Billett Genn of Ely d 1917

 Billett Genn was born to Billett Genn snr (see post of 4th June 2014)  ) in 1827.  In in 1841 aged 14 he was signed on as an indentured apprentice seaman (for 7 years) aboard the brigantine "George Robinson", a merchant ship which sailed for Newfoundland. 

 Billett kept a diary of his voyages which has survived, and after a short stay in Newfoundland he sailed for the West Indies in "The Garland".  In the West Indies he caught Yellow Fever and nearly died.

Soon after Billett arrived back in England, for some reason forgoeing the rest of his apprenticeship, he enlisted (in February 1846) into the 3rd Kings Own Light Dragoons, signing on for seven years as a trooper.

The 3rd had been stationed in India for some years and he was soon on the troopship "East Indies", sailing for India.  He fought in the Punjab Campaign of 1848/9 against the Sikhs.  The Sikhs have always been fine warriors and this and the usual thick headedness of some of our officers meant that there was some hard fighting, though ultimately the British prevailed and the Punjab was annexed by the British.  The 3rd Kings Own Light Dragoons were heavily engaged in all this, and their charge at Chilianwala is depicted below.

Billett was dishcarged back in London in 1853.  He received the Punjab Campaign Medal.

 This medal was awared to Billett's comrade in the 3rd King's Own Light Dragoons

 Returning to Ely, Billett became a Schoolmaster at Needham School in Ely which was a charity school for poor boys.  The old building survives (below) but is now used for teacher training.  Billett left and then returned and worked there for quite some years through to the 1870s.

Billett married Victoria Haylock, daughter of an Ely Miller on New Years Day 1867 - he was 40, she 23.  They had a number of children.  He retained the "cavalry" whiskers for much of his early and middle years as we can see below.

Even after leaving Needhams, Billett contiuned to work part time as a schoolmaster in Ely, doing so until the First World War when he was in his 80s.  He also continued to have an association with the volunteer forces in Ely, having loved his time in the army, and we see him below sporting his Punjab Campaign Medal

Billett and Victoria lived at 1 Lynn Road in Ely, the house of his father and opposite the Lamb Hotel.  I have been there a numer of times, it is now a shop

We see him and Victoria, he sporting a clay pipe in later life, but they are obviously visiting, as this is not their home. This is 1906, Billett is nearly 80 and Victoria 61. Below is Billet at nearly 90.

Victoria, who was well known in Ely in her own right,  died in 1913 aged 68.  Billett was the last of the Ely Ginn and Genn family to actually live there.  He died aged 90 in 1917, the last of a family to have been there continuously for 330 years. He was granted a full military funeral which is depicted below, the courtege is passing his house.

                                            

Billett and Victoria had seven children

Arthur Robert - the first Ginn in Ely  was Robert (1587) and his eldest son was Arthur.  The last Genn in Ely was Billett d. 1917 a descendant of Robert, so it is a little spooky that his eldest son was Arthur Robert.

Arthur Robert joined the 17th Lancers the "Death or Glory Boys" in 1898.  His very distant cousin Benjamin Ginn had left the same regment in 1891.

             17th Lancers on Parade before embarking for S.A

 Arthur fought in the 2nd Boer War and received the South Africa Medal with 4 clasps.

He subsequently joined the Bedfordshire Police and rose to Inspector.  He married and had issue and his son, the late Lt. Colonel Robert Seymour Genn left genealogical notes that have contributed research to this blog.  Arthur died in 1955

Algernon - actually Billett Algernon Manners Genn - hated his name.  I can scarcely blame him.  He went into Warwickshire as a young man and took an apprenticeship (Birmingham) and lived with a Haylock Aunt for a time.  He joined one of the Territorial battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment when he was 18 calling himself Albert.  He obviously feared his name being ridiculed.  In 1900, there were moves to encourage volunteers from the Territorials into the regular army, and he volunteered (calling himself Alfred !) into a volunteer company of the 1st Btn. Essex Regiment.  It is all the same man- he gave his place of birth and parents.  Like his brother he fought in the Boer War earning the South Africa Medal with 5 clasps.  This was issued to him as Alfred of course and I have noticed that the medal was recently sold in Australia.  He took early discharge which as a volunteer was allowed in mid 1901 and some months later married.  There were issue.  Algernon was later an Engineer and a Freemason.  He lived in Bedfordshire like his brother.  He died in 1937.

