John Ginn of Cape Town, South Africa d. 1819

John Ginn here was a direct  descendant of William Ginn in my post of  4th September.  More details of the intervening years will be disclosed in due course.

John was to be one of a number of the Ginn family of Hertfordshire that saw service during the Napoleonic Wars.  In April 1797,  John joined the 23rd Light Dragoons, a light cavalry regiment which was largely Irish.  I do not know where he enlisted, merely that he did.  The regiment did not see any active service that I can see and was disbanded in 1802, partly because of the Peace of Amiens and partly because of the fact that the Irish dragoons were considered unruly, the 26th Light Dragoons being renumbered the 23rd.

For three years John drifted, then in August 1805 he was at Stratford in East London where he re-enlisted into the 83rd Foot , yet another Irish regiment !  They obviously suited him.  The muster for the 2^nd Btn of  the  83^rd shows that he was recruited by a recruting party who went out from Chichester to Tilbury Fort.  He was 5ft 7, hazel eyed, with a dark complexion and brown hair.  By trade he had been a Labourer.

                         British Dragoons in Napoleonic Wars

In August 1806, he was transferred to the 1^st Btn of the 83^rd Foot and sent out to Cape Colony, South Africa as it is now.  The British had taken Cape Colony by force in a military expedition of December 1805/January 1806 as shown below, which had involved the 1^st Btn 83^rd Regiment who had stayed on as a garrison to secure the Colony against the French.

The man led a charmed life as had he stayed on with either the 23^rd Light Dragoons (cut to pieces in fierce fighting in the Peninsular War and sent home, and once reinforced later involved at Waterloo) or the 2^nd Btn 83^rd Foot (subsequently heavily involved in the Peninsular War) he would likely not have survived the Napoleonic Wars unscathed.  As it was, he spent the period 1806-1818 on garrison duty in various places in the Cape of Good Hope and does not seem to have been involved in the Xhosa Wars, was discharged to pension in 1818 and decided to stay on in the Colony.

A number of Ginn family members went to South Africa at various times (some are still there), the next (excluding likely soldiers) being a John Ginn from Hertford who went out in the 1850s, but John here was the very first Ginn in the Colony.

Various people helped me try to trace him once he left the army, and special thanks to Charles Fison who indexed the relevant register and emailed me the entry, for John died in Cape Town in 1819 and is likely buried at the Anglican chapel in the Castle of Good Hope there (shown below), there being no Anglican church at the Cape until some years later.  He was 40.  Ironically, I visited the castle some years ago being ignorant of the connection at that time. 

There is no indication John ever married but I cannot entirely rule it out, his having had a fairly settled garrison life. I was glad to have traced him.