Martha Keartland nee Hall
Martha Keartland nee Hall was born either at the end of 1817 or at the beginning of 1818, the youngest daughter of
William and Sarah Hall who are buried at
A. 13 along with their sons
Henry William and
Edward, and Martha's sister
Jane. Their sister
Emma Maria is buried at
A.12. It seems significant that the relationship with the Hall family is mentioned on her headstone, along with the name of her husband,
Robert Keartland. He is buried nearby at
E 2. 11 with their niece Martha.
Martha was baptised at Stoneleigh on 28 January 1818 and married Robert Keartland on 13 August 1839 when she was 21. Robert lived at the time in the parish of St Nicholas, Warwick, where his father was a farmer.
Robert had become the master of the Free School in Lower Boddington by the late 1840s and in the 1851 census he was described as such, with Martha being described as a straw bonnet maker. In the same census in Stoneleigh, however, Martha's widowed mother Sarah Hall was a beer retailer, and by 1861 Robert and Martha were themselves living in Stoneleigh, and Robert was both brewer and grocer. Obviously a reasonably educated man, he was also the census enumerator for Stoneleigh in 1871.
When her husband died in February 1875 Martha took over the business and was described as "beer retailer" in the 1881 census. She died on 27 October 1885 and was buried on 2 November.
Her nephew George Hall Manley, the son of her sister Emma Maria, and one of Martha's executors then took over the licence for the "beer house".
