George was 3 months old and living at Robert Street, off Vine Street, in Lambeth, Surrey with a painter called George Ricket and Lucy Ricket, both aged 50, and, (probably), their three children who were aged between 9 and 20. He had been born in Surrey. There does not seem to be a record of his birth at the General Register Office.
He and his wife had two children, Francis who died about 1786, and Ann who died after 2nd October 1784 when Francis signed his will.
Francis married Elizabeth, possibly Elizabeth Bragg, and their children were Elizabeth and Francis who were probably born before 1764, and William Powle Pyner who must have displeased his father between the signing of the will on 2nd October 1784 and when the codicil was added on 3rd January 1785. He was probably born after 1763. The family lived in Lombard Street in London in 1785 when the will was made.
According to his will Francis also had a nephew called John Pyner, and two nieces called Ann Pyner and Catherine Pyner. Another niece called Sarah was the wife of John Babington, and one called Elizabeth who had married John Dorrell. He also named a friend called Martha Spiers who had two daughters Mary and Martha. The daughter Martha may have married Francis from the fourth generation.
This Francis was living in Chertsey when he made his will. He was married to Martha, possibly Martha Spier, and they had two children, Francis who was born about 1788, and Martha who may have been older than her brother. This could be the Martha who married Robert Hughes from Alkington in Oxfordshire and was living in Shenington, near Banbury in Oxfordshire in 1841.
Francis had a sister Elizabeth who married John Loader and who died after 1795.
He was born in London, (or possibly Chertsey), in 1788, and enlisted in the 58th (Rutlandshire) Regiment of Foot as an Ensign in 1807. On the 25th of March 1808 he was promoted to Lieutenant. If this was by purchase then this would have cost another £250 in addition to the £450 which the purchase of his ensignancy cost.
The regiment may have been posted to Aston Rowant in Oxfordshire soon after this because this is where he married Elizabeth Davis on the 13th of October 1810 and their first child, Ann Elizabeth, was baptised here on the 10th of November 1811.
Two years later he was promoted to acting captain on the 4th of April 1813, and this was made substantive on the 29th of July in the same year. This may have required a further £1,100 to purchase the commission. In 1815 he was in Yorkshire where their only son, Francis Richard, was born, and the following year Helen Sophia was born in Chelmsford in Essex.
He went onto half pay in the same year in which Helen was born on the 25th of February 1816 and daughter Julia was born around this time. The following year Emma was born in Deddington, Oxfordshire and Laura followed in 1819 and was baptised in Bloxham, Oxfordshire. This was the year in which Francis joined the 2nd Surrey Regiment of Militia on the 10th of December, and three more daughters followed between 1826 and 1831.
Francis must have bought East Sandfield House, Stoke next Guildford in Surrey around this time. His wife Elizabeth died some time between the birth of their last daughter Fanny and 1841 as she does not appear in that census. In 1840 Francis became adjutant of the 2nd Royal Surrey Militia.
He made his will on the 12th of April 1849 leaving all plate, pictures, prints, glass, household furniture and all residue to his unmarried daughters who were living at the time of his decease to be divided equally. Daughters Emma Rebecca and Helen Sophia Pyner were appointed executrixes and the will was witnessed by Saml Cotton of 7 Lothbury, (London?) & Wm Hy Heming, clerk.
In 1851 he employed two live-in female servants and four of his daughters continued to live with him at that date. The following year he resigned from the militia on the 14th of September and was still living at East Sandfield House when he died in 1855.
Ann was baptised at Aston Rowant in Oxfordshire on the 10th of November 1811 and moved with the family when her father's regiment was posted to different parts of the country. She died towards the end of 1845 in Guildford.
He was christened in Sculcoates in Yorkshire on the 25th of August 1815. In May 1833 he was one of 14 gentlemen who was successful in the half-yearly examinations at Sandhurst and was recommended for appointment to ensigncy without purchase. (An ensign was the lowest rank of officer and would have cost £450 if purchased.) He joined the Northumberland Fusiliers, (the 5th Regiment of Foot), as an ensign on the 22nd of November in the same year.
The regiment was in Malta as part of the British Army Garrison in February of 1837, with Francis as one of the ensigns. A year later he was promoted to First Lieutenant, although this could have been by purchase. A month later he became the adjutant following the death of an officer called Munro. Towards the end of 1839 he resigned the adjutancy and went with the regiment when it was posted to Cephalonia in 1840.
When the 1841 census was taken he was staying in Shenington, Oxfordshire, with two of his sisters, (Emma and Marianne), at the vicarage. The vicar was Robert Hughes and his wife was formerly Martha Pyner, and it is possible that she was an aunt of Francis. He married Alice Jane Bolden, the daughter of John Bolden of Hyning Hall in Lancashire and widow of an Irish attorney called David Davison, at St Oswald in Warton on the 29th December 1841. Unfortunately she died on the 10th November 1843 in Cove, Ireland of consumption.
