The Wheatley Family
Joseph Wheatley was born in Ripley, Derbyshire in 1797. By 1831, he was the landlord of the Ship Inn, located on the banks of the Foss Canal in Saxilby.
Married to Mary Ann (born in Lincoln), they had five children; the eldest, John, was born in Skellingthorpe in 1827. The other children, three girls and a boy, were all born at the Ship.
John followed his father in the business, and was landlord from 1865 until 1896.
This was not always a happy household, as revealed in a newspaper article dated 10 December 1877. The local doctor said that the woman (Mary Ann) was ‘constantly more or less under the influence of drink’. At one time, Joseph and his brother ‘pounced upon her, seized her, and dragged her upstairs, where she was chained to the wall in her bedroom and kept there all night and the next day until 4 o’clock’.
Pictured is Charlotte Wheatley, born in Dunholme in 1841. She married Joseph’s younger son, Thomas, who became one of the local bakers, with a shop a few doors along from the Ship.
By 1901, Charlotte is listed as a widow, and is running the shop with the help of her son John and daughter Charlotte. She is registered blind.
John married Louisa Broughton in 1903. She was the daughter of the new Ship landlord, George, who had taken over the premises from John’s uncle.
The Valley Family
Members of the Valley Family still live in the village.
John Valley (pictured left) was born in 1847, the son of Jacomin Valle, an Italian immigrant born in Genoa and Sarah Bellamy from Morton in Lincolnshire. John was the eldest of twelve children.
John married a local girl, Mary Ann Turner, in 1872. They had 10 children, all born at 28 Lincoln Road (pictured below).
One of their children, John William, was a well known character around the village. He swept the streets, and mended footpaths and roads. What he lacked in stature was made up by a large heart. He was a local preacher, and spent many hours visiting the sick and housebound. He is pictured below in the centre of the photograph
