Dorothy Bennett and her Ancestors

William Smith (1780 to 1866)

William Smith was the father of George Smith who was a great-grandfather of Dorothy Bennett, and Dorothy was the wife of Sidney Alfred Parsons and Sidney was a grandfather of the author of these web pages.


William was baptised on the 13th of February 1780 in New Alresford in Hampshire. His parents were William and Mary Smith.

New Alresford was and still is a small market town on the old main road between London and Winchester lying about 8 miles from Winchester and 11 miles from Alton.

William became a blacksmith and worked for Beaumont’s coach manufactory in Bishop’s Sutton, a small village about one mile east of New Alresford. Mr. Beaumont’s factory was a large enterprise which at times employed more than 100 men. The blacksmiths there made springs, tyres for the wooden wheels, and axles. One of the apprentices while William worked there was Richard Andrews who later set up his own coach factory in Southampton and became mayor of that town. William stayed with Beaumont’s for about fifty years. Towards the end of his life he specialised in making the steel springs for the coaches’ suspensions.


On the 14th of July 1805 William married Martha Gibbs in the parish church of St. John in New Alresford. Martha’s family, the Gibbs’s of Ropley and Bishop’s Sutton, were probably related to the Gibbs families of Wield, Bentworth and Chawton one of whom, John Gibbs (1774-1887), worked for Edward Knight, a brother of the author Jane Austen.



William and Martha Smith lived near the centre of New Alresford in West Street, on the main road running through the town, and they stayed there for the whole of their married life.

The map to the right is dated 1911, which is more than a century after William and Martha were married, but the layout of the roads has not changed and many of the buildings from their time are still standing. William and Martha’s house was on the south side of West Street, a few doors to the west of the Swan Hotel which is near the church and the junction with Broad Street.


Between 1806 and 1823 William and Martha had ten children: Charlotte, William, Jane, Hannah and James (who were twins), George, Martha, Eliza, Mary and Sarah. It was George who continued the line of descent to Dorothy Bennett.

They lived together for nearly forty years until Martha died of dropsy at the end of December in 1846. William continued to live at his home in New Alresford with his remaining un-married daughters who worked as laundresses.

In 1851 William spent some time in Maylebone, London, visiting his son James, who was a widower, and his daughter Charlotte and her husband Cornelius Knight. James was a blacksmith and lived in a boarding house. Charlotte and Cornelius lived nearby. While he was there William stayed in the same boarding house as his son.

After William’s daughter Charlotte died her only child, Edwin Knight, who was still very young, came to New Alresford to live with William and his daughters.

William’s son George died in New Alresford in 1854. His wife had died four years previously so their three young children became orphans. The court appointed William, together with his son-in-law William Pewsey, as the children’s joint guardians. One of those children, Frederick was a grandfather of Dorothy Bennett

William Smith died in New Alresford in April 1866. The 21st of April edition of the Hampshire Chronicle reported his death as follows:

    “A few days since, Mr. William Smith, coach-smith, Alresford, who for some 50 years worked at the coach manufactory of Mr.Beaumont, Bishop's Sutton, aged 86.”

William and Martha’s children


•   William and Martha’s first child was a daughter called Charlotte who was baptised on the 1st of November 1806. She married Cornelius Knight, a fruiterer, and lived with him in Marylebone, London. Charlotte and Cornelius had only one child, Edwin, who was born about twenty years after they married. Soon after he was born Charlotte died after which Cornelius gave up his fruit shop and became a servant. Young Edwin went to live with his grandfather William in New Alresford until William died after which he lived with his aunt Eliza Pewsey.

•   William and Martha’s second child, a son called William, was born on the 29th of October 1807 in New Alresford and baptised there five days later. No further trace of him has yet been discovered.

•   Their third child, a daughter whom they named Jane, was baptised in November 1808. She lived with her parents until her father died in 1866 after which nothing more is known of her.

•   Their next two children were twins born on the 3rd of August 1811, Hannah lived with her father until 1851 when she was nearly 40 years old. Nothing more is known of her after then.

•   James, Hannah’s twin, became a blacksmith and for a while lived in London not far from his elder sister Charlotte.

•   George, who was baptised on the 6th of February 1814, continued the line of decent to the present author. He remained in New Alresford, married Eliza Oakley, and became a baker and confectioner living just across West Street from his father’s house. George’s son Frederick, who also became a baker, was a grandfather of Dorothy Bennett. George and his wife Eliza both died while they were relatively young and William, George’s father, became a legal guardian of their three children until they came of age.

•   Martha was born in 1816. In 1845 she married a wheelwright and carpenter called Henry Broad. At first they lived in New Alresford but later they moved to Old Alresford about a mile to the north where they spent the rest of their lives. They had six childen, all sons, called Lloyd, Henry, Ernest, Arthur, Alfred, and Frederick.

•   William and Martha’s eighth child was a daughter whom they named Eliza. She was baptised on the 5th of July 1818. In 1847 she married William Pewsey, a cooper who later took up baking as well. They lived in New Alresford. They had no children of their own, but after Eliza’s brother George and his wife died their two children, Robert and Charlotte, came to live with them. Robert learnt to the bakery business and Charlotte worked in the shop. And after Eliza’s father died in 1866 her orphaned nephew Edwin Knight, who had been staying with William, also came to live with Eliza and her husband. After the children had grown up and left, Eliza’s unmarried sister Mary came to live with them.

•   Mary, who was born in 1821, never married. She lived with her father and worked as a laundress until he died. After her sister Eliza's foster children had left home Mary went to live with her and her husband William Pewsey.

•   William and Martha’s tenth and youngest child, their daughter Sarah, was baptised in November 1823. She lived with her father and her sisters Mary and Jane until at least 1861 and worked as a laundress. After then nothing is known of her.



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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.