Hi All,
Sorry, I am late to the party on this discussion, but first of all thank you to everyone for all of the useful information.
Phoebe Sainsbury who is mentioned in one of the posts was my 3rd great grandmother. She had nothing to do with clocks but married a soldier called John Harman. A soldier of that name was injured at the battle of Waterloo. John returned to Wiltshire about 1815 but the entire family ended up as paupers on the parish and were treated very badly. They eventually became pawns in a long-running legal battle between two parishes about which should support them.
Back to the clocks. I have found a record that Richard Meese Sainsbury was apprenticed to James Moore clockmaker of Warminster in 1804 and was still in that position in 1807. Unusually, the record does not say how long the contract was for.
I believe that his father Richard Sainsbury remained in Wilton and is the Richard shown on the 1841 census as a weaver. However other Richard Sainsburys are available. He appears to be living with Elizabeth the daughter of his first marriage.
I had just investigated my main ancestral line until a DNA match came up with someone descended from Richard Percy Sainsbury, so I have started looking at the wider family.
Everyone has spent time hunting for Richard Mathias Sainsbury, but the only evidence for his existence is the entry on the marriage certificate of his son Richard Percy (Piercy) Sainsbury. Applying Occam's razor, I surmise that it should in fact be Richard Meese Sainsbury. It is even possible that his son did not know what his father's middle name actually was.
Given the family tradition of using mother's or grandmother's names as middle names we are possibly looking for a marriage between Richard Meese Sainsbury and someone called Pierce in the Warminster / Bridgwater area about 1809. There are some Pierce families nearby. Richard would have been 21, finishing his apprenticeship and ready to start up in business or go into partnership with one of the Sainsbury or Moore clockmaking mafia. Just right for marriage and starting a family. I wonder if they had other children as well?
Back to the Wilton family. Richard Meese Sainsbury's grandfather was Valentine Sainsbury, one of a long line of farmers of the same name.
I have some documentation for all of this, but at the time I wasn't storing it online so it might take a bit of finding.