Eaton & Yorkshire Bint Family

The Greyhound Inn, Besselsleigh 1900 (Eaton Lane is on the left.)

Appleton late 1890


	St Laurence Church Appleton		St Lawrence Church Besselsleigh in 1885

	The Eaton Bint family's first proven ancestor was William Bint who was born in Berkshire around 1725 and died in December 1802 at Appleton. William was married to Susanna who was probably from Besselsleigh. Susannah died in 1815 and was also buried at Appleton. They had at least five children, Mary - 1750 John - 1753-1768 William - 1761-1829 Susanah -1759 Joanna - 1761 Their son William Bint (1761) was a shoe maker who was married on the 13th of December 1784 at St Lawrence Church, Besselsleigh to Emily Buckingham. She was born in 1767, the daughter of Robert and Mary Buckingham of Besselsleigh. They had at least five children, all baptised at Besselsleigh, John - 1792 Rosanna - 1798 Hannah - 1800 Phillip - 1804 William - 1795 William & Emily's son Phillip Bint (1804-1889) was a farm labourer who on the 4th of June 1830 married Eliza Fletcher (1811-1850) at her home parish church of South Hinksey. Philip and Elizabeth had five children, Charles - 1831-1832 James - 1832-1905 Fanny - 1835-37 Charles - 1837-1854 Henry - 1839-1911 George - 1849 Elizabeth died in 1850 and Philip remarried in 1852 at St Lawrence Church Appleton. Sarah Townsend (1817-1903) was the widow of Appleton farm-worker Zachariah Giles (1814-1846) who had died in 1846. She was born in the Berkshire town of Wallingford. Phillip and Sarah continued to live in the Eaton/Cumnor area and had two children, Alice (1853), and Selina (1856). The 1851 census shows Philip as a widower at Eaton with 3 of his sons, Charles 14, George 2 and Henry 11. It also shows at another address the widowed Sarah Giles listed as a pauper with four children, the youngest Zachariah jnr, baptised in November 1846 just two months after the death of his father. In 1871 Phillip and Sarah were still living at Appleton with their two daughters. Both parents are believed to have died as paupers in the Abingdon workhouse. William and Emily's daughter Rosanna Bint (1798-1880) married Abingdon mason's labourer William Reynolds (1795-1860) in 1823. They lived at Ock Street, Abingdon all their lives. Their children were: Eliza Reynolds 1829 – 1894 Harriett Reynolds 1832 – 1914 Sarah Reynolds 1834 – 1868 George Reynolds 1837 – 1918 John Reynolds 1840 – 1925

	William & Emily's son William Bint (1795) appears to have moved to Yorkshire with his wife Ann. He was employed as a sacking weaver in the Howden area near Selby. His wife died there in 1839 and he was still in that area during the 1860s and staying at the 'Half Moon' at Howden in 1861. At some point he returned to Berkshire where he is listed as an inmate of the Abingdon workhouse in 1881. He is believed to have died there. I do find his moving a couple of hundred miles from his birth place quite puzzling. Its not surprising that at a time when Berkshire agricultural workers were having a difficult time surviving he would seek work elsewhere, but this was long before our country developed a rail network and the journey by road would have been long and hazardous. I can only guess that he spent some time working in the Midlands before reaching Yorkshire. TB
			The Half Moon, Howden in 1925
	Philip and Sarah's daughter Selina Bint (1856) married farm worker Thomas Bennett (1850) from Cumnor in 1873. They settled at Appleton village and raised 10 children. Charles Bennett 1874 Mary Ann Bennett 1876 Alice Bennett 1878 Rosina Bennett 1880 Ellen Bennett 1884 Henry Bennett 1886 Stella Bennett 1889 Louisa May Bennett 1891 George Bennett 1894 Reginald James Bennett 1896		Philip and Sarah's other daughter Alice Bint (1853-1938) also married a farm worker and settled in Appleton. He was Charles William Bullock who was born at nearby Marcham in 1852. They were married in 1871. On the 1891 census her recently widowed mother Sarah Bint is staying with them. Their children all born at Appleton were: Kate Bullock 1872 – 1962 Albert Bullock 1880 Thirza Bullock 1883 – 1973 Gertrude Ellen Bullock 1890 – 1980


