Mrs. Elizabeth Nicholls of Wembley, Middlesex, and the late Thomas Eames are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter Emma Eames to William Stoker, son of Thomas and Ann Stoker of Brewood, Staffordshire. The couple were married on Sunday, 29 July 1849, at St. John’s Church, Wembley, in the parish of Harrow, after their banns had been read in church on three Sundays.

William gave his age as 23, a bachelor and saddler living at Newport, Shropshire, and named his father as Thomas Stoker, servant. Emma was 20, a spinster in service at Alperton, and named her father as Thomas Eames, wheelwright. Both William and Emma signed the register with their own names rather than a mark. Emma’s mother could not sign her name; fourteen years later she also signed Emma’s death certificate with her mark. The witnesses for the marriage were John and Anne Kidney, whose family lived two doors from Emma’s mother at Wembley.

William Edward Stoker was born 9 January 1827 at Crateford, a hamlet in the parish of Brewood, Staffordshire, and christened 4 February 1827 at the church of St. Mary and St. Chad in Brewood. Some histories and websites give 1822, even his own tombstone, a year worked back from the age of 77. The baptism register and English censuses agree on 1827.

His father, Thomas Stoker, was baptized at Brewood in 1787. The parish registers call him a laborer in 1825 and 1827 and a servant in 1828. By 1830 he was coachman at Somerford Hall, and he was still driving at 73. William’s mother was Ann Nightingale, and William was one of at least eight children. In 1841 the family lived at Four Ashes in Brewood: Thomas, coachman; Ann; Mary 21; Jane 16; Joseph 15, already a wheelwright; William 14; Thomas 11; and Eliza 8. By 1851 Ann was no longer in the household, and I have not yet found when she died. Thomas died at Brewood in 1865. Sometime in the 1840s William learned the saddler’s trade and moved across the county line to Newport, Shropshire.

Emma Eames was born 16 January 1830 at Alperton and baptized 21 February 1830 at St. Mary’s, Harrow on the Hill, by William Whitmarsh Phelps. The register gives her parents as Thomas and Elizabeth Eames of Alperton, wheelwright. Thomas Eames had married Elizabeth Lewis, a native of Thatcham, Berkshire, at St. Pancras Old Church on 2 October 1825.

Emma had an older brother Thomas, born in 1826, who spent his life at Alperton and Wembley as a carpenter and later as the village postmaster and shopkeeper. His second wife, Christiana, came from his mother’s home village of Thatcham. Emma also had an older sister, Alice Ruth, christened at Harrow in March 1828, and a younger brother William, baptized at Harrow on 12 February 1832, who does not appear with the family again.

Emma’s father was buried at Harrow on 12 September 1833, when she was three, and Elizabeth was expecting again. Their son William was born that winter and baptized at Harrow on 19 January 1834. He was buried there on 11 September 1834, nine months old. That September cholera came through Wembley. The curate wrote “Died of Cholera” beside the five burials just before William’s, though not beside his.

Within a few years Elizabeth married William Nicholls, a laborer from Ely, Cambridgeshire, and they had four children: William, Ellen, Caroline and George. By the 1841 census Thomas and Alice were living with them at Alperton, along with the two eldest Nicholls children. Emma was not there. “Emma Ames,” 10, appears instead in the household of John Lewis, a carman, at Horse and Groom Yard in the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster. Elizabeth had a brother John, born about 1801, and the census notes this John Lewis was born outside Middlesex, so he was very likely Emma’s uncle.

Emma went home to Alperton to have her first child. William Thomas Stoker was born there on 16 June 1850, and Emma registered the birth at Harrow eight days later. The certificate gives the father as William Edward Stoker, saddler.

By the end of March 1851 the young family was back in Newport, living on Middle Row: William, 25, journeyman saddler, born in Brewood; Emma, 22, born in Middlesex (the enumerator wrote “Studbury”); and William T., 9 months.

The family moved with William’s work. Alice was born 21 September 1851 at Brewood, near William’s family. Janetta, called Jeanette, was born 3 February 1856 at Kinver (the registrar wrote “Kinfare”), in Staffordshire, and Emma registered the birth at Wolverhampton. By 1859 they were back near Emma’s family, and Alfred was born on 22 September at Church End, Hendon, where Emma’s mother and stepfather were living by 1861. The family then settled in Reading, Berkshire, where Mary Ann was born on 24 February 1861.

The 1861 census found the Stokers at 18 Alfred Street in the parish of St. Mary’s, Reading: William, 34, saddler journeyman; Emma, 31; Thomas, 11; Alice, 9; Jenetta, 6; Alfred, 1; and Mary Ann, a few weeks old. The enumerator listed Jenetta as born in Brewood, but her birth certificate says Kinver. One more son, George, was born 28 October 1862 and died early in 1863.

