On the 21st of March 1724 in the parish of Denham in Buckinghamshire Richard and Elizabeth Alderman baptised their son John. Some years later, still in Denham, that John and his wife Mary baptised their own son on the 15th of October 1752. They decided to name their son John too. People were not very imaginative in those days.
Within a couple of decades young John had travelled all the way from Denham to Chalfont St. Peter. Although it is no more than five miles people walked a lot slower in those days.
On the 31st of October in 1775 John Alderman married Ann Baxter in Chalfont St. Peter and this is where the story begins. It is not a unique story nor in anyway special. It is occasionally a story of hardship, of illegitimate births and frequent deaths of babies and children; none of which should be considered exceptional. For the next two and a bit centuries there were Aldermans in Chalfont St. Peter. Someone once observed that we die twice: once when our life ends and again when we are forgotten. Let us remember some of them for a little longer.
John and Ann had several children die within their first year of life: John (1777), Ann (1782), Mary (1788 - 1789), Daniel (1793). At the time when around half the children born would not survive in to adulthood such loses would have seemed normal. It is only in recent times that such deaths have significantly declined.
John and Ann had several children that survived their infancy; the first of which was: