge. His wife Jane continued to live in Yenston and for some time their widowed daughter Elizabeth and her children lived with her. (Elizabeth’s husband Joseph White had died in 1850 only three years after they married.)

In 1861 Jane’s daughter Mary married and Jane, who was by then in her 70s, went to live with her and her husband John Stiggins in Surrey.

William and Jane had nine children. The lives of two of their sons and their descendants, those who are relevant to the history of the Parsons family, are explored in the following paragraphs.

William Sly of Southampton (1814 to 1874)

William, the eldest child of William Sly the farm bailiff, was baptised in the South Somerset town of Wincanton on the 29th of December 1814, just over a year after his parents married. He must have been brought up in Henstridge where his parents spent their entire marries lives. When William was about 32 years old he married a woman called Edith Richards who was more than 20 years older than him. Their wedding was held in the city of Bath. At first William and Edith lived on his small farm (it was only 20 acres) in Milborne Port in Somerset which is not far from Henstridge. By 1861 they were living 10 miles away in Stoke Trister where he had found work as a butler. In the early April of 1861, when a census was taken, Edith was visiting a friend or family member in Sherborne, and three weeks later she died. The doctor recorded “natural decay” as the cause. William’s brother-in-law Christopher Ryall was present when she died.

Six months after Edith died William married a young widow called Elizabeth Dunford who worked as a domestic servant in the home of a solicitor in the nearby town of Gillingham. Elizabeth was the oldest surviving child of Edward Parsons (who was Sidney Parsons’ grandfather) and, in contrast to William’s first wife, she was much younger than him (29 years old to his 45).

Soon after they married William and Elizabeth moved 50 miles away to the port town of Southampton where, in June 1863, he became licensee of the Saint Mary’s Hotel in East Street. Their only child, a boy called William Henry Francis Sly, was born there a few months later. A few years later Elizabeth’s younger brother John Parsons came to live with them there — he had been apprenticed to a boot-maker in the Somerset village where he and Elizabeth hsd been born — Marston Magna near Yeovil. John settled in Southampton where he also became a publican, married, and had three children. Sidney Parsons was his youngest son.

Not long after John made the move to Southampton another of Elizabeth’s brothers, Isaac Parsons, also came there and he too became a publican.

By 1873 William and Elizabeth had moved to a different pub — the Oriental Arms in Cross Street.

Early in 1874 William became ill with typhoid. He developed pneumonia, and, on the 9th of March, he died at home.

Elizabeth took over the licence and ran the Oriental Arms for twelve years until she married again. (It was renamed as The Anchor and a few years later it became The Anchor Stores.)

William and Elizabeth’s only child, their son William Henry Francis Sly, stayed in Southampton where he became a tailor and outfitter. He married and had three children, only one of whom survived to adulthood. William died in 1913, four years after his mother.

James Sly of Southampton (1827 to 1886)

James, the 6th child of William Sly the farm bailiff, was baptised in his parents’ home village of Henstridge in Somerset on the 25th of March 1827. He was only 16 years old when his father died.

By 1851 he had left home to become a servant to the rector of Cucklington, a village about 10 miles from Henstridge. It is close to the point where the counties of Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire meet. Later that year he got married, in Henstridge, to a girl called Anne Maria Hann and soon afterwards their first child, William Emmanuel Sly, was born in Haselbury Plucknett, near Crewkerne in Somerset.

For a good many years James and Anne lived apart. In 1861 he was working in Greenwich as a servant to a wealthy widow and her daughters while Anne worked as a domestic nurse in Sunbury in Middlesex. Their son William was living nearby in Sunbury with James’s brother John, who was a policeman, and his wife and baby. A few years later James took employment as a ship’s steward and Anne moved to Southampton with young William. She and James had three more children while they were living there — Katherine (1866), Alfred (1867), and Edward (1873).

By 1881 James had given up the seafaring life and become an innkeeper. He and his family were living at the Gardeners Arms in Shirley, Southampton, except for their oldest son William who was staying with his widowed aunt Elizabeth and helping her to run her pub.

