Person:James Bent (2)

Early life

James Bent was baptised on 24th December 1752 at Barton in the Clay in Bedfordshire, son of Elizabeth Bent, formerly Hill, and her husband William Bent, a labourer. Elizabeth and William had married the previous year in Barton, but the family did not stay long in Barton after James's baptism. Their next appearance is in Shillington, a couple of miles to the north-east, which is where William was from. At Shillington, William and Elizabeth had another child, Elizabeth, baptised in 1756. The following year, when James was four years old and his sister Elizabeth just over a year old, their mother Elizabeth died, being buried at Shillington on 22nd March 1757.

Four years later, William remarried. His second wife was Mary Pakes, who thus became James's stepmother. William and Mary married at Hexton, which lies between Barton and Shillington. After this marriage the family clearly stayed in Hexton, where William and Mary had three children baptised between 1761 and 1769.

Marriage and move to Luton

On 11th October 1781, when he was 28 years old, James married Susannah Sheffield. They married at Shillington, where James had lived for a time as a child. At the time of his marriage he was described as living at Hexton, where he had probably been living since his father's second marriage there in 1761.

Straight after their marriage, James and Susannah moved about ten miles to the south, to Luton. They did not live in the town itself, but at the rural hamlet of Ashwell Bridge in the south of Luton parish, on the border with Wheathampstead parish in Hertfordshire. (Ashwell Bridge as a name has subsequently fallen out of use - it is today part of East Hyde village, with the bridge in question being where Cooters End Lane / Thrales End Lane cross the River Lea.)

James and Susannah had seven children between 1782 and 1799, six of whom were baptised at Luton and one at nearby Harpenden, whose baptism records that the family lived in Wheathampstead parish, so possibly still in the Ashwell Bridge area but just the other side of the parish boundary. All seven of James and Susannah's children would live to adulthood.

James died in 1803 of a fever. At the time of his death he was living in Luton workhouse, although this may have been because it was the only place that could offer some medical care to a poor man. He was buried on 24th June 1803 at Luton. He was 50 years old. Susannah outlived him by nearly 19 years. James's first grandchild, his daughter Elizabeth's son, was born the following year and named James.

1. ↑ Bedfordshire Record Office. Transcript of Barton in the Clay Parish Registers. (Bedford).

   Baptisms:
   24 Dec 1752: Jas s Wm & Eliz Bent

   This baptism has been linked to the James Bent who married Susannah Sheffield in 1781 on the basis that it can be shown the father of the James baptised in 1752 went on to live at Hexton between 1761 and 1786, and when James was married in 1781 his abode was given as Hexton. No evidence that the James baptised in 1752 died young has been found. A 1752 baptism is seven years out from the age implied by James's burial record in 1803, but such a margin of error is not unusual - and no other evidence as to his age from while he was alive has been found, so the age at burial is relying on someone else reporting his age. If James had been the age quoted at his burial, he would have been about 35 when he married, which would have been quite late by the standards of the time, whereas the 1752 baptism suggests he was 28 when he married. The adult James also named his first two children Elizabeth and William, which were the names of the parents of the James baptised in 1752.

2. ↑ Church of England. Parish registers of St Mary, Luton, 1603-1944. (Bedford: Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record Service).

   Burials in 1803
   June 24 James Bent from the wellhouse 57 fever

3. ↑ See marriage.