John and Eliza nee Spencer	see Family Tree	(generation 20 J&ES John = Eliza)
(Revised 30 Nov 2010: details of military and workhouse service added)

John was born in 1827 in Devonport, Plymouth, Devon, the eldest son of John and Esther Whitehouse and the grandson of William and Martha Uglow.

Although he had been trained for clerical work, John wanted to be in the Services. In 1842 he enlisted in the Royal Marines at Portsmouth, possibly overstating his age in the process. He served with them for a little over one year and then with the Grenadier Guards for 18 months. In 1846 he returned to Burton on Trent where his parents lived and whilst there he signed up to join the 1st Dragoon Guards. Unfortunately he was thrown from a horse when serving on despatch duty in Ireland whilst the potato famine was raging. Two years later, the complications brought about by this accident were to bring his military career to an end when he was discharged unfit for service in 1849. The 1851 census return shows John aged 23, back home again in Burton on Trent and looking for work. Shortly after, he left home to become master of the workhouse at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which is about 8 miles South-East of Burton-on-Trent. In 1856, whilst there, he married Eliza Spencer. Eliza appears to have been born in Ashby de la Zouch about 20 years earlier, the youngest child of John and Catherine Spencer.

After getting married, John returned to Burton-on-Trent to become a Brewery Traveller or Agent and bring up a family. John and Eliza had five children. The first two children did not survive but were soon followed by two daughters and a son who grew up with their parents.

Sometime after 1871 and before 1876 the family moved from Burton-on-Trent to Ashby de la Zouch possibly so that Eliza could be closer to her family. Eliza died in Ashby de la Zouch in 1876 aged only 41. After her death, the two daughters stayed at home with their father helping with the housework until he also died young in 1882 aged only 55.

Details of John and Eliza's children are :-

• their first child, a son, was born in 1856 in Burton-on-Trent and died before christening
  
  
• their second child, another son, was born in 1857 in Burton-on-Trent and died before christening
  
  
• daughter Alice Eliza was born in 1860 in Burton-on-Trent. After her father's death she became governess to the family of Edward Freeland, a brewer living at Fazeley. In 1890, when she was 30, she married Edward Freeland's son, Edward Fricker Freeland in Tamworth. They had two sons. Like her mother before her, Alice died young, aged 48, in 1909. Her husband, Edward married three further times and died in 1959 in Solihull aged 89.
  
  
• daughter Mary was born in 1862 in Burton-on-Trent. In 1892 she married John Daniel Whitehouse in Hackney London. Her husband was the son of John Bullivant Whitehouse and Jane Reeve and was a farmer of Erdington, near Birmingham. John and Mary appear to have had two children - a son and a daughter. It is known that Mary died young, but the date and place of her death have yet to be established. Her husband died in Erdington in 1910.
  
  
• son John Spencer was born in 1866 in Burton-on-Trent. By the age of 16 he had lost both his parents and it appears he then stayed with his uncle Joseph Spencer, a farmer at Ashby. By the age of 19 he was employed as a railway clerk. Nothing more is known about him before his death in Ashby in 1901, aged 35. It appears that he did not marry or have children.