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

Mrs Catherine SPOFFORD, née Green (1783–1871)
St Giles section Row 15, Grave 26½

Catherine Green was born in Leyton, Essex in 1783 and baptised there on 18 May 1783. She was the daughter of John Green and his wife Sarah.

Catherine was living in St James’s parish, Clerkenwell when on 27 May 1809 James Spofford (born c.1780), who was then living in Holborn, took out a marriage bond, and they were married soon afterward at Clerkenwell. They had the following children:

• James Spofford (born at St Pancras, London on 11 July 1811 and baptised at the New Jerusalem Swedenborgian Church on 11 August)
• John Spofford (born in London on 25 January 1815 and baptised at the New Jerusalem Swedenborgian Church on 10 March 1816)
• Catherine Sarah Spofford (born in London on 13 March 1818 and at the New Jerusalem Swedenborgian Church on 10 May)
• Amelia Caroline Spofford (born at St Pancras, London on 18 July 1820 and baptised at the New Jerusalem Swedenborgian Church on 15 October; died in 1825 aged five and buried at St Pancras on 31 October)
• Louisa Hannah Spofford (born at St Pancras, London on 29 September 1822 and baptised at the New Jerusalem Swedenborgian Church as Louesia on 10 May); died the same year and buried at Whitefield’s Memorial Church, Camden on 24 November 1822)

They were evidently Swedenborgians, and must have worshipped at the New Jerusalem Swedenborgian Church (which was originally in Brownlow Street, Holborn, then in Cross Street, Hatton Gardens and later in Waterloo Road, Lambeth).

Their elder son James was married in 1939:

• On 1 February 1839 at Marylebone, James Spofford married Emma Elizabeth Stanton or Stanten.

At the time of the 1841 census Mrs Catherine Spofford (57) was living at Victoria Place, Merton, Surrey with her husband James Spofford (59), who was an oil cloth painter.

Their only surviving daughter was married in 1850:

• On 30 November 1850 at St George’s, Hanover Square, Catherine Sarah Spofford married Frederick Klentz Harvey. Their marriage was announced thus in The Times of 3 December 1850: “On the 30th ult, by the Rev. F. J. FitzWygram, at St George’s, Hanover Square, F. K. Harvey, Esq., of Constitution-villa, Milton-on-Thames, to Catherine Spofford, only daughter of James Spofford, Esq., of Merton, Surrey.” Their only son William Frederick Harvey was born at Milton near Gravesend in Kent in 1852.

At the time of the 1851 census Mrs Catherine Spofford (67) was living at 4 Hamilton Place, Lambeth and was described as the sister of the householder, who was away on census night. Her husband was not with her. Her only unmarried child John (32) was now the servant of a draper at 288, 289, and 290 High Street, Chatham.

Mrs Catherine Spofford and her husband James were living at Morden Road, Merton, Surrey by 1854. James Spofford died there that year at the age of 74 and was buried at Norwood Cemetery on 12 October.

By the time of the 1861 census Mrs Catherine Spofford (77) had gone to live in Milton, Kent (at Constitution Villa, Windmill Hill) with her daughter Mrs Catherine Sarah Harvey (36) and son-in-law Frederick Klentz Harvey (45), who described himself as a landed proprietor, and their son William (8).

On census night her bachelor son John (43) was paying a visit to the milliner Jane Pankhurst (29) in High Street, West Malling, and he married her very shortly afterwards:

• In the second quarter of 1861 in Malling, Kent, John Spofford married Jane Pankhurst.

On 17 October 1870 Catherine's daughter’s son William Spofford was matriculated at the University of Oxford from Magdalen Hall; as the Universities Test Act was not passed until 1871, it indicates that he was not being brought up as a Swedenborgian. William’s parents were still living at Milton in Kent at the time of his matriculation, but within a few months they had moved to Oxford, possibly to be near their son, and Catherine (87) came with them. The 1871 census shows them living at 3 Clarendon Villas (now 40 Park Town), and William Frederick Harvey (18), now described as an undergraduate, was home for the vacation. Also living with them was their six-year-old niece and Mrs Spofford’s granddaughter Georgina Catherine Spofford (born at Town Malling, Kent in 1863 and known as Catherine), the only child of John Spofford.

Mrs Spofford died at her daughter’s house in 1871:

† Mrs Catherine Spofford, née Green died at Clarendon Villas (Park Town) at the age of 88 in June 1871 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 27 June (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).

---

Surviving children of Catherine Spofford and her husband James

• James Spofford (born 1811) and his wife Elizabeth do not appear to have had any children. They were living in St Pancras in 1841 and 1851: in the latter year James (39), who was described as a master floor cloth maker, and Emma (35) had taken in Emma’s sister Miss Sarah Stanton (39). By 1871 the three of them were living at Lime Tree Villa, Morden Road, Merton, and they were still there in 1881, when James was retired. James Spofford died at Lime Tree Villa, Merton, Surrey at the age of 77 on 17 March 1887, leaving a personal estate of £967 8s. 7d.
• John Spofford (born 1815) and his wife Jane appear to have had just one daughter, Georgina Catherine Spofford, who was born at Town Malling, Kent in 1863, and she was evidently sent to live with her aunt Mrs Harvey in Oxford. At the time of the 1871 census John (52) was a wine & beer retailer living over the Surrey Tavern in Battersea with his wife Jane (36). John Spofford died in Lambeth at the age of 60 in 1876.
• Catherine Sarah Spofford, Mrs Harvey (born 1818) lost her husband just a year after her mother’s death: Frederick Klentz Harvey died at Park Town at the age of 57 on 18 October 1872 and was buried at St Helen’s churchyard, Cliffe, Kent. Her only son William Frederick Harvey became a barrister and married Alice Louisa Fisher in Kent in 1878. Mrs Catherine Sarah Harvey was still living at Park Town in 1881 with her niece (Georgina) Catherine Spofford (17) and a servant. She died at Summertown on 13 September 1887 and was buried with her husband:
  see their grave in Kent, which is now a listed monument.
  Just a month after her death, on 17 October 1887 at St Michael’s Church, Mrs Catherine Sarah Harvey’s companion and niece Georgina Catherine Spofford married the Oxford dentist Harry Sanford Burton, with her cousin William Frederick Harvey as one of the witnesses. At the time of the 1881 census Georgina was living at 50 Cornmarket Street, Oxford over her husband’s surgery with two boarders and a cook and housemaid.