Mrs Maria FORD, née Geyton (1820–1901)
Her daughter Miss Emma Maria FORD (1844–1860)
St Paul section: Row 5, Grave A8 (St Paul ref. F2)
Thy Master is come
And called for thee
Emma Maria Ford
Pupil teacher of St Paul’s School
called on the …
[Rest obscured by footstone:
presumably it gives date of her death
(March 1860) and her age (15)]
Footstone:
E. M. F.
Other side of gravestone
(added 41 years later when
her mother died)
In Memory of
Maria Ford
who died
October 15th 1901
aged 81 years
Maria Geyton was born in Brafield-on-the-Green, Northants in 1820, the daughter of Goodman Geyton and his wife Charlotte, and was baptised there on 23 August. She had one older brother, Stephen, and four younger siblings: Betsey, Rosanna, Sarah, and John.
On 4 March 1842 at Brafield-on-the-Green, Maria Geyton married George Thomas Ford. He was born at Middleton Stoney on 8 January 1821, the son of William Ford, clerk of works to Earl Jersey, and Mary Blackwell Ford, and baptised at Bicester on 7 February. They had two children:
- George Thomas Ford junior (born at Passenham, Northants in 1842 and baptised there on 18 September)
- Emma Maria Ford (born in Burford in 1844 and baptised there on 27 December).
George & Maria Ford were evidently living in Passenham, Northants in September 1842, but by 1844 they had moved to Burford in Oxfordshire, where her father worked as a groom.
At the time of the 1851 census Emma was six years old and living with her parents and her brother George (8) at Sheep Street, Burford. Her father was then working as a cow keeper and horse breaker.
The family then moved to Oxford and lived at Pusey Street (then called Alfred Street). Emma became a pupil teacher at St Paul’s School (below).
This school (for girls and infants only; there was no boys’ school until 1854) had been built in Walton Street in 1847 on a site given by the Radcliffe Trustees, and by 1854 there were about 70 girls and infants taught by a certificated mistress, an assistant mistress, and six pupil teachers.
Emma died in 1860 when she was only fifteen:
† Miss Emma Maria Ford died at Pusey Street at the age of 15 in March 1860 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 25 March (burial recorded in the parish register of St Paul’s Church).
The sexton's notebook confirms that Emma was the first to be buried in this grave in the area that St Paul's described as F.2.
At the time of the 1861 census George Thomas Ford (40) was a livery stable keeper, living at 6 St John Street in Oxford with his wife Maria (40). They had one servant girl.
Emma’s brother George Thomas Ford junior died in the Eton district of Berkshire at the age of 27 in 1870.
Emma’s parents continued to move around. By 1871 they were in Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire where George was an innkeeper at the Crown; by 1881 they were at Ringsfield in Suffolk, where he was a farm bailiff with 151 cows and employing nine men. In 1891 when he was 70 he was working as a carpenter in Bradfield, Berkshire; and he was still working as a carpenter there at the age of 80 in 1901.
Emma’s mother died later in 1901, and she was buried with her daughter in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery:
† Mrs Maria Ford née Geyton died at School Road, Bradfield, Berkshire at the age of 81 on 15 October 1901 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 19 October (burial recorded in the parish register of St Paul’s Church).
The death of Emma’s father does appear to have been registered. He was not buried in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery, and is possibly buried with his son.
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