The Stokers met missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Reading. William Thomas, then twelve, was baptized on 1 February 1863, and William and eleven-year-old Alice followed on 27 May. We are not sure if Emma joined the church before her death or not. The church does not appear to have records of her joining while alive.

Emma died on 28 April 1863 at 18 Alfred Street, after a year of phthisis, or tuberculosis. She was 33, though the certificate says 35. The informant, who was present at the death, was her mother, Elizabeth Nicholls of Hendon, then about 58 and working as a charwoman, who signed with her mark. Find a Grave places Emma in St. Mary’s churchyard, Reading, but no records have confirmed this burial. Her brother Thomas named a daughter Emma the following year.

Elizabeth outlived her daughter by more than thirty years. She and William Nicholls stayed at Church End, Hendon, where the 1891 census found them at 84 and 86, and she died in 1896.

A month after Emma’s death, William was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Two weeks before that, on 16 May 1863, his notice from the Reading Conference had been acknowledged for passage on the next emigrant ship. The British Mission register lists “Wm Stoker,” 36, sadler, and his children Thos 13, Alice 10, Janet 5, Alfred 3 and Mary A., an infant, all sharing the 7 Coley Street address of the Reading members above them. He paid a £6 deposit and a balance of £15 12s, £21 12s in all, on ticket 182. The ship’s name at the top of the page is written over a crossed-out “Cynosure.”

The Amazon left London on 4 June 1863 with 895 Latter-day Saints. Before she sailed, Charles Dickens visited the ship and later described the emigrants as the “pick and flower” of England. Elijah Larkin, a fellow passenger, noted that thirteen-year-old Thomas was administered to on 16 and 20 June for a sickness he had had since sailing. The ship landed at Castle Garden, New York, on 18 July.

From New York the Saints went west by rail. Verna Olson’s history says that the same evening they landed, the family went on by train to Albany on their way to Florence, Nebraska, the Church’s outfitting post, the last stretch by river steamer up the Missouri. Two family accounts say William stayed and worked in New York for a time, but his marriage in Ogden in May 1864 means he must have crossed with the 1863 companies, since no company leaving the Missouri in 1864 could have reached Utah by then. At Florence, teams and wagons sent by the Church met those who could not pay for their own, and the emigrants divided into several wagon companies for the last thousand miles. The trail followed the Platte across Nebraska, past Chimney Rock and Fort Laramie, then up the Sweetwater past Independence Rock and through Devil’s Gate, where the Martin Handcart Company had been stranded seven years before. George A. Smith wrote that the company reached Salt Lake City and camped on Union Square on Saturday and Sunday, 3 and 4 October 1863, “in good health and fine spirits,” two days before General Conference opened on Tuesday, 6 October. The journey from London had taken four months. I have not yet identified which wagon company the Stokers crossed with. The Daniel D. McArthur company, which left Florence on 6 August and ended its journey at Salt Lake City on 3 October, is one likely candidate.

Ogden and Plain City

William settled in Ogden and opened its first harness shop. He married Eliza Sinfield in Ogden on 18 May 1864, and three years later, to the day, they were endowed and sealed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Their home stood on 26th Street between Washington and Grant, which the 1880 census lists as 6th Street; in 1889 Ogden added twenty to the numbers of its east-west streets. On 27 March 1869 William was called as one of the presidents of the 75th Quorum of Seventies.

Before long, the five children from England were living with families in Plain City, all of them Latter-day Saints at the time. Several Plain City families, the Sharps among them, later left for the Episcopal church after a dispute over tithing that Milo Ross remembered as the doing of one bishop. Family accounts say the children first camped in a tent on the Plain City square. Mary Ann was raised by George and Victorine Musgrave, who called her Lillie, and Jeanette by Lewis and Catherine Garner. The 1870 census lists all five with William and Eliza in Ogden, but it cannot be taken literally. It even includes Alice, who had died the previous September, and the others were also counted with the families they lived with; Jeanette appears with the Garners as “Janet.”

Children

William Thomas Stoker, known as Thomas, was born 16 June 1850 at Alperton, Middlesex. On 22 August 1870 he married Fanny Amelia Tucker in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, and they settled in Plain City, where they raised nine children. After Fanny died in 1892 he married Ellen Hemmings, and after her death, Catherine Oliver. He died at Plain City on 21 October 1908 and is buried in the Plain City Cemetery.

Alice Stoker was born 21 September 1851 at Brewood and was baptized with her father on 27 May 1863. She is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery, whose records give her death as 11 September 1869, ten days before her eighteenth birthday. In 1887 James England, born the same year as Alice, was sealed to her in the Logan Temple. I am not clear if they were engaged and then she passed away before marriage, or what occurred. But James and Alice were sealed while he was still alive.

