John Yates
Little is known about
John Yates other than the basic details of birth, marriage and death: his age at death is given as 85; he must therefore have been born sometime around 1753. He married Lucy Gillitt of Stoneleigh. The register states that he is of the parish of Kenilworth, and no indication about whether he was a bachelor or a widower is given. This is surprising, given that he was 52 at the time of his marriage, on 9 December 1805.
Lucy herself (nee Slade) was married before, to John Gillitt. The couple had six daughters baptised at Stoneleigh, the first in 1779. John died in October 1802, and two years afterwards, in 1804, the youngest two daughters aged 6 and 2 were baptised. The youngest must have been just a baby when her father died.
Lucy then married John Yates, her youngest child being a mere 3 years old, but her oldest 26! At the time of her second marriage in 1805, then, Lucy herself was in her forties.
Sadly Lucy died in late November 1811, and was buried on 1 December. It would seem that John never remarried, living a long life and dying on 13 January 1838. He was buried on 17 January and the register gives his residence as the almshouse.
(
Interesting postscript: Lucy's youngest daughter, Lucy Gillitt, went to America with her husband as a pioneer in the 1860s, settling in Utah.)