He married Mary Neilson Gray, the widow of John Baker, on the 23rd of July 1846 in Templeport, Cavan, Ireland and they had a daughter Mary Helen Francis who was born in the Citadel, Plymouth on the 8th of May 1847. Francis was promoted to Captain some time before the 9th of November 1849 when he went on to half pay and became unattached from his regiment.
He and his family were probably living in Yarmouth, Norfolk at this time as this is where he died on the 21st of May 1850.
I believe that Mary returned to Ireland with her daughter shortly after her husband died and that she died a few years later. In 1861 the daughter, Mary, was living in Lathbury in Buckinghamshire with her cousin Henry Bull, the vicar of Lathbury, and she stayed with him until after 1871. By the time the 1881 census was taken she had moved to the Convent of the Holy Trinity in Woodstock Road, Oxford to live with another cousin Marian J Hughes, (possibly related to Robert and Martha Hughes from Shenington), who was Mother Superior of the convent. There were 16 Sisters of Mercy, one Novice and thirty-one boarders who were being taught by the nuns.
In 1891 she had moved a few miles to live with another cousin, Frances Bull, who was about Mary's age. She never married and died late in 1897 in Headington district in Oxfordshire.
Presumably her father's regiment was in Essex at Chelmsford when Helen was born. She stayed with her father until he moved to Guildford and lived in East Sandfield House until her death in 1878. She and her sisters Emma and Clara were well enough off to employ live in servants from at least 1861 onwards.
Julia was the third daughter of Francis and Elizabeth Pyner and was not born in Surrey, but was living with her father in 1841.
Emma was born in Deddington, Oxfordshire in 1817 and in 1841 she was staying with her sister Marianne and brother Francis at Shenington with the Reverend Robert Hughes and his wife Martha, (formerly Pyner).
By 1851 she had moved back to the family home in Surrey where she lived for the rest of her life. She must have inherited some money from her father when he died in 1855, as did all her sisters, apparently.
She died in the winter of 1879 in Guildford at the age of 62.
She was baptised in Bloxham, Oxfordshire, on the 5th of November 1819 and was still living with her father when he had moved to the Guildford area in 1841. In 1849 she married George Silvester on the 7th of August at Stoke next Guildford. They do not appear to be listed in the 1851 census, but after George died, (date uncertain), she had moved to 3 York Buildings, Hastings to a boarding house run by William Catt, a railway porter. Her sister Fanny was also boarding there in 1861.
It seems likely that she married D E O'Callaghan between 1861 and her death on the 11th of February 1872 in Chelsea, London, which was reported in the Surrey Advertiser.
Marianne was baptised on the 12th September 1826 in St Nicholas church, Guildford. In 1841 she was staying in Shenington, Oxfordshire, with her brother Francis, and sister Emma with Robert Hughes who was the vicar of Shenington, and his wife Martha. As Martha's maiden name was Pyner it is possible that she was the aunt of the three siblings.
On the 4th of January 1845 she married David Henry Alexander from Alton, Hampshire, in the church at Stoke next Guildford. They moved to Burnham in Buckinghamshire before 1851 where David owned a farm of 80 acres and employed one labourer. There was also a house servant called Jane Price who was living with them. Jane was only 17 and from Wooboun, (possibly Woburn), in Buckinghamshire.
It is not clear where they were in 1861, but 1871 found them living at 1 Holland Villas Road, Kensington, London. This time they had two servants - a 23 year old cook called Eliza Hamilton from Buckland, Hertfordshire; and a housemaid from Pinner, Middlesex called Marian Howes, who was the same age as the cook.
Marianne died near the end of 1880 in Kensington. David then moved to Norfolk to a village called Walpole St Peter where he lived until 1893, almost exactly 13 years after his wife died.
She was born around 1831, possibly in Stoke next Guildford where the family had their home for several years. The 1841 census shows her living in her father's house, East Sandfield House, but aged 20! She was still at the same address in 1851, and still 20 years old.
Ten years later her sister Helen was head of the household, and Clara was a 'proprietor of houses'. Her occupation was shown as 'independent (means)' in 1871 and Helen was still head of the household. In 1881 she was living at Hill View, South Bersted, a village on the outskirts of Bognor Regis, although it has now been absorbed into Bognor. Her widowed sister Fanny was sharing the house with her.
She died eight years later near the end of 1889, probably in Hill View.
Fanny was born in Shalford near Guildford in 1831 and was living with her father at East Sandfield House, North Place, Stoke next Guildford in 1841, where she lived until after 1851.
In 1861 she was a boarder in Hastings, Sussex at 3 York Buildings, as was her sister Laura. She married William O'Callaghan during the next decade and she and William, a surgeon from Ireland, had moved to Chelsea. William died in the spring of 1872 and by 1881 Fanny had moved to Hill View, London Road, South Bersted, Bognor Regis, Sussex to live with her unmarried sister Clara. She died in the autumn of 1889 in or near Lewes, Sussex.
