C14.4

Joseph Gibbs Sarah Pritchett Barker nee Bousfield Joseph Gibbs Barker Matthias Barker This large box tomb commemorates members of four generations of one family. 1. Joseph Gibbs was born in 1693, the natural son of Mary Gibbs of Stoneleigh according to the baptismal register of 8 Feb 1694. It is interesting, then, that he became steward to two Lords Leigh at Stoneleigh Abbey, and is termed "Gentleman" in his Will. He appears in very many documents, administering the accounts of the abbey. He married Anne Wright of Coventry on 25 May 1733 at Coventry St Michael's and they went on to have seven children, the last of whom was born just a year before Joseph died. His Will expresses the hope that his wife will give particular attention to the education of their children. Perhaps he was grateful for an education which enabled him to make such progress in life? The inscription ( which is now too weathered to read) to Joseph, who died on 11 April 1748, gives the story: Here lieth the body of Joseph Gibbs of this parish whose virtues made his life a publick pattern and his death a publick loss. For 34 years he served the office of steward to the Lords Edward and Thomas Leigh, having lived 55 years, a great part of which time he dedicated to the service of the poor, the fatherless and the widow. He departed this life 11th April A.D. 1748. He was buried on 18 April, the register recording Mr Joseph Gibbs Steward to Rt Hon. Lord Leigh One of Joseph and Anne's daughters was Margaret Gibbs, born in 1743 at Stoneleigh. She married, in 1766, Matthias Barker, in Kenilworth, and it is their son Joseph Gibbs Barker and his wife Sarah who are commemorated next. 2. Joseph was born in Birmingham in 1774 and was baptised at St Philip's on 7 October. His father Matthias had presumably moved there as he was a gunsmith and Birmingham was at the heart of that industry at the time. Joseph was married to Sarah Pritchett Bousfield on 9 January 1809 at the church of St Lawrence Jewry in London - a Wren church; the register labels him "Esquire". He is described in several documents as "Gentleman". 3. Sarah Pritchett Bousfield was one of the seven children of William Bousfield and his wife Sarah Pritchett. She was born on 28 July 1781 in Tooley Street in Southwark, and her birth is registered along with her six siblings on 30 November 1799 in the records of Protestant Dissenters. It appears that the family were in the silk trade. Some of the witnesses at her marriage to Joseph Gibbs Barker were also silk manufacturers. In London, Sarah and Joseph went on to have seven children, many of whom became eminent in the church, medicine and education. Sarah was visiting her brother Charles, a silk manufacturer, in London at the time of the 1841 census, but she was living in Kenilworth by the time of her death on 27 September 1845. She was buried at Stoneleigh on 3 October. The family home by 1841 was in Herefordshire, which was where Joseph was in the 1841 census; by 1851, however, he was living in Kenilworth, and probably had been there for at least six years, since this was where his wife had died. He was living at Abbey House on Abbey Hill, and his former occupation was revealed to be linen merchant. Now retired, he was the 'proprietor of land and houses'. He then moved to live with his eldest son in Hereford, where he died on 27 February 1864, and was buried on 3 March in Stoneleigh. 4. Matthias Barker was the youngest of the seven children of Joseph Gibbs Barker and his wife Sarah. He was born in Hackney on 17 September 1821 and baptised there on 22 October. Like his brothers he was educated at Cambridge, and he was then ordained, becoming curate in Kenilworth between 1846 and 1851. He held other curacies before becoming vicar in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, where he died unmarried on 14 December 1883. He was buried at Stoneleigh on 20 December. The main inscription on this tomb refers to Sarah Pritchett Barker, Joseph Gibbs Barker and Matthias Barker, but it is an inscription at one end of the tomb which refers to Joseph Gibbs. In their wish to be buried at Stoneleigh it seems that later generations of the family recalled their ancestor and his roots.