A historian who studied at the University of Oxford has identified the property where the first ‘Bicester Osmond’ came seeking a bride.

According to Julie Ann Godson, it is a relatively well-known fact that 1970s pop group the Osmonds descend from Bicester.

Ms Godson has discovered that a Georgian building wedged between the Banbury and Buckingham Roads in Bicester, is in fact the house of the four-times great grandmother of the Utah singing group.

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She said: “The property was once the home of the Allen family. Thomas Allen was a maltster, a maker of the malt essential for use in brewing or distilling.

“His second daughter Mary Allen left the family home in June 1742 to marry George Osmond, a man sometimes described as the ‘first’ Osmond in Bicester.”

Ms Godson went on to describe how Mary and George’s grandson, attorney George Osmond III, appears to have had a liaison while living in London with a married woman named Nancy Flight, of Woolwich.

She added: “The result of the meeting was a son, George IV. It seems unlikely that George IV ever visited Bicester because in 1854, aged only 18, he left behind any problems that his illegitimacy might have caused in England and sailed on the "Clara Wheeler" to New Orleans, and then moved on to St Louis, where he worked as a civil engineer.

“In 1855, he married Over Norton farmer's daughter Mary Georgina Huckvale, and six years later his father George III died unmarried and living with just his housekeeper in Sheep Street, Bicester.

“This appears to have marked the severing of George IV's last link with the Oxfordshire Osmonds.

“George IV and Mary ultimately settled with their nine children in Bloomington, Idaho, where Osmond served as a judge and justice of the peace, as well as two terms as a member of the Wyoming State Senate.

“It was a highly respectable outcome for an illegitimate lad from the dockyards of Woolwich, and it would be nice to think that Nancy Ann Canham was aware of her son's success.

“In all, she had around eight children, although which was fathered by her husband and which by George Osmond III is unclear.

“She spent her last years living in genteel Albion Hill in Brighton, supported by rents that came, presumably, from some of the Osmond properties mentioned in family wills over the generations.

“George and Mary's grandson George Virl Osmond (George V) was the patriarch of the family of millionaire Osmond Brothers of pop music fame. It was all a long way from the respectable anonymity of the top o' the town in Bicester.”

 

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This story was written by Matthew Norman, he joined the team in 2022 as a Facebook community reporter.

Matthew covers Bicester and focuses on finding stories from diverse communities.

Get in touch with him by emailing: Matthew.norman@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @OxMailMattN1