So as someone who enjoys genealogy research, it’s always nice to see the name of your ancestor in a census, on a marriage certificate or a ship’s passenger list. It always makes you think of what their lives must have been like. When I came home from work at Target last night, my wife said “look what I found” She had found among the papers of Louise Marter, who had a massive amount genealogical information she had collected over the last 30 to 40 years. Louise passed away a few months ago and Kathy has been given the task of going through the boxes and boxes of papers to decide the relevancy of each piece of paper Better her than me because Pack-Rat Edward would be tossing nothing!! Anyway back to last night’s find. it was at list of school children in the Beverly schools in 1865 and 1866 and there among children was my great-grandfather John or Johnny Ashton
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His father John Sherrington Ashton, known as Sherrington was the son of John Sherrington Ashton and Martha Short Ashton. He came to the US with his brothers William Short Ashton, sisters Arabella in 1853. It appears that his parents John and Martha and his young brother James E and sister Mary came in 1852 all had lived in Holbeach, England in 1851.
Sherrington married Mary Parezo in May of 1857 and my great-grandfather was born a year later in May of 1858.His sister Mary Caroline(Carrie) Ashton was born in April of 1864. I did not even know about this sister until I sent for Civil War Pension papers from Sherrington. By the time my mother was born in 1928 Carrie was living in Camden with her daughter and would die 5 years later in 1933.
What makes the class list sad is that by the year 1865, Johnny’s dad Sherrington had died. He was killed in November of 1864 at the age of 27! The family story that I had always I heard was that he was stabbed getting off of Dunk’s Ferry by someone grabbing John’s own sword and stabbing him with it. When I started doing genealogy research in the 70s, his death record was one of the first things I found, the record recorded the cause of death as knife wound in chest! He was killed on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware and originally buried in the Larzelere Cemetery in Bensalem. The Larzelere Cemetery is the oldest part of still active Beechwood Cemetery. His remains were later moved to Monument Cemetery and appears to be buried in lots with is in-laws the Parezos,
But the Sherrington’s death was not the only tragedy for the Ashton family. His sister Arrabella had died the previous year (1863) at the age of 19 and his father would die in 1870. His father was returning to England (reason unknown) on the City of Boston, which never made it to England. His death is listed in the 1870 mortality index as “lost at sea-City of Boston”
Young John Sherrington (born in 1858) would also suffer loses during his lifetime. Three of his children from his first marriage and his wife would die. One of the children Horace died at the age of twenty months in 1890. Mary died in 1892 and children Blanche and Edward both died at the age of 18 in 1904 and 1902 respectively.
In 1894 John married my great-grandmother Margaret McCloskey. Their second child Myrtle would die in a house fire in 1900 at the age of 2. Their first child Violet was 4 and my grandfather John S was 1 at the time.
So genealogical records always give us a glimpse of the lives of our ancestor’s and often awakes us to the reality that many times those lives were not pleasant or easy!
