The text on the left forms the introduction to a booklet published to mark he fiftieth anniversary of the creation of J.P.Beer's Estates Ltd. It is difficult to find anything accurate in it which is surprising, as the directors of the company included his one surviving child and four grandchildren.
To begin at the beginning - Joseph Preston Beer was not born in
1857, but in 1858 "as records show".
Secondly, JP's wife was
not Florence Emma Sewell. She was Florence Lydia Sewell and is
entitled to have her name recorded correctly in any public document.
So who are these "well established Southampton families?" J.P. Beer's father was born in Exeter to parents who had migrated from the South Hams of Devon and from Cornwall. Like JP himself, his wife was born in Southampton but her father was a tailor from Salisbury and her mother came from Hagbourne in Berkshire. JP's mother was the daughter of James Preston, described as a "professor of mathematics" born in Swingfield, Kent.
