Ari’s 3x great-grandfather, John Edgar Pearson Wheeldon, was born on 27 July 1878 in Holloway, Belper, Derbyshire. His parents were Samuel Wheeldon and Mary Ann Bunting.
Primitive Methodist Chapel, Holloway
John was not christened until 1896, and this event took place in Wirksworth.
Derbyshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1916
The 1881 census had shown John as a two-year-old, living with his parents and three siblings in Holloway. His father was a hosiery dresser.
In 1891, John was still at school.
On 12 March 1898, he married Elizabeth Ann Murfin at All Saints Church in Mugginton, her parish.
The leaning porch at Mugginton church
The marriage certificate tells us that John was now working as a blacksmith.
In 1901, John and his wife are living at Little Hays in the parish of Alderwasley, Wirksworth, and John is a blacksmith’s striker. Two children have been born: Lawrence Edgar and John Henry Francis (Frank).
In 1907, John appeared as a witness in the newspaper account of a fatal injury (read left to right):
Belper News, 20 September 1907
Four more children would be born before the next census in 1911: Winifred Ethel, Arnold George, Edward Oliver, and Mary Elizabeth Ellen (Ari’s great-great grandmother). By then the family had moved to Nottingham Road in Belper. John is described in the census as “Journey blacksmith, wheelwright & general smith”. Another son, Lewis Mervyn, was born the following year but died at only a few months’ old.
John lived to see the marriage of two of his children, but sadly died at the age of only forty-five, on 4 February 1924, at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. The cause of death was given as broncho-pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma.
Ari, this is how you are related to John:
