Frederick Clements

Frederick Clements was the oldest surviving son of William Clements and his wife Elizabeth. He was born in 1825 at Charlton on Otmoor, Oxfordshire, where his father was a boot and shoe maker and farmer.

Frederick married Sarah Jacobs, a dressmaker, in Charlton Parish Church in 1846. By 1851 they were living in Kirtlington. The census gives his occupation as boot and shoe maker.

Frederick and Sarah had two children, John, who died aged about 2 and Sarah Maria, born in 1856.

In 1856 the name ‘Clements, Kirtlington’ appears on the Wesleyan Reformers Methodist Preaching Plan. It is likely that this is Frederick Clements, as no others of the same surname were resident in the village in the most recent census.

So far we have no other evidence for Frederick being a Methodist. We do know that his sister Mary married a dissenting minister in the Baptist tradition at Charlton on Otmoor in 1841, just a few years after the anti-enclosure campaigns known as the Otmoor Riots.

Sadly, Frederick Clements died in 1859 at the age of only 34.

By the 1861 census, the young Sarah Maria was living with her Charlton on Otmoor grandparents and Uncle, Thomas. She worked as housekeeper for the household until her marriage in 1881.