Thomas Ginn of Brooklyn, New York d. 1901

Tom here, brother of Joe in the last post also emigrated to the USA.  Comparatively few people in this Study emigrated to the USA after America ceased to be a British colony and I discuss this further below *

He was an adventurous sort as in 1865 aged 12 he ran away from home with his brother Frederick and was many miles away in London and put in the Workhouse in Westminster before being returned home to Hertford (see workhouse records on Ancestry). 

In 1871 Tom was in Bexleyheath in London as a Baker.  Joe and his family emigrated to Canada and then found their way into New York in about 1873. and Tom clearly went with them.  It was a bold move for a twenty year old but his mother was dead and he may well have welcomed the adventure.

Tom continued to work as a Baker in New York and settled in Brooklyn, where he married Ann Brown, an Englishwoman who had also emigrated, in 1877.

Tom and Ann had two children but sadly Ann died in 1886, she was 41.  A descendant, Sylvia Howes Mastroyannakis has kindly sent me a photo of Tom and his first grandchild Clifford Graham (b1898) which is below and which I think is a wonderful photo

  

Sadly Thomas Ginn developed tuberculosis and died not long after this photograph was taken, he was 48 and he and Ann are buried in Green-wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Thomas and Ann had two daughters, so the Ginn line ended with them:

Florence - she married William Louis Penfield in 1906 in Brooklyn.  William had a  prior family and no children are known  - she died in 1933, William in 1922.

Bertha - she married Herbert Graham in Brooklyn in 1898.  They had three children and there are quite a number of descendants.  Bertha died in Berkeley, Alameda, California in 1935.  Herbert died in 1947

*****

* It is surprising perhaps, but relatively few people from this Study emigrated to the USA once it had ceased to be a British colony.  By far the vast majority emigrated to the continuing colonies and dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in a couple of cases, South Africa.  At various times in the 19th century, there were Ginns from this Study in every continent and sub-continent.

The position before 1776 is unclear, but I have researched all Ginn records for 25 years now and I think that I can express a view.  

The name Ginn is comparatively rare in Scotland, though more common in the northern counties of Ireland, essentially Ulster.  Most people with the name come from England however (they form the great majority of Ginn men in the army of the Napoleonic Wars for example, where a third of that army were Irish and not a few Scots).  My view then is that the vast majority of early Ginn men in America were of English origin, most likely from London (in Stepney there were a great number of Ginn mariners) and from the West Country (there was a large number of Gynn and Ginn in Cornwall) which had a maritime connection with America from the 1600s.  I further think that, before 1850, the great majority of Ginns in America were descendants of very early settlers, in short that there was little emigration in the 1700s.  It is obviously just my view.