Margaret Elizabeth - married Frederick Bixby in Westminster in 1906

Victoria Blanche - married Frederick Chambers at St Mary's Ely in 1913

Florence Martha - was a Housekeeper in Dorset in 1891 but untraced thereafter

Marian Bewster - married Thomas Martin Phillips at Ely St Mary in 1915

Yerbury Emile - died infancy

Acknowledgements - I am indebted to the late Lt. Colonel Robert Seymour Genn for much of the information on Billett, and to Robert's daughter Helen for the wonderful collection of photographs of him

John Thomas Genn and the Genns of Oregon USA

 Due to the discovery (during Coronavirus induced Lockdown) of conclusive evidence linking the Ely Genn family to the Ely Ginn family (who came from Hertfordshire) I have extended my research efforts on the Genn family and have created new posts out of the old.

John Thomas Genn snr  you will find online as the father of John Thomas Genn jnr (1867-1939) but where he is mentioned there is no comment on where he came from, nor any marriage record for his supposed marriage to a Mary Bloodworth  nor any burial record.  There is a reason for that - the guy is fiction.  Until a correspondent wrote to me in 2023 I believed this online story.   John Thomas Genn jnr was the illegitimate son of William Mackinder Genn (see post of  2nd March 2014)) and his cousin by marriage Mary Bloodworth.

 William Mackinder emigrated to America, going out to New York on the "Neptune in 1862 with the Bloodworths, his cousins by his sister.  He is not indexed on the Ancestry passenger list but is there as William Gen aged 18.  For some reason they give his origin as Ireland - a typographical error.  He was indeed 18 went he went out. He and the Bloodworths went to Winfield in New York State, a small place ner Utica.

William enlisted from Winfield into the Union Army in 1862, very soon after his arrival. After William returned from the Civil War in 1865, he went back to New York State where Mary Bloodworth was still living with her family in Winfield (1865 census) near Utica.  They obviously had some form of relationship and in 1866 she became pregnant, the child was clearly born in the area in April 1867 but there appears to be no record.  John T jnr later (see below) gave his birth place as Utica and his father as William Genn.

                                 William M Genn in later life

The relationship broke down, William Mackinder departed to Chicago (where he is reputed to be in 1867) and Mary, a domestic servant,  named the child John Thomas Genn (which suggests some involvement by William - he had a late brother of that name) and was living with her sister Fanny and family in Winfield in 1870.

In 1872 Mary married a George Cox and moved to Illinois.  George then died and she remarried Thomas Cox who was George's brother - both George and Tom were born in England also.  Mary died in 1903.

John Thomas Genn junior married Clara Sophia Morse at Winnebago Illinois in 1890 and moved up to Oregon by 1900 or so.  He was a Real Estate Salesman, what we in England would call an Estate Agent.  He and Clara had two sons - Willis B. (known as Bill Genn) and Vernon.

John T. jnr died in 1939 in Eugene, Oregon and Clara in 1949.  Their memorials are below

When John T died in 1939 his son Bill (Willis) was the informant on the death certificate which is below.  John T's parentage is given.

As for their two sons:

 Willis Burr Genn (known as "Bill") originally joined the Merchant Navy.  He had an ancestor and two Genn cousins who went into Law enforcement so it was no surprise to me to find that he joined the Oregon State Police and rose to Sergeant.  He married more than once but I do not believe  there were children.  Bill died in 1954. See below

                                                                 Willis in 1919

                            Bill is seecond from left (1925)

Vernon Chathburton Genn - worked as a manager for General Motors and spent some years as Japanese Sales Manager and in charge of a factory in Osaka.  A successful businssman.   He married, had three sons and there are known descendants.  Vernon  died in 1953.

                                                            Vernon in 1915

Frederick Ginn of Tottenham died 1904

If postage stamp collecting, market gardening and baptist missionaries are your thing, then this post is for you !

