Introduction

Gracie Joan Ponting (my paternal grandmother) was born on 27 July 1906 at 25 Montrose Avenue, Willesden, the eldest daughter of Dudley James Ponting and Grace Florence Pyne (Chapter 13). Dudley was the son of William Ponting who was one of three brothers who founded the Ponting Brothers Department Store in Kensington High Street, London in the 1870's (Chapter 5)

When I first started research into the Ponting branch of the family I was helped by my cousin Colin Ponting who pointed that me in the direction of "Shops & Shopping 1800-1914" by Alison Adburgham. This connected the four Ponting brothers, Thomas Hewitt Ponting, John Jones Ponting, William Ponting and Sydney Ponting and put me on route to discover much of what follows. 

I also received a lot of information from Sarah Manson, a member of Gloucestershire Family History Society. This initially confirmed that the Henry Ponting who married Jane Jones was the son of Henry Ponting and Hester Wetmore and provided the details of earlier generations. Many gaps in my knowledge have been filled by other members of Ancestry.co.uk which has been a great source of information both because of the access it provides to records and to others with similar research interests.

In addition to tracing my main Ponting line back as far as I can, I have also researched the descendants of a number of my great x 4 uncles and aunts forward to as close to the present day as possible. This information is in the various appendices in Volume II.

This area of research started when I found invoices from William Harris Ponting and Edward Ponting in Sydney and Emily Ponting's personal papers (Chapter 11), some of which are held at Gloucestershire County Record Office and I set about finding whether they were related to the main branch of my family. However this has expanded somewhat!! I have found this fascinating not only because of the number of inter-family marriages, but also because of some of the stories that have emerged. In particular,

  • Ellen Ponting Shipp nee Daniell, great granddaughter of William Ponting and Fanny Jones and the letter written to her brother from Canada (Appendix C).
  • George Ponting, son of William Ponting and Fanny Jones, his son Charles Harrington Ponting and his grandsons, because of the connection to Northampton (close to where I live) and the information available about their butchers shop (Appendix C),
  • John Jones and Caroline Ponting, daughter of William Ponting and Fanny Jones, not only because this was another Ponting/Jones marriage, but also because all their surviving children moved to America and made their lives there - so whilst my immediate ancestors were moving to London, their 2nd cousins, John and Caroline's children were making a much bigger move (Appendix C), and seemingly leaving their widowed mother alone in Gloucestershire!
  • Thomas Harris Ponting and Edward Ponting, children of George Ponting and Marianne Harris, who worked for Sydney and Emily Ponting (Appendix H)
  • Arthur Ponting and his connection to Ponting Brothers Ltd and the London drapery business in general (Appendix J).

Finally Volume II covers the ancestry of some of the woman who married into the Ponting family and were my great (to x 4) grandmothers - the Wetmores (Appendix I), the Jones (Appendix K) and the Hewetts (Appendix L), families in Gloucestershire whose lives were linked in a number of ways - and the Snells (Appendix M) and the Pynes (Appendix N) - who married into the Ponting family after they had moved to London. 

Click here to go to "Chapter 1 - The Early Years"