Janetta (Jeanette) Stoker was born 3 February 1856 at Kinver, Staffordshire. On 22 December 1875 she married Charles David Rogers at Sandy, Salt Lake County, where they spent the rest of their lives. They had nine children, four of them sons who died young. She died at Sandy on 5 December 1941. Her obituary gives 2 February 1855 in Devonshire, but the birth certificate states Kinver.

Alfred William Stoker, known as Jim, was born 22 September 1859 at Church End, Hendon. By 1880 he was living with his father in Ogden, and on 30 July 1881 he married Elizabeth Branson. They raised twelve children. By 1900 the family had moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where he worked as an upholsterer for the Oregon Short Line. He died at Pocatello on 3 November 1927 and is buried in Mountain View Cemetery.

Mary Ann (Lillie) Stoker was born 24 February 1861 at Reading. She was raised by George and Victorine Musgrave of Plain City and on 11 May 1879 married Milo Riley Sharp. She died at Plain City on 6 May 1935 and is buried there.

George Stoker was born at Reading on 28 October 1862 and died there early in 1863, only weeks before his mother.

The Second Family

Eliza Sinfield was born 26 January 1842 at Eversholt, Bedfordshire, to Samuel Sinfield, a bricklayer’s laborer, and Phebe Cross, who had joined the Church. Phebe died on 20 August 1852, a week before the family was to leave for Zion. Samuel still made the trip with his two daughters. They sailed to New Orleans and up the Mississippi. Samuel drove a Church team across the plains in 1853 while the girls walked most of the way. In Ogden they lived at first in a dugout cut into the hillside, and there a long fever left Eliza lame. She was 22 when she married William in 1864. As a widow she lived for a time with her daughter Agnes at Mullan, Idaho. She died at Agnes’s home in Salt Lake City on 3 April 1912, of heart disease, and was taken home to Ogden for burial.

Emma Stoker was born at Ogden on 24 March 1865 and died there on 16 October 1878, aged thirteen. She is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery.

Agnes Stoker was born at Ogden on 1 October 1866. She married George Shields, and by 1889 they were in the mining country of northern Idaho. In 1900 they were at Mullan with their children, her widowed mother and her brother Albert. George died in 1906, and Agnes settled in Salt Lake City, where her mother died in her home in 1912. Agnes died in Salt Lake City on 6 September 1921 and is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery.

Henrietta (Etta) Stoker was born at Ogden on 10 October 1868. At sixteen she married Simon Heber Weston, and she lived in Ogden the rest of her life. They had nine children, six of whom she outlived. Simon died in 1939, and Etta died at Ogden on 10 June 1942.

Eli Benjamin Stoker was born at Ogden in July 1870; his death certificate gives 1872. He married Sarah Jane (Jennie) Thomas in Salt Lake City on 22 November 1899, and they settled in the mining town of Mullan, Idaho, where he lived for most of the next fifty years. They had six children. He died at Silverton, Idaho, on 16 May 1952 and is buried at Mullan.

Albert Edward Stoker was born at Ogden on 12 May 1873. In 1900, still single at 27, he was living with his sister Agnes and their mother at Mullan, Idaho. On 17 February 1908 he married Annie (Larson) Shulsen in Salt Lake City and became stepfather to her son, William. He later settled at Midvale, where he died on 8 February 1949, and he is buried in the Midvale City Cemetery.

Victoria Stoker was born at Ogden on 28 May 1875. She died there at a quarter past six on the evening of 20 November 1888, aged thirteen, and her funeral was held two days later at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Ogden’s Episcopal church. She is buried in the Ogden City Cemetery. In July 1891 William and Eliza had Victoria and her sister Emma baptized by proxy in the Logan Temple, and that October Emma’s endowment was done there on the thirteenth anniversary of her death.

William’s Death

William died in April 1899 at a son’s home in Plain City. The Ogden Standard gave the date as the 11th; his headstone gives the 12th. His funeral was held at the Plain City meeting house on Thursday, 13 April, and he is buried in the Plain City Cemetery. The paper remembered him as a pioneer of Weber County for thirty-six years and the first man to go into the harness business in Ogden. It listed four sons and four daughters as survivors, which matches the eight children known to have outlived him.

This is the only other picture we have of William Edward Stoker, as a much older man. You can see the tuft of hair in the middle that has not changed, and the same man greatly aged. Look closely and you can see some of the resemblance in his sons.

Emma was sealed to William by proxy on 18 May 1867, the same day he was endowed and sealed to his second wife. That seems to indicate he and others had her baptism and confirmation information, as well as someone performing her endowment. Those records, if existing do not currently show. She was baptized by proxy on 7 August 1956. Her endowment was done by proxy on 20 December 1956 in Idaho Falls Idaho Temple.