I presume your conclusion that John, George, Thomas, William and Anne are the children of John and Mary of Damerham is the result of exhaustive parish record research.
Yes, together with the early censuses in some cases. Let me look at them each in turn. We know
John lived in Cranborne which is no distance from Damerham, and was born in about 1786 outside of Hampshire, which at that time Damerham was. The only family we know to have been having children in the area around the Hants / Wilts / Dorset border in the mid 1780s was John and Mary of Damerham. (We can't absolutely rule out John and Susanna, even though I think Susanna died in 1784, as John's age might not be entirely accurate; but if I'm right that John and Susanna are the father and stepmother of John of Damerham, it's unlikely they would have named a second son John.)
You don't mention
James, but he helps complete the picture. We have his baptism, as it's before the dodgy period in the register, and it matches a burial in Cranborne. Knowing that one of John and Mary of Damerham's sons moved to Cranborne increases the likelihood that another one did: perhaps John followed his brother James there for work. But actually Cranborne and Damerham are close enough that we don't really need to explain the move: it's less than four miles between village centres, and considerably less between the closest points of the parishes.
The
George and
William in Fawley seem to appear from nowhere in the early 1810s. The 1851 census tells us George was born 1788-89 in Damerham, but there's no plausible baptism for him there (or anywhere else). We don't know for sure that William was from Damerham, but the only plausible baptism in the area is in Damerham, the son of John and Mary. As they appear at about the same time, and there are no other Whitfields in the Fawley area, it's reasonable to suppose they came together (possibly not at exactly the same time) from the place.
Thomas was living in Damerham on the 1841 census, so it's reasonable to believe he'd stayed in the area. His burial in 1845 puts his birth in 1793-94.
Anne was baptised in Damerham in 1797. Almost certainly she married James Sheppard in 1820 in Damerham, and are on the 1841 census there. She was buried there in 1854. Finally, there's
Betty (normally short for Elizabeth), the oldest child, baptised 1775. Possibly she's the Elizabeth who married Joseph Frampton in Damerham in 1796, but there was a second Eliizabeth, daughter of John and Susanna, born in 1772, and it might be that Elizabeth who married Joseph Frampton.
When you put the list together, it makes a very plausible sequence of children: Betty (1775), James (1778), William (1780), John (c1786), George (c1788), Thomas (c1794) and Anne (1797). Attributing John, George and Thomas to John and Mary explains the long gap between William and Anne, which would otherwise be problematic, and there's a good explanation as to why we don't have the baptisms: we know there are problems with the Damerham register between 1783 and 1796, which is exactly when the missing children were baptised.
Imagine a line from Poole to Blandford to Shaftesbury to Salisbury to Southampton, and then follow the south coast back to Poole. This encloses an area of about a thousand square miles centred on the New Forest. I've tried to find every Whitfield in this area in late 18th and early 19th century, and I think I've done a reasonably thorough job, though there are still a few parishes in the south of Wiltshire where I'm waiting for the WFHS to complete indexing, and I'm suspicious of the quality of the current indexes available for Dorset. The only Whitfields I've found in this area who were born 1775-1800 were those seven people, plus the Roger I mentioned in my earlier post, and maybe a Matthew fat the far west of the area the very start of the period. That strongly suggests a single family (maybe excluding Matthew).
Are you of the opinion that this John Whitfield is likely to be a child of the older John/Mary of Alvediston?
Almost certainly. I've not found a marriage for the second John, but it must have been in or a little before 1775. There's a burial in Damerham in 1813 for a John, aged 58, which matches the 1754 baptism perfectly. We could question whether this burial is definitely for John, the husband of Mary, rather that John, the husband of Susanna. But we have another burial there two years later for Mary, so it seems reasonable to suppose they are a pair; plus John and Susanna were last seen in Moor Critchel and Wimborne Minster. The John and Mary of Alvediston who married in Fifield Bavant in 1752 perfectly fits the start of the list of children in Damerham. So, yes, I think John and Mary of Alvediston moved to Damerham and had children: Mary (1753), John (1754), William (1758), William (1759), Thomas (1762), Jenny (1767) and Grace (1769). We know Mary died in 1769, and I think John then married Susanna and had two more children: Elizabeth (1772) and Roger (1775). Susanna was probably buried at Wimborne Minster in 1784; my best guess is that John was buried in Laverstoke in 1804, but I'm less confident of that.
