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Charles BRACKSTONE (1822/3–1867)
His son Charles William BRACKSTONE (1865–1867)
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 24, Grave G61

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The lower part of this inscription has been obscured by the footstone (which was moved to facilitate mowing), but the gist of it can be deduced from Bostock’s record

Charles Brackstone was born at Hathenden in Hampshire in 1822/3. He is likely to be the baby of that name born to William and Lucy Brackstone on 25 December 1822 and baptised at Andover on 12 February 1823. He is also probably the Charles Brackstone (19) who at the time of the 1841 census was working as an agricultural labourer and lodging with his younger brothers Thomas (15) and James (6) in the house of an agricultural labourer and his wife at Redenham, Fyfield. (There was, however, a second Charles Brackstone born in Appleshaw near Hathenden at much the same time, who married Eliza Horn, and it is easy to confuse them.)

In the third quarter of 1854 in Oxford, Charles Brackstone married his first wife, Elizabeth Jane Copelin (born in Crowmarsh Gifford, Oxfordshire in 1830, the daughter of James Copelin, a grocer, and his wife Ann). They had two children:

• Anna Amelia Brackstone (born in Hathenden in 1858, reg. Andover third quarter); died in Bristol aged 12 in 1871
• Henry William Brackstone (born in Hathenden in 1860, reg. Andover third quarter); died in Reading aged 2 in 1862.

Charles initially took his wife back to his home town of Hathenden, but by the time of the 1861 census they were living at 38 Bedford Street, Reading with Anna (2) and Henry (7 months). Charles was described as a labourer and a Primitive Methodist Lay Preacher.

Charles Brackstone’s first wife Elizabeth Jane died in Reading in 1862 (reg. second quarter).

After his first wife’s death Charles appears to have moved to Oxford, where he must have met Ann Tripp (born in Shifford in 1827/8), who was to become his second wife: at the time of the 1851 census Ann (23) had been a house servant at 6 Beaumont Street, Oxford. On 1 September 1863 Charles and Ann were married in Oxford: Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 5 September that year announced: “Sept. 1, at the Methodist Free Church, St. Ebbe’s, by the Rev. G. Warner, Mr. Charles Brackstone, late of Reading, to Ann, second daughter of Mr. Isaac Tripp, Old Shifford, near Standlake, Oxford”. They had one child:

• Charles William Brackstone (born in Oxford in early 1865 and baptised at the Primitive Methodist Chapel in St Ebbe’s on 25 January); died aged two.

Charles Brackstone was described as a general dealer in Oxford at the time of his youngest son’s baptism. By the time of his death in 1867, just four years after his second marriage, the family were living in the part of Walton Street that lies in the parish of St Mary Magdalen (Nos. 128–173):

† Charles Brackstone died at Walton Street at the age of 46 in September 1867 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 27 September (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).

His youngest child died about seven weeks afterwards, and was buried with his father:

† Charles William Brackstone died at Oxford at the age of 2½ (or 34 months, according to burial register) in November 1867 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 16 November (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).

Charles’s second wife Ann Brackstone remarried in Oxford in the fourth quarter of 1868 (a year after her husband’s death). Her new husband was William Badger, a farmer who was 14 years her senior, and he and Ann were living at his 45-acre farm in Beckley in 1861 and 1871. She does not appear to have looked after her stepdaughter Anna Amelia (born 1858, so nine years old at the time of her father’s death in 1867). Mrs Ann Badger, formerly Mrs Brackstone, appears to have died at Clifton, Gloucestershire at the age of 12 in 1871 (reg. first quarter).

All of Charles Brackstone’s children were now dead, so there are no descendants.