Harry Herbert BROWN (1851–1882)
St Giles section: Row 44, Grave K37
IN LOVING
MEMORY OF
HARRY HERBERT BROWN
BORN JUNE 3, 1851
DIED NOVEMBER 3, 1882
SO HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP
Harry Herbert Brown was born at Blashford, Hampshire on 3 June 1851, the son of Alexander Brown and his wife Harriet. At the time of the 1861 census Harry (10) was living at Blashford with his father Alexander, who was a farmer of 60 acres employing two men, his mother Harriet (49), and his siblings James (17), who was a pupil teacher, and Charles (15), Alfred (13), Ann (7), and Walter (nine months).
By the time of the 1871 census Harry (20) was a draper's shopman, lodging at Market Place in Witney with the draper John Watts. By 1879 he was an innkeeper at Brierley Hill, Dudley, Staffordshire.
On 11 November 1879 at St Clement's Church in Oxford, Harry Herbert Brown married his first wife Elizabeth Rippington: they were both aged 28. Elizabeth was born in Marston near Oxford in 1852, the daughter of the farmer Mark Rippington, but was living with her sister in St Clement's Street, Oxford at the time of her marriage.
For more on her background, see her separate grave, where she is buried with her second husband.
Harry took his wife back to Staffordshire, and they had one daughter:
- Edith Brown (born at Brierley Hill, Dudley, Staffordshire in 1880 and baptised there on 23 August).
At the time of the 1881 census Harry (30) was still working as a a publican and living at 42 High Street, Kingswinford, near Dudley with his wife Elizabeth (30) and their daughter Edith (eight months), plus a barmaid and a servant girl.
Soon after that census the couple moved down to Abingdon, where Harry went back to his original trade and worked as a hosier. He died in Abingdon at the following year:
† Harry Herbert Brown died at Ock Street, Abingdon at the age of 31 on 3 November 1882 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 8 November (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles's Church).
It is unclear how he was able to obtain a burial plot in St Sepulchre's Cemetery. His effects came to £434, and his wife was his executor.
His widow Elizabeth married her second husband, the Oxford coal merchant Dan Symes, at St Giles's Church on 9 January 1886. See their grave for their subsequent history.
Harry's only child
Edith Brown (born 1880) lived at 31 St John Street with her mother and stepfather Dan Symes, and moved with them to 139 Walton Street in about 1889: she can be seen there at the age of ten in the 1891 census. By 1901 the family had moved to 22 Polstead Road, and Edith (30) was still living there with her mother and stepfather in 1911. She is hard to trace after that date.
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