♂John Phipps

John Phipps (baptized 1803; fl. 1826–1834) was a cabinet-maker and upholsterer of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. He was the great-great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son William Bennett Phipps (1827–1898) and his granddaughter Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919).

John Phipps was baptized at Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 30 December 1803, probably the son of William and Rebekah Phipps. The same parents had three other children baptized at Holy Trinity: Anne in 1799, William in 1809 and Mary in 1812.

Marriage and family

On 23 February 1826 John Phipps swore an affidavit before J. Davenport, a surrogate of the diocese of Worcester, to obtain a marriage licence. He described himself as of the parish of Stratford-upon-Avon, aged twenty-one years and upwards, a bachelor and a cabinet-maker, and he signed the affidavit. Five days later, on 28 February 1826, he married Elizabeth Bennett, a spinster of the same parish, by licence in the parish church of Stratford, Holy Trinity^W. The Coventry Herald and Free Press announced the marriage a month later, on 31 March 1826, describing the bride as “the eldest daughter of the late Mr. Bennet”, so her father had died before the wedding. The vicar who married them, James Davenport, was the same man who had taken his oath. The copy of the register sent to the diocese shows the bride, the groom and both witnesses, Mary Bennett and John Lane, signing their names, where the entry above theirs records marks.

When their son William Bennett Phipps was baptized at Stratford on 28 May 1827, the register gave the father’s trade as upholsterer. Two more children, John and Elizabeth, were baptized there on the same day, 16 April 1834; the records do not say whether they were twins. Elizabeth was buried at Stratford on 29 May 1837, aged thirty-two. William later followed his father’s trade: the United States census recorded him as an upholsterer at Greenville, North Carolina, in 1860 and at Chicago in 1870.

Notes

The identification of the 1803 baptism with him rests on name, parish and age alone: the 1826 licence gives him as twenty-one years and upwards, his son was named William, and the index of the November 1838 Stratford remarriage gives that groom’s father as William. William was a common name, and another John Phipps of the district also had a father named William, so the match is not proved. The 1838 Stratford register entry, which gives the groom’s father and trade in full, would settle it. What became of him after his wife’s death is not known. At least three men named John Phipps had families in and around Stratford in these years: besides him, a laborer of Alveston with a wife named Mary, whose son Daniel was baptized in 1830, and another of Alveston with a wife named Ann. Two marriages of a John Phipps were recorded in Warwickshire in November 1838. The one at Pillerton Hersey, to Elizabeth Smith, was of a bachelor laborer whose father was named William Phipps, so it was not this widower. The other, at Stratford to Mary Grafton, was of a widower; no record giving the groom’s trade is known, so that marriage cannot yet be assigned to him. The 1841 census index gives no John Phipps living at Stratford.