Sarah Jane WATKIN (1859–1865)
Probably also her mother, Mrs Ellen WATKIN, née Williams (1825–1911)
St Giles section: Row 10, Grave 28½
IN / AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE / OF
SARAH JANE WATKIN
BORN JULY 31ST 1859 /
DIED JULY 1ST 1865
[?]AGED 5 YEARS
Sarah Jane Watkin was born in Great Oxendon, Northants on 31 July 1859, the daughter of Alfred Watkin (born in Market Harborough, Leicestershire in 1835) and Ellen Williams (born in Bicester in 1825). Her parents were married at Market Harborough in the second quarter of 1857, and Sarah appears to have been their only child.
At the time of the 1861 census Sarah Jane (1) was with her parents in Great Oxendon, Northants. Her father Alfred was a carpenter aged 26, and her mother Ellen, who was ten years older than her husband, would have been 36, but she regularly made herself out to be younger.
Sarah's father Alfred Watkin disappears after that census (no death record found), and by 1865 Mrs Ellen Watkin had moved down to Oxford with her young daughter Sarah Jane. She lived at Park Place, which was at the south end of the Banbury Road, running north from opposite St Giles's Church (map).
Sarah Jane died at Park Place just before her sixth birthday in 1865:
† Sarah Jane Watkin died at Park Place at the age of 5 years and 11 months on 1 July 1865 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 5 July (burial recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).
It is hard to find her mother, Mrs Ellen Watkin, in the 1871 census, but in 1881 she was keeping a grocer’s and general shop at 26 Walton Crescent. She now gave her correct age (56) and described herself as a widow. Her niece Henrietta Williams (25) assisted her, and she also had a boarder.
In 1891 Mrs Watkin was a shop assistant, staying in a lodging house at 14 Pembroke Street, St Aldate’s; and in 1901, when she would have been 76, she was a sempstress living in two rooms in a house at 4 Castle Terrace in St Peter-le-Bailey parish.
Mrs Watkin died in Oxford near the end of 1911 and her correct age (86) was recorded on her death certificate. As her burial is recorded by St Giles’s Church even though she died in west Oxford, she was probably buried with her little daughter, although there is no inscription on the grave:
† Mrs Ellen Watkin, née Williams died at St Thomas's Nursing Home, Abbey Road, west Oxford at the age of 86 on 21 December 1911 and was buried on 23 December (burial is recorded in the parish register of St Giles’s Church).
Her effects came to £50 10s. 10d.
Please email stsepulchres@gmail.com
if you would like to add information
These biographies would not have been possible without the outstanding transcription services
provided by the Oxfordshire Family History Society