I've just come across this old Hunt (nearly 3 years ago!) and thought I'd update, as the responses here really helped me learn more about this branch of my family.
Going back to Dublin, Reuben Kilner turns out to have been the church warden at a protestant church in Dublin; he also ran a small school there. Joseph Kilner, who I've had to presume to be his son, signed his name very neatly on both his marraige entries, which I always found unusual for a FWK, but if his father was a teacher, that would explain his literacy!
The JK who married in Enderby in 1816 and the JK who married in Basford in 1832 turned out to have almost identical signatures too.
I never found out what happened to wife no. 2 (Hannah Woodhouse, Basford) but suspect that she was still around when Joseph ended up with Mary, which is why I've found no marraige for J and M.
There was a sizeable FWK trade in Dublin; J was a FWK; so I guess he had a trade that allowed him to move to the midland counties of England and make a living. His death certificate stated that he "used to work in the navy"! I've no evidence of that but someone suggested that perhaps he joined the navy during the Napoleonic wars, and went back to his original trade of FWK after the end of the wars. That's just conjecture, of course. I wonder if he had dementia when he was in the workhouse and could only, by then, remember his early years clearly and talked about the navy -- conjecture again.
Best of all, though, is that someone got in touch a few months ago re "T Kilner and sons" in Leicester in the 1940s to say that their grandfather was the "son"! So now, thanks to this other person, I have a photo of my gt-granddad and a lot more detail of his life - I couldn't have wished for more!
So many thanks to you all!
