♂John Phipps

John Phipps (baptized 16 April 1834) was the younger son of an upholsterer of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. He was the great-grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the brother of William Bennett Phipps (1827–1898), Roger’s great-grandfather.

Childhood

His parents were John Phipps, a cabinet-maker and upholsterer, and Elizabeth Bennett, who had married at Holy Trinity, Stratford, on 28 February 1826. Their first child, William Bennett, was baptized on 28 May 1827. John was baptized seven years later, on 16 April 1834, on the same day as his sister Elizabeth, and the register again gave the father’s trade as upholsterer. The records do not say whether the two were twins or whether one or both were baptized late.

His mother was buried at Stratford on 29 May 1837, aged thirty-two, three years after his baptism. The records do not show what became of the household afterwards. His brother William was in the United States by the 1850s; no later record of John himself is known.

Notes

Other men of the name

At least three men named John Phipps had families in and around Stratford in these years, so a later record of a John Phipps is not his without something to tie it to him. A John Phipps aged three was buried at Alveston on 1 August 1837; an index of parish records also shows a John, son of John and Ann Phipps, christened at Alveston on 5 October 1834, so the burial is more likely that child’s than this one’s. The 1841 census index lists no John Phipps at Stratford, and the 1851 index lists no Stratford-born John Phipps of his age who can be his.