A number of families lived, worked and died within the Beeston area of which my ancestors were one of many. The churchyard of St John the Baptist Church - Beeston's Parish Church - has been the final resting place of local inhabitants since very early times. Burials there are recorded in the Parish Registers since these records began in 1558 up until 1888 when the churchyard was closed for almost all burials after the opening of the present cemetery in 1886.
This site contains the details of my families births, marriages and deaths in written form and pictorical, my Great, Great, Great uncle Thomas Sheldon was born in 1794 in Beeston Nottingham, Thomas Sheldon on his burial record had ‘Waterloo man’ which made me dig deeper. What I discovered at the National Archives, Kew were his discharge papers dated 1840 which stated he joined the Royal Horse Artillery in 1811 aged 16 years old and was at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and stayed in France for 3 years 6 months which would mean for the whole duration of the war, he also served in Ireland (probably where he met his second wife Elizabeth, his first wife Margaret died in 1839) as well as in England. He was later discharged from the army in 1840 with an exemplary record. He was showing in the 1841 census being at the Royal Hospital at Woolwich with his wife who was Irish and 3 children working as a Coachman to the Director General of the Hospital. In the 1851 Census he was a coachman to the then retired Director general of the Hospital, Capt Webb. He was later listed as a Chelsea Pensioner in later Census records and moved back to Arnold in Nottingham and is buried at St Marys Church, Arnold after living to a grand age of 80 years.
Click here to see the Sheldon family tree