♂William Phipps

William Phipps (fl. 1799–1812) was the husband of Rebekah and the father of four children baptized at Holy Trinity^W, the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, between 1799 and 1812. He was probably the third great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son John Phipps (baptized 1803).

The children

The children were Anne, baptized on 22 February 1799, John on 30 December 1803, William on 8 February 1809 and Mary on 24 June 1812, each entered as a child of William and Rebekah Phipps.

The line of descent

John is thought to have grown up to be the cabinet-maker and upholsterer of that name who married Elizabeth Bennett at Holy Trinity on 28 February 1826, and whose son William Bennett Phipps was baptized there the next year. William Bennett Phipps (about 1827–1898) was the father of Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919), whose son Frederic Arthur Curtis (1903–1990) was the father of Roger.

Notes

The baptism entries

The entries, in the form used at Stratford before 1813, give only the names of the child and the parents, with no trade or abode, so William’s occupation and his own origins are not known. No record of his birth or his marriage is known, and the date of his death is not known. The Birmingham Journal of 22 July 1848 reported Rebekah’s death on 8 July and called her the widow of the late Mr. William Phipps, so he had died before that date.

The descent through John Phipps

The link between this couple and John Phipps the cabinet-maker rests on name, parish and age. When John swore for his marriage license in February 1826 he described himself as of the parish of Stratford-upon-Avon and aged twenty-one years and upwards, which fits a baptism in December 1803; his was the only baptism of a John Phipps entered at Stratford between 1787 and 1817. His son was named William, and the entry for a November 1838 Stratford marriage of a widowed John Phipps, who may be him, gives the groom’s father as William. But William was a common name, another John Phipps of the district also had a father named William, and no document ties the cabinet-maker to the 1803 baptism directly, so the descent is probable rather than proved.

A son of Thomas and Rebekah Phipps

A James, son of Thomas and Rebekah Phipps, was baptized at Stratford on 3 January 1806. Whether that was a second couple or a clerk’s slip for William is not known, and he is not counted among this couple’s children.

A London marriage

A William Phipps, bachelor, married Rebecca Cookes, spinster, both of the parish, by banns at St Marylebone, London, on 15 June 1797. The names and the timing fit a couple whose first child was baptized at Stratford in 1799, but the entry does not mention Warwickshire, and nothing connects that couple with Stratford.