Fred Ginn here was born in 1836 and was the son of Charles Ginn of Harlow in my post of 16th November 2014 and nephew of Samuel Ginn who was killed in the Napoleonic Wars (see post of 26th January 2013).  Fred was an orphan early on and he was brought up by his childless uncle George Ginn of Tottenham (see post of 16th November 2014 ) and effectively was his son in all but name. Fred  was almost certainly named in memory of  his half-blood uncle Frederick Ginn who like Sam joined up and died in the army.

Fred took over his Uncle's nursery in Marsh Lane, Tottenham and was a successful market gardener.  Marsh Lane like Cheshunt from where I come is in the Lee Valley, and until relatively recently the Lee Valley had a major horticultural industry.

Fred married Elizabeth Giles at Newington in 1863 and they had seven children.  Fred died in 1904 and Elizabeth in 1910.

Of the children:

Frederick jnr - I started stamp collecting briefly at age eleven and it sadly left me cold, but Fred jnr here started collecting postage stamps as a boy and it became his life's work.  Fred was trading in stamps from his home in Tottenham in his mid teens, ie the 1870s.  When I was at University (long before my Ginn research) I bought a  Victorian book which I later realised had Fred mentioned in it - he was exhibting stamps, exhibitions being a 19th century obsession, at Bruce Castle in Tottenham (below)

On leaving school Fred entered the tea trade, but kept up stamps as a side line, trading from home, and he became so successful that for decades he ran a shop in The Strand in central London opposite the Gaiety Theatre.

The Royal Philatelic Society say that he had one of the finest collections of American stamps in the world.

Fred jnr married twice but only one child (Dorothy) is known though there were likely more.  Dorothy was a Baptism Missionary in Asia and married a Baptist Reverend at Lahore Cathedral in 1929.

Fred junior died in 1938

George Charles - you might have thought that one stamp collecting obsessive in the family was enough - but there were three.  George and his brother Ernie started the well known philatelic company Geo. C Ginn & Co, they were in Moorgate in London and traded internationally and traded international stamps.

George married twice and had four children.  Geo. C Ginn & Co had a strong presence in Canada and George's one son Ivor obviously had no interest in stamps and emigrated to Deep Creek, British Columbia in Canada in 1923, became a dairy farmer, married there and had no less than twelve children.  There are a huge number of descendants.  George died in 1945.

Ernest Burnett - Ernie was a  partner with his brother George in the family firm of Geo. C Ginn and Co.  In the philately world this was a well  known and respected company.  He married and had three children including a son Arthur who flew airships in World War 1 (Royal Navy) 

Arthur then joined the family firm.  Ernie died in 1948.

Elizabeth - was a teacher all of her life.  She never married and died in 1956.

Lucy - was a paid companion to a socialite (a little bit "Agatha Christie") never married and died in 1946.

Ada- married and had four children and died in 1953

John - became an ordained Baptist Minister and Missionary in India, obviously under the continuing influence of his late gt. uncle George Ginn of Tottenham who was also a Baptist.  He worked in India, returned to England with ill health and had connections with Frinton Free Church below.  He married but I have no idea whether there were issue.  He died in 1935.

Robert Ginn of Nuthampstead, Barkway and Anstey died after 1680

 I realised in 2020 that I have never written this guy up, which was an omission, and also that to do so properly I would need to create a new post.  So here it is.

Robert Ginn was born in 1602, the son of Robert and Lettice, nee Benn - see my post of  23rd July 2012.  He was a popular guy - his uncle Arthur Ginn was clearly fond of him and Bob junior here had high hopes of a successful and prosperous life if he applied himself.

 

Two events happened to him in 1630 , when he was 28.  Firstly his uncle Arthur Ginn died and left fifty acres of land or more  in Anstey, Nuthampstead and Barkway which was to go to this guy.  Secondly, Robert married Sarah Ferris at Layston (above), daughter of William Ferris and Ellen of Layston (Buntingford) William being a blacksmith from several generations of the  same in Buntingford.  Ellen's maiden name was Peede, and as the wife of Bob's brother Francis also came from Layston and was called Peede,  I think we can assume Bob married his cousin.

At this point  Robert was in a very good place.  He and Sarah had settled down and were having children.  His father had a fair bit of land and Robert here had inherited a bit.  By 1642 this guy was the only Ginn in Anstey to be prosperous enough to be taxed in the Lay Subsidy of that year.

