Joseph Genge was a sawyer at Oil Moor in 1841 and 1851. He probably worked with John Watts, at least in 1841.

The 1861 census recorded him as a shopkeeper, and the 1871 census as a shopkeeper and farmer.

Joseph was born at Hardington in 1807, the son of John and Jane Genge. His father, a weaver and, later, a farmer, died in March or April 1840 at the age of 63, leaving a will that was proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.[1]

On 24 September 1840, Joseph married Ann Slade at Hardington. In 1843, they lived at Moor in what was later Mrs Hawkins’s house.

On 3 May 1844, Joseph was fined 20s and costs for assaulting his own mother, Jane, a widow.[2]

In March 1851, Joseph and Ann lived at the Moor with Ann’s mother, Betsy Slade. Betsy died in May 1859.

Following his mother’s death in 1855, Joseph inherited “that plot of grown in the Moore” under his father’s will.[3]

By April 1861, Joseph and Ann had moved into Hardington village, and Joseph was a grocer. In April 1869, he was appointed one of the parish overseers.[4] In April 1871, he was a shopkeeper and farmer living in the High Street. He is listed as a shopkeeper in trade directories of 1861, 1866 and 1872.

From 1867 to 1880, he rented a house and land from Lord Portman.[5]

In November 1878, he was fined £1 6s, including costs, for having inaccurate scales. The newspaper account of the case describes him as a grocer.[6]

His wife, Ann, died in 1880, aged 64. By April 1881, Joseph was a farm labourer living with his widowed sister, Harriett Haggett, at Hardington Moor. She died later the same year, aged 77. In April 1891, Joseph was a pauper inmate of the Union workhouse, where he died in April 1897, aged 89. His mother had died there, too, in 1855.

Joseph and Ann had only one child, John, who died in 1842 at the age of two.

References

[1] The will of John Genge, dated 8 March 1840, proved in London on 5 May 1840.

[2] Sherborne Mercury, 4 May 1844, p.3.

[3] The will of John Genge, dated 8 March 1840, proved in London on 5 May 1840.

[4] Western Gazette, 9 April 1869, p.8.

[5] Guardian Valuations.

[6] Western Gazette, 8 November 1878, p.6; Southern Times and Dorset County Herald, 9 November 1878, p.7