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Miss Sophia GRIFFIN (1799–1868)
Her brother Joseph GRIFFIN (1810–1880)
Joseph’s wife Mrs Martha GRIFFIN, née Wheeler (c.1808–1892)
St Paul (St Barnabas) section: Row 22, Grave F24 [St Paul ref. S20]

Sophia Griffin was born at Kingswood, Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire in 1799 and baptised there on 19 May, the daughter of John Griffin and his wife Ann. Sophia never married, and spent her working life as a domestic servant. She was aged 40 at the time of the 1841 census and working as a clergyman’s servant in St Albans, Hertfordshire. In 1851 she was the housekeeper of Dr John Cox in Wheatley, Oxfordshire.

Joseph Griffin, her younger brother, was born at Kingswood in 1810 and baptised there on 28 October. In 1841 when he was aged 30 he was working as a servant of Worcester College, Oxford in 1841. In 1843 in Oxford (reg. third quarter) he married Martha Wheeler (who was born at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight in c.1813). They had the following children:

• Joseph William Griffin (born in Oxford in 1845 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 5 October)
• Frank Henry Griffin (born in Oxford in 1847 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 11 April)
• Frederick John Griffin (born in Oxford in 1848 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 10 September)
• Mary Ann Griffin (born in Oxford in 1849 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 25 November)
• Martha Agnes Griffin (born in Oxford in 1851 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 29 June)
• Jane Sophia Griffin (born at Nelson Street, Oxford in 1854 and baptised at St Paul’s Church on 26 March).

Joseph Griffin was a gardener to the Provost of Worcester College. His address was given as the college in 1845 and 1848, and as Worcester Lodge in 1848, Worcester Place in 1849, and Richmond Road (then called Worcester Terrace) in the Jericho area of Oxford in 1851.

At the time of the 1851 census Joseph Griffin (40) described himself as a wood faggot maker and was living at Richmond Road with his wife Martha (42) and their first four children Joseph (5), Frank (4), Frederick (2), and Mary Ann (1).

By the time their daughter Jane was born in early 1854, Joseph & Martha Griffin had moved to Nelson Street in Jericho.

Miss Sophia Griffin and her younger married brother Joseph Griffin were together again in Oxford by the time of the 1861 census. Joseph and his wife were then living at 29 Nelson Street in Jericho, and Joseph was still working as a college servant. They now had six children, and Sophia (60, but recorded as 55) had come to live with them.

Sophia died there in 1868:

† Miss Sophia Griffin died at 29 Nelson Street at the age of 69 [register wrongly says 72] on 19 November 1868 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 24 November (burial recorded in the parish register of St Paul’s Church).

The following year the Jericho area was taken out of the St Paul’s district chapelry and came into the ecclesiastical district of St Barnabas’s Church.

At the time of the 1871 census Joseph (62) was still working as a college servant and living at 29 Nelson Street with his wife and four of their children: Joseph William (25), who was also a college servant; Frank (24), who was a solicitor’s general clerk; and Mary (21) and Martha (19), who were domestic servants. Frederick (22) was a railway clerk boarding at Horninglow in Staffordshire, and Jane (17) was the servant of the family of the bank cashier William Phillips at 92 High Street.

Two of their sons died in 1877: Joseph William at home in Nelson Street at the age of 31 in March, and Francis in London at the age of 30 in May: see separate grave.

Four of their children were married in the 1870s:

• In the third quarter of 1873 in Oxford, Martha Agnes Griffin married Alfred Richard Tattam;
• In the second quarter of 1877 in Oxford, Frederick John Griffin married Eliza Jane Wheeler;
• Near the beginning of 1878 in the Headington registration district, Jane Sophia Griffin married Robert Hill;
• On 3 November 1879 at Ss Philip & James’s Church, Mary Ann Griffin (30) of Nelson Street married John Bishop (28), a compositor of St Bernard’s Road and the son of the coal merchant William Griffin.

Joseph Griffin died in 1880:

† Joseph Griffin died at 29 Nelson Street at the age of 69 on 9 February 1880 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 13 February (burial recorded in the parish register of St Barnabas’s Church).

His personal estate came to under £200, and his executors were his son Frederick (now a clerk to the Oxford Co-operative Society) and the college servant Daniel Deverell.

In 1881 Mrs Martha Griffin (72) was described as an annuitant and was still living at 29 Nelson Street, and her married daughter Mrs Mary Bishop (31) and her six-month-old son Walter Bishop were living with her.

By the time of the 1891 census Mrs Martha Griffin (81) was living on her own at Nelson Street (apparently at No. 28 rather than 29). She moved to Great Clarendon Street soon afterwards, and then on to Nazareth House (a home for the aged poor run by Roman Catholic nuns and situated on the corner of Rectory Road and 99 Cowley Road). She died there in 1892:

† Mrs Martha Griffin née Wheeler died at Nazareth House at the age of 85 in October 1892 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 14 October (burial recorded in the parish register of St Barnabas’s Church).

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Children of Joseph and Martha Griffin

• Joseph William Griffin (born 1845): see separate grave
• Frank Henry Griffin (born 1847) see separate grave
• Frederick John Griffin (born 1848) and his wife Eliza had four children: Olive Winifred Griffin and Blanche Elizabeth Griffin were born in Oxford in 1881 and 1882/3, and Lena Beatrice Griffin and Frank Henry Griffin were born at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight in 1885 and 1886. (Another child, Frederick Joseph Griffin, died aged one at 29 Nelson Street in 1881: there was an inquest to determine that he had died of natural causes.) At the time of the 1891 census Frederick (42) was a widower, working as a an accountant and living at Battersea with his daughter Olive Winifred Griffin (9). In 1911 Frederick (61) was working as a cashier to a dyeing and cleaning business and living at 96 Gainsborough Road, Wavertree, Lancashire with his children Olive (29), who was a piano teacher; Blanche (28), who was acting as his housekeeper, Lena (25), who was a confectioner, and Frank (24), who was a bookkeeper to a publisher.
• Mary Ann Griffin, Mrs Bishop (born 1849): see separate grave
• Martha Agnes Griffin, Mrs Tattam (born 1851) and her husband Alfred had three children: Alfred Joseph Tattam (born Abingdon 1873/4); Frederick William Tattam (born Bedford 1886); and Minnie Agnes Tattam (born Plymouth 1887). At the time of the 1891 census Martha was living at 46 Padwell Road, Southampton with her husband Alfred, who was a draughtsman for the Ordnance Survey, and their three children. In 1901 they were at 27 Alma Road, Southampton with their daughter Minnie; and by 1911 they had retired with Minnie to Bournemouth and were living at 31 Maxwell Road, Winton. They both died there: Alfred in 1929, and Martha at the age of 94 on 12 September 1945. Her effects (save and except settled land) came to £271 11s. 5d., and her unmarried daughter Minnie was her executor.
• Jane Sophia Griffin, Mrs Hill (born 1854) and her husband Robert Hill had eight children. She died in Oxford in 1937 and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. See her biography on the Find a Grave site.