But I knew something had gone wrong, and I found out what it was in 2020.  Robert, like so many of this blog in the 1600s, had got himself into debt.  Owing money never works out well.

The truth is it was very easily done in the 1600s, as now.  There were no banks, and people with spare cash, having no safe place  to deposit it - put it in small loans to small traders and farmers secured by bonds.  It stimulated the economy, but it was also risky, because the loans could be called in and anybody with low liquidity could be asked at very short notice to sell assets to meet their loan. Potentially they could be ruined.

Now the strange thing is that I knew years ago that Robert here did not prosper after he was about 40, and I also knew that his father was selling quite a bit of his land in Therfield in the 1640s, and the answer is here.

A Richard Preist [sic] an Attorney at Law launched a court action in the Court of Common Pleas in 1642 (CP40 2495/6 National Archives).  He sued Robert Ginn, his brother Thomas Ginn of  Therfield, a William Smith  of Barley and a James Elliot of Lidlington in Cambridgeshire, all expressed to be Yeomen, for £30 a piece.  Not a lot you might think, but that amount could buy a house at the time, and to find it quickly would have put a strain on all of these men.

We do not know the result of the case, but given that so much land was sold I think we can assume that the defendants lost.

Although Bob and Sarah obviously survived, their fortunes took a marked turn for the worst, and in the 1663 Hearth Tax, Robert only had the one hearth, implying her inhabited a cottage, rather than the three or four hearthed farmhouse I would have expected.

Although Robert and Sarah used Anstey and Barkway churches, I am virtually certain that they lived at Nuthampstead, a tiny hamlet and not a parish on its own, being affiliated with Barkway.  I assume that after the court case this chap was best described as a Husbandman rather than a Yeoman.

Robert and Sarah had a good number of children, but they were not lucky with the survival of sons.  Sarah died "wife of Robert Ginn" at Barkway (below) in 1680 aged 71.  Robert was alive then aged 78.  Assuming that he did not died elsewhere, his burial entry is missed from the registers

Robert and Sarah had six children

Robert - died in 1663 aged 16 "son of Robert" and buried at Reed

Arthur - may have died at Barkway in 1668 aged 33 or he may (he is the favourite known candidate) be the Arthur who emigrated to Maryland, British America in the 1660s. His father's money from the land sales may have helped him by giving him a start when he came of age. The guy who died in 1668 could be another Arthur, known to me to have been alive in 1652 but untraced.

Martha - is untraced

Hannah - "of Anstey" married Daniel Brand "of Great Hormead" at the gorgeous Little Hormead Church (below) in 1663.  I have been there and it is lovely.   Daniel had two hearths in the Hearth Tax.  They had a few children then Daniel sadly died in 1677 aged 36 .There is no obvious remarriage.  I know that the couple lived in Hare Street at Great Hormead which still has a few thatched cottages, one of which was possibly theirs.

Sarah - two Sarahs married at Great Hormead in 1661.  One of them was this girl.  My guess is she married William Aldridge.

John - married Martha Rayner.  More on this in due course

John Ginn of Ware, Soldier and Chelsea Pensioner died 1846

When I was a boy in the 1960s, I used to read (among others) the story book (rather than a comic) "The Rover and Wizard", tales of derring-do (in my mind's eye I could have wrestled a crocodile and beaten off a horde of Zulus single handed) to stir the blood of every English boy.  The Napoleonic Wars were featured I remember, and John here could well have been a character in the comic.

John here was great, great grandson to Richard in my last post, born in Ware in 1770 to John and Sarah.

John Ginn was a Labourer, who in 1799 joined the army, specifically the 5th Foot ("the Fighting Fifth") as they were known throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

I first researched this guy more than twenty five years ago, in the microfilmed records at the National Archives, before there were any genealogical websites, before there was an online.  It is still the case that you cannot know the story of this man's time in the army without going to the original records at Kew and I am delighted to have researched the guy and to give him a memorial.  Everybody here has a story, and I see myself as the storyteller.

John Ginn was in the 1st Battalion of the 5th (see series WO12/2296 at the National Archives), and spent the first few years of his time in the army on quiet duties at home and in the Channel Islands.  Things changed in 1805.

