William Edgington (1827-1913) was born in Badsey on 6th June 1827, the second of eight children of John Edgington, an agricultural labourer, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Hicks). He was baptised at Badsey on 23rd September 1827. The family lived at Sharps Row (a terrace of cottages demolished in the 1930s) where they were living at the time of the 1841 census. William’s father died in 1843 and his mother remarried in 1850. Several of their neighbours at Sharps Row were also to emigrate to America in the 1870s: John Hicks and his daughter, Mary Anne Sears, William and Elizabeth Knight, John Knight, Edwin Knight and John Wheatley.
On 16th January 1851, William married Eliza Cook at St James’ Church, Badsey. They were living at Sharps Row, Badsey, in 1851, where their eldest son, John was born in 1852. They then moved to the neighbouring village of Offenham where a further seven children were born: Felicia (1854-1908), Charles (1856), William (1858-1938), Amelia Ann (1861-1925), Frederick R (1863-1941), Ethelbert E (1866-1922) and Mary Ann (1869-1903). They lived just three doors away from Eliza’s parents, John and Hannah Cook. William was still a labourer in 1861 but had become a gardener by 1871.
In 1874, William and Eliza’s eldest daughter, Felicia, emigrated to America and married David Sears, from a Wickhamford family who had emigrated the year before. William and Eliza decided to follow in her footsteps and emigrated with their five youngest children the following year. At the time of the 1880 census, they were living in Auburn Township, Geauga County, Ohio, where William had taken up farming. He remained in Auburn until after the death of his wife in 1900. He then went to live with his son, Fred, and family, in Burton Township, Geauga County.
William died at Andover, Ohio, on 4th January 1913 and was buried in Shadyside Cemetery, Auburn.