James ALDOUS [Parents] [scrapbook] was born on 22 Jun 1777 in of Kelsale, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom. He was christened on 22 Jun 1777 in Laxfield, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom. He died on 14 Jun 1862 in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England, United Kingdom. James married Lydia BURTON on 14 Mar 1847 in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England, United Kingdom.
Other marriages:PAGE, Mary Ann
James Aldous was born in the village of Laxfield, Suffolk, England, and christened in the parish church on 22 June 1777. Within a few years after this his parents, Samuel and Margaret, moved their family to the nearby town of Cratfield. James grew up in this vicinity, and in the process learned the carpenters trade from his father.
At Kelsale, a village about seven miles from Cratfield and Laxfield, on an early summer day (4 June) in the year 1805, James and his sweetheart, Mary Page, a Kelsale girl, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth, were married. James was twenty-eight years of age and Mary was twenty-four.
This marriage was blessed with fourteen children: eight boys and six girls. Seven of these children died before they were five months old. Four others passed away at the ages of eight, thirteen, twenty, and fifteen, leaving three of the fourteen children. Only these three Robert, Angelina, and George, lived to marry, both of the Sons learning the carpenter's trade from their father.
James had received no formal education (at least we may assume this, as he signed his name with a mark), but was able to send his sons to school, and they received all the education that the common schools of the vicinity offered.
James and Mary Aldous were in good financial circumstances, James occupying, as a carpenter, the position of chief steward to the Reverend L. R. Brown, this being the responsibility for the church owned lands, the products of which provided for the poor of the parish. (O. F. Whitney, in his “History of Utah,” Vol. 4, p. 433, says that James held this position after his move to Huntingdonshire, but the Vicar at Kelsale while the Aldous family was there was “L. Brown,” so James probably did this at Kelsale.)
James was an excellent craftsman, a “Carpenter Master,” and an even better position than the one he held beckoned him to Fenstanton, in Huntingdonshire, approximately eighty-five miles distant from Kelsale, and the family moved in about 1828 or 29. Here Robert and George continued to work with their father, even after their marriages, Robert's in 1835 and George's in 1845.
In 1841 Mary died, and was taken back to Kelsale for burial. James remained a widower until 14 March 1847, when he married again at the age of sixty, this new wife being a local widow and fifty years of age.
James continued to be active as a carpenter for several more years, but in about 1855 became increasingly troubled by an “asthma” condition, and after seven more years, died at the age of 85, and is buried at Kelsale.
(References: Laxfield, Cratfield, and Kelsale, Suffolk, Parish Registers; Death and Marriage certificates; 1851 census Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire; “History of Utah,” by Orson F. Whitney, Vol. 4, p.433.)
