John William FENEMORE (1873/4–1918)

St Lawrence’s Church, North Hinksey

The 1871 census shows John’s parents living alone at North Hinksey: their first two children (Esther and Mary Jane) had already died in infancy. John’s father (30) was a Master Boot & Shoe Maker, and his mother Esther (28), who was due to give birth to her next child, Ann, in a matter of weeks, was a shoe binder.

John was born in North Hinksey in 1873/4 (reg. first quarter) and baptised at the church there (with surname spelt FINMOR) on 8 March 1874. His younger brother George was born in 1877, but only lived for just over a year.

At the time of the 1881 census John (7) was with his parents and only surviving sibling Ann (9) in North Hinksey. His next sister Ada was born later that year; his sister Ann died at the age of 11 in 1883; and his youngest sibling Arthur was born at North Hinksey near the end of 1886.

Between 1886 and the time of the 1891 census, the family had moved to 1 West Street in Osney. John (17) was now an apprentice to a cabinet maker, and his father was still a shoemaker. His younger brother and sister were at school, and also in the household was his cousin, Annie Hutson.

In 1899 John’s mother Esther died at 1 West Street at the age of 55 and was buried at St Lawrence’s Church, North Hinksey on 19 April; his father William died shortly afterwards at the end of 1899 or beginning of 1900 (registered first quarter of 1900).

At the time of the 1901 census John (28), now a journeyman carpenter, and his wife Clara (30) were living at 6 Christ Church New Buildings. Their first daughter Winifred had already died, and John’s sister Ada (19) had come to live with them. On 3 August 1908 at Ss Philip & James's Church, Ada Fenemore married Walter George Remnant, a grocer from Stockbridge, Hampshire, and they moved away from Oxford.

John’s son Sydney was born at the end of 1901, but his daughter Constance, born in 1904, died soon after birth.

Towards the end of 1910 John’s wife Clara Fenemore died at the age of 39, leaving him with his only surviving child, nine-year-old Sydney.

John’s brother Arthur died in Oxford at the age of 27 towards the end of 1912, meaning that in the years between 1900 and 1912 he had lost both of his parents, his wife, two of his children, and his only brother, while his only surviving sister had moved away. The 1911 census shows his only surviving son Sydney (9) in a boarding establishment at 6 Abbey Road, while John, a widower of 37, was living alone in two rooms at 12 Christ Church buildings and still working as a carpenter. His sister Mrs Ada Remnant was with her husband and first son at 91 Benskin Road, Watford.

John’s address in 1915 was (according to Jackson’s Oxford Journal) in Duke Street. His mother-in-law Mrs Shott was still living there at No. 24, and it seems likely that he and his son were living with her, and that she cared for Sydney when John volunteered to go to war.

Aftermath

John Fenemore’s only surviving child

• Sydney Thomas FENEMORE (born 1902) married Winifred E. COULING in Oxford in the first quarter of 1934. The birth of their son Peter A. Fenemore was registered in Oxford in the first quarter of 1935. Sydney Thomas Fenemore died in 1966 in the Oxford district.

John Fenemore’s only surviving sibling

• Ada FENEMORE (born 1881) and her husband Walter George REMNANT had four children: Walter Leslie Remnant (born in Bicester in 1909/10); Eric W. Remnant (born in Watford in 1911); Marjorie E. Remnant (born in Hackney in 1915); and Dora L. Remnant (born in Watford in 1917/18). John's sister Ada lived to be 85 and died in Chatham Kent in 1966.

---

Please email if you can add anything to this information

Back to list of the war dead of St Frideswide’s Church