In 1859 Elizabeth Brown applied to have the licence of the Blue Bull transferred into her own name.
Her husband John had died in March of that year, and had been the ostler at the inn. Elizabeth was left with a young family of four boys, John, William, Joseph and James Robert, and two girls, Mary Ann and Lucy Jane, and she needed to support them.
John, who had been born in Stonesby, Leicestershire, had lost his own father, also called John, who died when he was just a few months old.
The former Blue Bull in 1859.
Elizabeth died seven years later in 1868, her youngest child James being only 10 years old at that time.
Her son John, then 26 took over the licence of the inn and by the time of the 1871 census was living there with his wife Ann and farmed 40 acres of land.
They lived there with a servant and a nurse.
The former Blue Bull in Grantham today.
Ann must have been pregnant, because in the census ten years later, they were recorded as having a nine-year-old daughter.
In 1871 William, then aged 22, was a butcher in Southwell and lived with his brother William. Joseph, then aged 20, was a servant at the Coach and Horses inn at Newark.