♀Elizabeth Bennett

Elizabeth Bennett (born about 1805 – died 1837) was a woman of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, the wife of a cabinet-maker of that town and the mother of three children. She was the great-great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son William Bennett Phipps (1827–1898) and his daughter Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919).

Marriage

Elizabeth Bennett married John Phipps at Stratford-upon-Avon on 28 February 1826. Both were described in the register as of that parish, he a bachelor and she a spinster, and one of the witnesses was a Mary Bennett. The marriage was performed by James Davenport, the vicar.

It was a marriage by licence rather than by banns, which was the more expensive course and suggests some means on one side or the other. Five days beforehand, on 23 February 1826, John Phipps appeared before a surrogate of the diocese of Worcester and swore an allegation in order to obtain the licence. He gave his own trade as cabinet-maker — a skilled craft, not a laboring one — and described himself as aged twenty-one years and upwards, a bachelor; Elizabeth he described as of the parish of Stratford-upon-Avon, aged twenty-one years and upwards, a spinster. The surrogate who took the oath was J. Davenport, the same James Davenport who married the couple as vicar the following week.

The printed words “with consent of”, which the form provided for a bride or groom under age, were struck through on the marriage entry. The allegation explains why: Elizabeth had been sworn to be of full age, so no parent’s or guardian’s consent was required. The phrase “twenty-one years and upwards” was the standard form of words for this, and states only that she was not a minor.

Later life and death

Three children of the marriage are known: John, Elizabeth, and William Bennett Phipps, born in 1827, who lived until 1898 and who carried his mother’s surname as his middle name.

Elizabeth Bennett was buried at Stratford-upon-Avon on 29 May 1837. The register gives her age as thirty-two. She had been married eleven years, and her eldest known son was ten.

Notes

Her parents are not known, and no baptism has been proved for her.

A possible candidate is an Elizabeth baptized at Bearley, four miles north of Stratford, on 14 December 1806, one of six children of William Bennitt and Mary Tims who were orphaned when both parents died within a month in the autumn of 1808. Against it, the burial register’s age of thirty-two points to a birth about 1805, about two years before the Bearley baptism; the marriage licence states only that she was of full age, which does not date her birth. A newspaper notice calls the bride the “eldest daughter of the late Mr. Bennet”, which implies at least one other daughter, and the Bearley family had no other daughter, so the notice counts against that identification or at least complicates it. The poor-law papers of Bearley and Wootton Wawen might settle it if they give an age or a parish; none are on Ancestry, and anything surviving is at the county record office in Warwick.