Pinn Profiles 


 

Updated 2001/10/27 at 15:32:47 (Eastern Australian time). These notes are being built up as information comes to hand. If you have downloaded previous editions, please replace them with this latest version.Anyone who has a copy of the 1978 duplicated notes, please destroy them and replace them with this version. Kevin Swann

William John Pinn

William's step mother died when he was thirteen years old and because he didn't get on with her, it is said that he laughed during the funeral while her body was being lowered into the grave. His father chased him but William hid and then ran away to join the army.

While stationed in Ireland, he was ceremonially stripped of his stripes for being drunk. He was then sent to the cook house where he became an army cook.

After leaving the army, he became a signal man on the Great Northern Line in England. At one stage he lived and worked at Tempsford where a daughter, Olive, was born. When Olive was quite small the company moved William to Stevenage. (Click here for map) They lived at Fisher's Green, Stevenage where he worked just down the road in the signal box. Cicely Swann takes up the story:-

"My mother was born at [Tempsford] in Bedfordshire, England on the 14th August 1884 the eldest daughter of William John Pinn and Emma Louisa Pinn (nee Edmonds). There were three sons in the family, Sidney, Cecil and Frank, and a younger daughter Phyllis Emma. Her father was a signalman at Stevenage on the main line to Scotland. There were two important trains each day, not to be delayed, the fish train (taking fish from Scotland to London) and the Scottish Express. The family was moved by the Railway Coy to Stevenage when my mother was still quite young.

Stevenage was then a small town surrounded by woodlands. They had a happy childhood. Mum and her friends often walked to neighbouring towns (about 3 miles distant) on market days and walked through the woods where primroses and other flowers grew so thickly it was impossible not to walk on them. The church was at the end of a mile long avenue of big trees and all the young people walked to church each Sunday and enjoyed each other's company.

Mum's Mother was often sick with bronchitis. She was sent to hospital in London three times. She always seemed better in the London foggy atmosphere. She often used a steam kettle to help breathing. My mother left school when she was eleven because her mother was so often sick.

Her father grew vegetables in the garden at home and also on an allotment, part of an area specially set aside and divided into allotment for people to use for growing vegetables. He also kept two pigs which he sold to the butchers when big enough and bought two more piglets to rear. He also helped with the house cleaning and helped cook the meals. The three brothers reared pigeons which they sold when big enough, often to the District Nurse, who called every week on their mother.

Mum's sister Phyllis Emma Pinn died when she was 17 of consumption. She was at a Nursing home at Torquay run by a Church of England order of sisters in a last endeavour to cure her. She is buried at Torquay.

Of the boys; Sidney married, his wife's name was Lillian. They had one daughter, Ida at least, and I think a son and perhaps others. Cecil Pinn died aged 21 of diphtheria. Frank Pinn married and had a son called Bill. I do not know anything more.

William Pinn had three uncles named Pinn, two of them came to Australia. The third had intended coming, but broke his leg and could not travel. That uncle had offered to take William John Pinn (then a young lad) with him, but the broken leg prevented that.

The two uncles settled in Goulburn, one at least was a builder. One member of these families was the editor of the "Goulburn Evening Penny post" at one time.

All the Pinns are descended from a Frenchman who escaped from France at the time of the French Revolution and settled in Devon at ........ There are graves of several of the family at the cemetery there.

Mum always said her father 'was the best father in the world.' "

When the new town of Stevenage was built in the 1950s, the railway station was moved further south and Bill's signal box was demolished to make way for a new bridge over the railway line.

At Fisher's Green the Pinns lived in a building divided into three dwellings, theirs being at the right hand end of the building. (Click here of photos) In 1978 a Mr. Furrs and his companion lived at the opposite end of the building. When interviewed in 1978, Mr. Furrs could still remember "old Bill Pinn" who used to live in the end house when Mr Furrs was a boy. Mr Furrs thought old Bill never had any children. In fact he had five:- Cecil William who died 20th January 1901 aged 20; Frank who had a son named Bill; Sidney who married Lillian and had a daughter, Ida, and perhaps a son; Phyllis Emma who died at St. Barnabas Home, Torquay 3rd January 1908 aged 17; Olive Louisa who had seven children and died in Sydney Australia on the 15th August 1974, aged 92.

Fisher's Green is now a park with houses backing onto it. These houses hide the old Steppin Farm, granary, cow shed and stables which (in 1956) was still visible across the field opposite the Pinn's home.

Mr. Furrs' companion, used to work as a maid on Steppin farm. (In 1978 her niece owned Bills old home and the one in the middle. These had been remodeled to make one dwelling.)

William married twice, his first wife being Emma Louisa Edmunds. Emma suffered from asthma and bronchitis so William had to take on much of the care of the three children and the house work. Emma died 23 March 1905 aged 50, just four weeks before the birth of her first grandchild - Cicely Swann. Emma was buried on 27th March 1905 at Nicholas' Stevenage.

Olive used to tell the story that her father was one of the first to successfully grow tomatoes in Stevenage and his verdict was that he "didn't like them much".

William only ever knew three of his seven grand children (Cicely, Robert & Molly) when they lived nearby in Stevenage for a few years (Joyce had died when she was only 8 days old). Then Olive, her husband Sidney Swann and the first three of their children migrated to Australia in 1912.

I have not been able to establish where and when William died - his death is not mentioned in the parish of Stevenage records.

Olive Louisa Swann (nee Pinn,)

Olive Louisa Pinn Was born at Tempsford (about 20 miles NNW of Stevenage) on 14th August, 1882, daughter of William and Emma. In 1904 she married Sidney Swann (Click here) who came from March, Cambridgeshire. They lived in Bournemouth Rd just around the corner from Olive's father William Pinn.

In 1906 according to Kelly's Directory of Trade and Business, Sidney was a "wood gate and fence manufacturer at the Steam Joinery Works, High Street, Stevenage". Later he moved his business to Middle Row. They had by this time moved to Baker St. (a lane off Middle Row)

In 1912, Sidney, Olive end their three children Cicely, Robert, and Molly migrated to Goulburn, Australia (Joyce had died aged 8 days in 1907). Four more Children were born in Goulburn, Donald, Morton, John (Jack) and Elizabeth (Betty).

After this they moved to Strathfield in Sydney where Sidney died in 1949 and where Olive continued to live in Chalmers Road with her son John (who died in 1968) and daughter Cicely, until Olive's death in August, 1974 at the age of 92.

 Kevin Swann

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