It was Napoleon's intention to invade Britain from early 1803 to mid 1805, just as in 1940 it was Hitler's, and luckily both came a cropper.

Napoleon had the Grand Armee of over 180,000 men in the vicinity of the French channel ports in mid 1805, waiting to invade.  But luckily a combination of events in Eastern Europe and Nelson's huge victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, crushing the French and Spanish naval fleets, changed the man's mind.   So the Grand Armee marched away, towards the German states and ultimately their own crushing victory over the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz.

Now until Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) took charge of it in the Peninsular War, in truth the British Army was a sorry thing. It was undermanned, under resourced (most of the money went on the Royal Navy) and was often thrown away in "penny packet" expeditions, where far too few men were expected to achieve far too much.  In truth many of these raids were simply so that the Generals could be shown to be doing "something" to irritate Napoleon.

So it was here.  Whilst the 180,000 strong French Army was marching across what is now Germany, the British got together an expedition of 15,000 men under General Cathcart (below) to land in

Germany and take Hanover, the British King George III coming from the House of Hanover of course, and rather wanting the ancestral home back.  It was all nonsense of course.

The First Battalion of the 5th Foot formed part of this expedition and the British troops loaded on to their transports and sailed across the North Sea.  It was December 1805 and the weather was not great.

John Ginn and about 200 of his mates (not all of the Battalion which numbered about a thousand men) were on HMS Helder.  It was Christmas Eve 1805, and due to bad weather the ship ran aground (the crew were lucky to bring her in at all apparently) on, ironically, Den Helder (above) the very northern tip (now a Dutch Navy base) on the Dutch mainland north of Amsterdam.

This was not great news.  The men scrambled ashore with just their lives.  Holland was under French  control and though there were French troops there, most military forces were Dutch, and though allied to the French, certainly a lot more kindly to the British than the French would have been.  John Ginn was one of 250 men (including the crew) taken prisoner.

Now John Ginn was a strange cove, all 5 foot 6 inches of him (black hair and hazel eyes).   He had an uncanny karma to get himself into scrapes, but the most astonishing luck (someone looked after him) to get himself out of them.  It is a gift I envy.

He and his mates were prisoners until August 1806.  Cathcart had landed in Germany, taken Hanover and (with Russian assistance) won a couple of minor engagements, but his efforts were made null and void by a deal between the French and Prussians (Britain's ally) in early 1806 whereby Hanover was given to Prussia.  Cathcart sailed home with his men in the Spring and it would seem to have been the Prussians and the Dutch who allowed John and his mates to be released.  They were back in Portsmouth by September 1806 (John marked as "POW" for the previous 8 months in the Muster) .

John was scarcely back in England before he was off once again, this time to South America !  How he must have welcomed going to sea again !

In yet another of these dreamed up pocket book ideas (perhaps the generals also read "The Rover"), it had been a pet idea of the British since the 1790s to invade South America and free it from Spanish influence (we were always at war with Spain) give the citizens independence and set up a load of trade deals with the friendly and grateful locals who had been oppressed by Spain for years. Simple.

In 1806, they believed that that moment had arrived when in that year the British invaded and took the colonies at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa (assisted by another John Ginn - see post of 3rd October 2012).  The Navy patrolling off the Cape, extended their naval control as far as South America and a plan was hatched to launch an invasion there, in fact there were two.

The first invasion took place in 1806, and was initially successful,  Buenos Aires fell, save that it turned out that the locals were not so friendly or grateful as anticipated - they did not want the Spanish, but they did  not want the British either, and local militias and Spanish regulars forced a retreat.

Fearing and forewarned of a second British invasion, the people of Uruguay and Argentina (as they became) started to form further trained regiment of militia and armed themselves.  They wanted independence, but they wanted to claim it themselves, which of course they did eventually.

The Second Invasion commenced in early 1807 and the British after a fierce action by the 40th, 95th and 87th Foot took Montevideo.  In May, General Whitelocke (below) arrived to take command together with reinforcements,  these included the "Fighting Fifth"

 Whitelocke had two weaknesses, the first was he was slow to make a decision, the second that he underestimated the nature of the fight he was up against.

The plan was to move on Buenos Aires, but he hesitated, a delay that gave the defenders time to prepare. And thinking that he had little to fear from the local militias, he divided his forces into no less than 16 columns.

