• History of Cemetery
• Location/Plans
• Notable people
• Grimsley gravestones
• News
• Burials A–Z
• Current Work
• Photographs
• Restoring a grave
• Contact/Search

George ASH (1823–1876)
His wife Mary Ann ASH, née Stevens (1822–1876)
Their third daughter Mary ASH (1850–1879)
Their eighth daughter Mrs Isabella HOWKINS, née Ash (1861–1884)
Their granddaughter Ethel Maud HOWKINS (born and died 1884)
[With a mention of their fifth daughter Mrs Annie Louisa WHITE, née Ash (1857–1879)]
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 24, Grave G70

George Ash was born in Cheltenham in about 1823, the son of the labourer William Ash.

Mary Ann Stevens was born in Oxford in about 1820, the son of the labourer Thomas Stevens.

On 12 July 1846 at St Thomas's Church, Oxford, George Ash married Mary Ann Stevens. They had the following children, the first born less than three months after the wedding:

• Rebecca Sarah Ash (born in Oxford in 1846 and baptised at St Thomas’s Church on 13 September)
• Amy Ash I (born at Hart Street in Jericho, Oxford in 1847/8 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 30 January 1848);
  died aged 2½ in St Mary Magdalen parish and buried on 11 May 1850
• Mary Ash (born at Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1850 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on Easter Day)
• Amy Ash II (born at Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1851 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 26 October)
• George Thomas Ash (born Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1852/3 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 27 February 1853)
• John Richard Ash (born at Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1854 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 10 December)
• Annie Louisa Ash (born at Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1856 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 15 June)
• Jane Ash (born at Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1857 and privately baptised);
  died aged eleven days in St Mary Magdalen parish and buried on 23 December 1857)
• Selina Jane Ash (born at Red Lion Square, Oxford in 1858/9 and baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 13 February 1859)
• Isabella Ash (born at Red Lion Square Oxford in 1861 and baptised at St George's Chapel on 18 October, with the baptism recorded in St Mary Magdalen Church's parish register)

The first baby was baptised in Mary Ann’s parish church. In 1847 when Amy was baptised George and Mary Ann Ash were living at Hart Street, Jericho (then called Union Street), and George described himself as an engineer. Their next baby Amy died in infancy, and is likely to have been buried in the children's area of the St Mary Magdalen section of St Sepulchre's Cemetery.

By the time of the 1851 census George (26), described as a publican & engineer, was living at the Blue Pig in Gloucester Green with his wife, his first two surviving daughters, and two lodgers. This seventeenth-century pub (picture) stood in the cattle market at Red Lion Square, near the market pig pens, and was demolished in 1934 to widen Gloucester Street.

In the 1861 census George was described as the licensed victualler at the Blue Pig, and he and his wife had seven surviving children, all at school: Rebecca (14), Mary (11), Amy (10), George (8), John (5), Anne (4), and Jane (2). George’s sister-in-law, Miss Sarah Waklin (21) was also living with them and working as their house servant.

They were still at the Blue Pig in 1871, and Amy (19), John (16), Annie (14), Selina (11), and Isabella (9) were still at home. Rebecca (25) and Mary (22) were living with their aunt, Miss Ann Ash, who was a lodging-house keeper in Southampton; and George (18) was living with the grocer in Warwick for whom he worked.

Their daughter Louisa was married in 1874:

• In the second quarter of 1874 in Oxford, Annie Louisa Ash married William White. 

Five years later George and Mary Ash died within six days of each other:

† George Ash died at the Blue Pig at the age of 53 on 30 November 1876.
† Mrs Mary Ann Ash née Stevens died at the Blue Pig at the age of 56 on 6 December 1876.
They were buried together on 6 December 1876 in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery (burials recorded in parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).

The following notice appeared in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 9 December 1876:

DEATHS
Nov. 30, Mr. George Ash, landlord of the “Blue Pig,” Red Lion-square, Oxford, aged 53; and, on Dec. 6, Mary Ann, his widow, aged 54. The deceased were interred together in St. Paul’s Cemetery on Wednesday, and the unusual spectacle of a double funeral drew together a large number of people.

Two of their daughters were married in 1878:

• On 1 August 1878 at St Mary Magdalen Church, Rebecca Sarah Ash married the ironmonger Noel Baddeley;
• In the fourth quarter of 1878 in Southampton, Selina Jane Ash married George William Deacon.

Their sixth daughter Mrs Annie Louisa White died at the age of 22 on 2 May 1879, according to the headstone (but she may be the Annie Louisa White who died in Aylesbury at the age of 22 near the beginning of 1880). She is not buried here.

Their third daughter Mary died in 1879, and was buried in her parents' grave;

† Miss Mary Ash died at the High Street (All Saints parish), Oxford at the age of 29 on 16 November 1879 and was buried in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 20 November (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).

Their married daughter Rebecca Sarah Baddeley died in New Headington at the age of 35 in 1880, and was buried in St Andrew's churchyard there on 31 December.

At the time of the 1881 census the Misses Amy Ash (29) and Isabella Ash (19) were living by themselves at 19 Leckford Road, supporting themselves with money left to Amy by her sister (presumably Mary).

On 4 September 1881 at St Mary Magdalen Church, Isabella Ash married Henry Thomas Howkins, a coal merchant, and they lived in Gloucester Street. Their baby Ethel Maud Howkins was baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 14 September 1884, but both mother and baby died the next month:

† Ethel Maud Howkins died at Gloucester Street at the age of four months on 10 October 1884

† Mrs Isabella Howkins née Ash died at Gloucester Street at the age of 25 on 22 October 1884

Mother and baby were buried in the grave of Isabella’s two unmarried sisters on St Sepulchre’s Cemetery (on the same day, 27 October 1884, according to the burial register of St Mary Magdalen Church; but possibly the baby was reburied in her mother’s grave).

Surviving children of George & Mary Ann Ash

• Amy Ash (born 1851) never married. She died in Oxford in 1887.
• George Thomas Ash (born 1853) was still an unmarried grocer’s assistant in 1881, lodging in Woburn. In 1891 George (36) was lodging with his younger brother John (34) at 198 Marlborough Road, Oxford. He died in 1895 at the age of 42 (death registered Bicester second quarter).
• John Richard Ash (born 1854) was lodging with his brother George at 198 Marlborough Road, Oxford in 1891. He appears to have died at Gateshead at the age of 45 in 1899.
• Selina Jane Ash, Mrs Deacon (born 1858/9) and her husband George, who was an auctioneer, were living at Moss Side, Manchester in 1881 with George’s parents and their first son, but by 1891 they had their own home there. They had seven children: Frank (1879), William Benn Deacon (1881), Flora Mildred Deacon (1883), Stuart Deacon (1885), Sam Deacon (1887), Herbert Deacon (1891), and Frederick Deacon (1893). They were living at 2 Silverdale Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Lancashire in 1911. Mrs Selina Deacon died in Manchester at the age of 71 in 1929.