The Brinsmead-Stockham line

Fanny Brinsmead

Fanny Brinsmead was a daughter of Thomas Brinsmead and Emily Brinsmead, the last family with the Brinsmead name to remain in St. Giles in the Wood. She was born in 1843 and apparently had a twin sister Harriet who died in early infancy. She also had an older sister Rachel, an older brother Henry and a younger brother Thomas James. Fanny was the last to leave the village. Rachel and Henry both married and left to live in Ipswich in Suffolk. However, both their spouses died at a young age and they both returned to St. Giles until they eventually left for London, Ontario, Canada. Brother Thomas James later known simply as James trained to be a chemist and spent several years abroad before marrying and moving to St. Kilda in Australia.

Fanny lived at home with her parents until after she was thirty. She lived in the village, although on the 1871 census she was visiting with friends in nearby Buckland Brewer. Some time after that she moved to Exeter where she married.

Marriage to John Stockham

John Stockham (born 1833) was a cork merchant and later a coal merchant as well. John and Fanny were married on February 24th, 1872 in the curious little church of St. Petrock's in the centre of Exeter.

The couple had two children; Florence M. Stockham (born 1877) and John Brinsmead-Stockham (born 1880). The family appears to have continued to use the single surname Stockham, but son John is always recorded with the hyphenated surname Brinsmead-Stockham. This is not surprising in that; he was christened John Brinsmead Stockham,  the Brinsmead name was becoming well known due to the success of and advertising by the Brinsmead piano firm, and because his cousin, Emily, who for a time lived in Ipswich and for a time in Exeter, had adopted the hyphenated name Brinsmead-Williams. Hyphenated names were quite fashionable at the time.

John Stockham was the son of John and Jane Stockham (born 1797 and 1794 respectively). We have not determined whether these Stockham's are descended from the Captain John Stockham (24 July 1765 - 6 February 1814), who was an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and who, in 1805, was called upon to command the ship HMS Thunderer at the Battle of Trafalgar. Such a connection is not unlikely given the limited number of Stockhams in Exeter at the time. John attended the St. John Hospital Foundation School in Exeter. The School has long since been demolished, but is still commemorated by a statue of a "Blue Boy" taken from outside the school, in the Princesshay shopping precinct. By age 17 he was working as a cork cutter, presumably with his father who carried on that same trade under the name Stockham and Warren, Paul Street. In 1861 he was listed as a Cork Manufacturer.  Up until his marriage at least, he lived at 94 North Street, Union Court, St. Kerrian, Exeter.

By the time son John was born, the family had moved to Elm Cottage, St. Leonard's, Exeter. This building may still be standing since it is listed as a Grade II property. Obviously, John's business had prospered since he is listed as a Coal Merchant employing seven men and one boy. That year, while young John was with his father, Fanny and daughter Florence May were visiting Fanny's parents back in St. Giles in the Wood. Interestingly, cousin Emily Williams, age 18 and daughter to Fanny's cousin Rachel, was living with the family in Exeter.

By 1891, the family had moved again, this time to 52 Wonford Road, Exeter where John died in 1895.  Fanny Stockham (nee Brinsmead) continued to live there, and died in 1916 at about age 73. We have little further information on Florence Mary (or May). We believe she may have married in Bristol in 1905 but have not confirmed any husband's name. However, by 1911 she was living at home with her mother in Exeter, listed as age 27 and single (we think Francis Mary may have taken a slight liberty and dropped 10 years off her age when the census people came by). She obviously kept in touch with the broader family since she was left £100 by John Brinsmead's granddaughter Emily Dodderidge when she died in 1938. Francis Mary Brinsmead was listed as a spinster when she died in early 1954. She was listed as living at 153 Clapham Road, Wandsworth, London, which was also her brother's address..

John Brinsmead-Stockham, born 1880

John Alexander Brinsmead-Stockham (born 1880) went to school in Exeter. By age 20, he had moved to Plymouth where he took board and lodging and worked as a draper's assistant. By 1911 (age 30) he is living in London at Messrs. Cook's Employees Boys Home at 95 Southwark Street. He, along with many other young men, is listed as a Wholesale Manchester Warehouseman which is a term used for a cotton warehouseman since Manchester was the center of the cotton trade.

John married Elsie Helen Beck (born 1890) in 1915 in the little Dorset village of Piddletrenthide, where Elsie's family originated and where she and John plus some of their children are buried.

John and Elsie lived in the Clapham area of London. At the time of the 1939 Register, they were in Lambeth running a news and tobacconist shop. He died on September 26, 1954 at Tooting Bec Hospital. Elsie survived John by 27 years, passing away in 1981. Both John and Elsie are buried in Piddletrenhide, Dorset where Elsie grew up. In 1959 we know Elsie took a trip to East Africa to visit and then return to England with her daughter Joyce and family.

John and Elsie Brinsmead-Stockham's children

John and Elsie had at four children; John (born December 18th, 1916, David (born on September 21st, 1920), Joyce (born in 1923) and James (born 1927).

John Brinsmead-Stockham (born 1916) appears to have served in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment during the Second World War.  Right after the war, he married Dilys Emma King in the Durham area. They had three children; two boys and a girl, who are still living and carry the Brinsmead-Stockham name forward. John died in late 1978. His widow Dilys lived in Redcar, in the Teeside area, and passed away at 86 years of age in 2008.

David Francis Brinsmead-Stockham served in The Queen's Regiment in World War Two. Once the war was over, he joined the Railway Police, where he met Audrey Duckworth. They married in September of 1960. They had three daughters, two of whom are active contributors to the Brinsmead Family facebook page. David died in the Canterbury area in 1998, probably in Whitstable. Audrey survived him and, in 2002, was still living in Whitstable.

John and Elsie's only daughter, Joyce Eileen Mary married right after the Second World War, in 1947 in Wandsworth, London, to Noel Marcus Barthropp, a civil servant who worked in East Africa for the Northern Rhodesian and then Zambian governments. They appear to have had four children, one of whom at least is still living in Zambia. Noel died in the Chichester area in 2000. Joyce too has passed away, although we do not have a date.

The youngest son, James Alexander Brinsmead-Stockham married twice; first to Ethel Violet Pateman who died in 1985 and later to Bessie Lord. There were no children from either marriage. Bessie and John were married in late 1978 in the Islington area of London. Bessie died in February, 2011 and James very recently died - on August 7, 2014. Both are buried in Piddletrenhide, Dorset.