James and his wife Anne both died in the year 1886.

James and Anne Sly’s children:

  •  William Emmanuel Sly (1851-1893) and his children

William was born in Haselbury Plucknett very late in 1851 or very early in 1852. As a child he was sometimes looked after by relatives while his mother worked but eventually his parents made a home for the family in Southampton. As a young man William helped his widowed aunt Elizabeth Sly (née Parsons) run her pub, The Anchor, in Southampton’s East Street.

William was 35 years old in 1886 when both his parents died. He married a woman called Mary Ann Eden who lived in Bitterne in Southampton in a pub known as the Bitterne Brewery. Mary’s father had managed the pub until his death four years before Mary married. William Sly took over the running of the pub and he and Mary lived there for the rest of their lives. William died at the pub in July 1893 after suddenly falling ill whilst visiting London to see a royal wedding. The cause of death was said to be “heart apoplexy”.

William and Mary’s eldest son was also called William — William James Sly. He was born at the Bitterne Brewery on the 12th of July 1887 and he eventually took over the running of the pub. There was some controversy over its ownership. Young William’s step-father, a man called Alfred Thomas, who had married William’s mother after his father had died, wanted to take over the Bitterne Brewery after Mary died in 1900. But in the event, it passed to William James Sly as Mary’s eldest son. William spent some time learning the trade at the Imperial Hotel in Bournemouth but spent the rest of his life at the Bitterne Brewery. In 1913 he married Ruby Haysom who was a younger sister of his uncle Alfred Sly’s wife. William was killed in June 1942 when the pub was severely damaged by German bombs; it is said that instead of taking shelter during a raid he had re-entered the building to collect the takings. His son Victor (born 1914) took over the pub and in 1952 he had it re-built. Vic Sly was a good friend of Elizabeth Sly’s great-nephew George Parsons who was a son of Sidney Parsons, although it is unclear if they knew their families were related.

  •  Katherine Annie Jane Sly (1866-1939)

Katherine was born in Southampton in April 1866. While she was very young her father was often away at sea. In 1888, when Katherine was 20 years old, both her parents died. She went into service and in 1891 she was Lady's Maid to a Scottish widow in Millbrook, Southampton. In 1896 she married a grocer called Arthur William Whale and lived with him at several shops in Southampton. Katherine died in November 1939 in Nutley in Sussex where she had been living with her daughter and her husband since the beginning of the war. She was buried in Nutley in a Roman Catholic ceremony.

  •  Alfred Henry Sly (1867-1943)

Alfred was born in Southampton in December 1867. At first he lived with his mother while his father was away at sea but later he lived with his parents at their pub. His first job was at a funeral parlour but he soon left to join the Ordnance Survey where he remained for the rest of his working life. He was a keen cyclist and joined the Cyclists Company of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. In 1896 he married a Southampton girl called Mabel Augusta Haysom. For a short while Mabel’s younger sister Ruby and Alfred’s nephew William James Sly were both staying with them — they later married. Alfred retired from the Ordnance Survey in 1928. Ten years later his wife Mabel died. Alfred died in 1843 in a nursing home in Sunbury in Surrey.

  •  Edward James Ernest Sly (1873-1928)

Edward was born in Southampton in 1873. Both of his parents died when he was about 13 years old and in 1891 he was living with his brother William who was landlord of the Bitterne Brewery pub. He became a domestic butler and at the time of the 1901 census he was living with his sister Katherine and her husband Arthur Whale. Edward moved to Taunton, in Somerset, where he was the head servant in the home of a wealthy widow and her daughter. One of the other servants was a girl called Elizabeth Reid who had been born in Aberdeenshire. In 1918, on the 27th November, Edward married Elizabeth Reid in Taunton. Edward later went to London where he worked as a butler in Westminster, but early in 1928 he became ill with pneumonia and died. Elizabeth, who was living in Southampton, registered his death. Elizabeth became manageress of a college refectory in Southampton.



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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.