Abijah Hill Pears
 

My MMMF - details here in preparation for adding his parents and his wife's parents in other threads

Name - Abijah Hill Pears, a ribbon manufacturer in Coventry, and mayor of that city in 1842.

Date and place of birth; 1 Mar 1799 (according to his gravestone), probably in or near Coventry.

Names of parents; Son of ? (possibly either Thomas or William) Pears and (probably) Mary Hill, da. of Joseph Hill of Attleborough, Nuneaton, Warwickshire (although one family archive suggests is that her father was a quaker from Lutterworth, Leicstershire).
A son of Joseph Hill named George was buried at Holy Trinity, Attleborough in 1857.
The 1841 census has a record for Mary Pears, living at Allesley, Warwickshire, aged about 60 (see below)

Date and place of baptism: unknown

Details of each of his marriages - married 20 May 1834 to Elizabeth Bray, sister of Charles Bray, also a ribbon manufacturer and social reformer - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bray

Occupation(s) - ribbon manufacturer, later a J.P.

Addresses where they lived -
1841: Weymouth, Dorset
1851 - 1891: Allesley, Warwickshire (? 1861 missing)

Date, place and cause of death: Allesley (1895,aged 96) https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/...jah-hill-pears

Details of will / administration of their estate; beneficiaries were William Thompson Pears, (probably a grandson) and Edward Holme Woodcock (son-in-law)
Memorial inscription - see above

In Allesley, Abijah and his wife Elizabeth were neighbours of Mary Anne Evans, (later to be known as George Eliot) who was also a close friend of Charles Bray.

This web page has information about his business: https://www.franklins.co.uk/pages/franklins_history/