	In 1835 Abingdon had the dubious honour of opening the first Union workhouse in the country. It followed the passing of the Poor Law Act in 1834 establishing a system of Poor Law Union workhouses. The complex was built on the Oxford Road opposite St. Edmund's Church. The Master could view most activities from his parlour in the central hub of the complex. With little security at all, the agricultural day labourers were near the bottom of society. They were better off only than those with no income, the paupers. The poor were often widows and orphans, who had lost their family bread-winner, or the elderly or those who were disabled and unable to work. These ‘undeserved poor’ were supported through parish rates. By 1840 six out of seven of our ancestors in England and Wales lived in areas where the Poor Law was in force. It was a stark terrible fact that the majority of people were at some time or another likely to find themselves destitute. Yet there was a suicidal horror of the dreaded workhouse; people endured desperate cold and hunger before applying for entry. The Workhouses were intended to be "less desirable than life outside", with the theory being that if things inside the Workhouse could be made as disagreeable as possible, then they would be encouraged to find work and not depend on the Poor Rate. This was intended to be accomplished by strict discipline, sparse food, and separation of not just males and females, but of families. Abingdon Poor Law Union was formed on 1st January 1835, the very first union to be declared under the new Act, comprising 14 parishes. However it was enlarged from 6th October 1835 to include a total of 38 parishes. Its operation was overseen by an elected Board of Guardians, 41 in number, representing its constituent parishes listed below. Berkshire: Abingdon St Helen, Abingdon St Nicholas, Appleford, Appleton and Eaton, Besselsleigh, Cumnor, Draycot Moor, Drayton, Frilford, Fyfield, Garford, Kingston Bagpuize, Lyford, Marcham, Milton, North Hinksey, Radley, Seacourt, South Hinksey, Steventon, Sunningwell, Sutton Courtenay, Sutton Wick, Tubney, Wootton, Wytham. Later Additions: Bagley Wood, Chandlings Ford. Oxfordshire: Binsey, Burcott, Chiselhampton, Clifton (Hampden), Culham, Drayton St. Leonard, Littlemoor, Marsh Baldon, Nuneham Courtenay, Sandford, Stadhampton, Toot Baldon. A number of elderly paupers from the farm labouring Bint family spent time here and its where William (1795), his brother Philip (1804-1889) and Philip's second wife Sarah (1817-1903) are believed to have died. The workhouse was closed in 1932 and demolished soon after.

	Descendants of the Berkshire Bints			The Bint Family of Eaton, Nuneaton, Oxford & Yorkshire
				This Bint family lived in the Appleton, Eaton area near Cumnor to the South West of Oxford all of which were in Berkshire until 1974 when a number of major changes took place. A large area to the north west as far as Abingdon was transferred to Oxfordshire, and Slough (formerly in Buckinghamshire) became part of Berkshire. My sincere thanks to Teddi from Canada, Nigel from Woodstock and Linda King from Oxford for their unhesitating help and for allowing me to use their valuable and extensive research.






				To the left of Cumnor. Long Leys Farm - Henry's home
	Appleton, a village and a parish in Berkshire. The village stands near the Upper Thames, 5 miles NW of Abingdon station on the G.W.R., and has a post and money order office under Abingdon, which is the telegraph office. The parish includes also the township of Eaton. Acreage, 2077 ; population, 532. The Fettiplaces had an old seat here, which is now reduced to a fragment, with remains of a moat The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; net yearly value, £330 with residence, in the gift of Magdalen College, Oxford. The church is a plain stone building in the Early English style, the chancel being 15th century. The tower contains a fine peal of ten bells. The nave was restored in 1883. The church has a Jacobean tomb of Sir J. Fettiplace, and a brass of a skeleton (1518). There is also a small Wesleyan chapel. The manor house is supposed to have been built in the reign of Henry II. Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5 Across the river from Eaton, at the Bablock Hythe ferry, is the historic parish of Northmoor in Oxfordshire. Bablock Hythe was on the Berkshire Oxfordshire border until 1974. Close to Long Leys Farm is the Physic Well an ancient water-hole renowned in the 17th century for its curative powers.