occupation

Printer and potter

dates

Born: 16 Apr 1803, Holywell Street,
Oxford; baptised 1 Jun 1803, St Cross, Holywell, Oxford

Married: May 1807 to Mary Pratt, at St Peter’s Church, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Died: 19 Jan 1875, Astbury, Alsager, Cheshire; buried Jan 1875 at St Peter’s Church, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

residence

Various: Holywell, Oxford; Fenton, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire; Astbury, Alsager, Cheshire

submitted by

Joan HOWARD-DRAKE, née CROOK
(great-great-granddaughter)

related face

John ARNETT the elder (father)

Background information

John was apprenticed as a compositor at the Oxford University Press but did not stay there. He left Oxford under a cloud having joined a somewhat eccentric new church under a Rev Thomas Mulock, who believed in free love amongst other things. They were attacked by a large crowd in Oxford and left for Staffordshire where Mulock set up a church in Fenton, part of Stoke on Trent.

John must have become rather more conventional by the time he joined the firm of Felix PRATT, the pottery manufacturer and maker of the famous potlids. He married Felix’s daughter Mary and they had three children. His daughter Martha Emily came to Oxford to live after the death of her husband. John did not lose contact with Oxford and his family and on one occasion was able to help the University Press find a producer of fine India paper for them in the Stoke area. He and his brother Joseph, another printer, were executors of John senior’s will.