Name
Jesse Stapleton
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Pirton School Memorial
Biography
Jesse appears on the School War Memorial, confirming that he attended the school. Parish records suggest only one man of this name who could have served, and he was born on August 6th 1892 to Herbert Charles (recorded as Charles in some census records) and Ellen Stapleton (née Parkins). He would have been twenty-one at the outbreak of war. Baptism and census records list seven children: Frank (Stapleton - born 1988, before their marriage), Hubert John (possibly Herbert and later listed as John, b 1890), Jesse (b 1892) and Ethel Lizzie (b 1897), Richard (b c1902), Edward (b c1909) and Kathleen (b 1910).
In 1911, Jesse was eighteen, still living in the family home and earning a living as a domestic groom.
Jesse is recorded in the Parish Magazine of September 1915 as enlisting sometime during 1914, but after July, and serving in the Lincolnshire Yeomanry. The Hertfordshire Express of November 20th 1914 reports him as serving as an officer’s servant. Then an undated cutting from the village scrapbook, which must have been before September 1916, reports a J Stapleton writing from Oakley Park, Eye, Suffolk, headquarters, D Squadron (probably Hertfordshire Regiment). He says that his Regiment is going abroad any time now to join the Leicestershire Regiment, who are in action now, and ‘our men are filling in the gaps.’
Acknowledgments
Text from the book ‘The Pride of Pirton’ by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used with author's permission