The problem was that the British infantry were equipped with muskets, not rifles, they did not know the terrain and were trained to fight in line in open combat, not skirmish in the streets of a city.

So when the British entered the streets of Buenos Aires things did not go well for them.  Militia men had set up mobile barricades all over - they trapped them in front, they trapped them behind, they fired at them from above and below and locals threw cooking pots of boiling water and oil down upon them. There was even a militia unit of 600 african slaves.  Men got seperated from each other, had no idea where they were, nor the location of their mates.  The confusion (over about five days) was so great that not a few men deserted and stayed in South America, as many as 1,500 later forming a regiment that joined the locals and later fought for their independence.

The fighting lasted for several days as I say, the most intense being on 4th and 5th July when the British took 1000 casualties, one of them being John Ginn who was wounded on the 5th.  He was badly wounded in the right hand, rendering it useless.

The British lost the battle for Buenos Aires and the campaign.  The men retreated to Montevideo and the Royal Navy.  Whitlocke was later court martialled and dismissed from the army.

Now John, were he here to tell you, would agree that he and ships never got on.  If the extremely superstitious Royal Navy men had know his history, they would likely have considered him more of a "Jonah" than a John and never let him on board.

John was put on board the HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) "Alexander" at Montevideo, along with quite a few others of the wounded and the ship sailed for home.

It is pretty obvious that the ship was carrying back some munitions of the homeward bound army, because on 22nd November 1807, somewhere in the mid Atlantic, the ship blew up !

John was below decks and the explosion did not touch him.  But the ship was on fire, listing and sinking.  John could not use his right hand and the ship was now at an angle and in trying to get up the steps to the top deck, we know that he fell some distance.  He broke his right thigh bone  and so damaged his right ankle that the foot was splayed out at an angle for the rest of his life.

There were some unrecorded heroes there that day (and John's "Guardian Angel") because men from another ship came to the burning and sinking vessel in Atlantic seas to see if they could get anybody off.  Only 21 men were saved - John being one of them.  The Muster record is so cool as to be chilling "which he was removed before she was lost".

John came home on another hospital ship, never rejoined his regiment and was obviously still sick in early 1808 when the army granted him an out pension as a disabled veteran.  He obviously was in no condition to work and must have had a hard time of it for a few years, living on a pittance in some lodging or other.

In 1812 he returned to the army, obviously disabled and only fit for garrison duty.  He was in the 5th Royal Veteran Battalion for two years until 1814 which was disbanded when Napoleon went to Elba.  When Napoleon escaped, John was back to the fray again, being enlisted in the 8th Royal Veteran Battalion and finally discharged from the army in 1816 when he was 46.  By the time he was discharged his old regiment the 5th Foot (with whom he served for nine years) had another nickname in the army "The Old and Bold", a name which might be applied to John.

I knew pretty much all of the above by 1995, but there was no trace of what happened to John after 1816.  You hear so many stories of disabled old soldiers begging in the streets, that I hoped that had not been his fate - but this story has a happy ending.

Years ago, I discovered that there a namesake of this chap in a renowned British military institution - but the age given was totally wrong.  A fellow researcher said "it cannot possibly be him" but it was.

                               Royal Hospital Chelsea 

The records of Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers (where the "Chelsea Pensioners" reside) are not online, but in 2015 I turned them up at the National Archives in Kew.  John Ginn, formerly of the 5th Foot was only 50 (so they may have fiddled his age to get him in) but in 1820, obviously too disabled to look after himself, John petitioned the Chelsea Board to let him in, and they accepted him.

The Hospital was built in 1692 to the designs of Sir Christopher Wren, and remained unaltered for 300 years, only recently having some internal alterations.  The men lived then and do now, in Long Wards (John was in Long Ward 10) where each man had a room in a long corridor, not very spacious and known as a "berth" with their uniform on a peg outside the door where also sat each man's military chest with their belongings etc (below).  They obviously all messed together for food etc and recreation.

John lived at Chelsea for twenty five years.  The stories that he and his mates must have recounted to each other would have filled a million weekly editions of the "Rover".  It is my loss that I will never get to hear them.  John Ginn died in Chelsea in 1846, he was 76.