Grid Reference: M 8b
Reverend William Stephens, first Vicar of St Thomas’ Church
On 4th February 1849, the Reverend William Stephens became the first Vicar of St Thomas’s, an incumbency he was to hold for the next thirty-one and a half years.
He was born in Stoke Damerel in Devon in 1807 and on 12th September 1855 he married his first wife Jemima Perry at Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire. They do not appear to have had any children and Jemima passed away on 12th September 1855 from a fibrous tumour, just six years after her husband became St Thomas’s Vicar.
In August 1861 Reverend Stephens married again. William and Sarah had one child—a girl named Etheldred St Barbe Stephens, born in 1863.
Reverend Stephens took an active part in parish life including the creation of Wednesfield’s second school in 1856 in Graiseley Lane and in 1866 he was instrumental in starting adult evening education classes.
After nearly 32 years as Vicar of St Thomas’, Reverend Stephens died on 7th October 1880 and was buried in a vault in the Mortuary Chapel along with his first wife Jemima. Sarah would join them later when she passed away in 1900. The commemorative stone plaque from the chapel is now located along the pathway inside the Church grounds, but doesn’t give his wives’ details.
Wednesfield Burial Ground Project 