Henry Ginn of Sandon, Essex d. 1746

Henry Ginn here is one of the sons of William Ginn the Miller of Braughing in my post of  4th September 2012 .  He has always been something of a mystery but over the twenty three years that I have been researching various pieces of information have turned up at regular intervals.  In fact one vital piece of information was found only last week.

Henry became a Wheelwright.  Obviously a number of his brothers were involved in carpentry but quite how he came into this trade I have no idea.

Henry was  born in around 1687 - there is no surviving baptism record.  He lived in Braughing until 1719 or so and in 1718 married a lady with the rather lovely name - Carolina.

Carolina Wolfe was born in Anstey in 1687.  Her father was William Wolfe, a passably prosperous yeoman farmer there and I have tried to work out whether she had any Ginn descent, at present without success.  Her sisters, Barbara and Bridget also figure in this story a little.

By about 1700 William Wolfe, his wife Bridget and his three daughters had moved to Braughing.  As a yeoman farmer he must logically have had some dealings with William Ginn the Miller, Henry's father.

In 1709 Carolina Wolfe married a Cornelius Rickard at Widford.  The information is of great interest to me as Cornelius was almost certainly the son of Cornelius Rickard the elder who had married Elizabeth Ginn in 1679 (daughter of Francis Ginn - see post of 12th September ) and was therefore a half  Ginn himself, albeit from a different branch of the Ginn family.

Cornelius and Carolina were scarcely married any time at all and only one child, Carolina Rickard, survived infancy.  I cannot find her baptism but Cornelius Rickard sadly died at Ware in 1711 - he was likely about 30.

  Carolina presumably went home to dad in Braughing and began a relationship with Henry.

It is apparent from his will (written in 1724 - ERO, by which time he was in Bishops Stortford) that William Wolfe was careful as to whom his daughters married and was unfortunately not a fan of Henry Ginn, unfairly or not.  He left £100 to Carolina Rickard or to her mother should she die underage, but went to some lengths to exclude Henry Ginn and the two children of Henry and Carolina's born before 1724 and then living.  In fact, as things turned out, it may well be that all of William's money ended up in the hands of his daughters, Barbara Robinson (married Henry Robinson in 1715 - they were at Bishops Stortford in 1724) and Bridget, then wife to Langthorne Tingay.  Carolina Rickard or Ricket incidentally survived  - she married Ralph Grave at Bishops Stortford in 1730.

It was thus in this environment that Henry and Carolina went to London and entered a legal but "clandestine" marriage as it was known at the Fleet in 1718.  They had their first child, Honor, at Braughing in 1719 but until last week I had not traced them at all thereafter, although I had fairly complete details on what happened to their children.

                                           Orsett church

By 1723, Henry and Carolina were at Orsett (near Grays) in Essex, a move of some fifty miles.  There they had their last two children.  They had gone again by late 1726 and I am again searching for them, though strongly suspect that the records will eventually show that Carolina died in 1726/27 and that Henry, with three young children and stepchildren swiftly got together with a lady called Sarah (I doubt they married) and with her proceeded to have a child, Richard Guy Ginn in 1728.  Henry and Sarah were at Sandon by 1730 where Sarah died in that year.  Richard Guy Ginn was named after a yeoman farmer of Sandon (Richard Guy) who had died in 1723.  It seems that Sarah was a friend or employee, not a relation.  Richard Guy's widow Ann died in 1728 and in her will of that year (ERO) mentions both Henry and Sarah and Richard, then a babe in arms. 

Henry Ginn seems at last to have settled in Sandon and brought his surviving two children up there.  He died at Sandon in 1746 aged 59.

Henry and Carolina had three children and he and Sarah as detailed above had one:

Cornelius - see next post

Honor - in 1738 Honor Ginn married Robert Mayhew at Bishops Stortford.  Both were expressed to be of Bishops Stortford but in 2009 I finally found a Certificate of Settlement dating from 1742 (HRO) showing that Robert Mayhew came from Saffron Walden in Essex.

They had three children –

Anthony     1739

Ann            1741

Honor        1744 d.

Anthony and Ann were born in Saffron Walden and have no IGI record – they are listed in the Certificate.  They came from Saffron Walden to Bishops Stortford in 1742 and Honor snr died with there with her last daughter in 1744 – she was 25.  Robert Mayhew was a Shoemaker and in 1745 swore the Oath of Allegiance to George the Second (HRO) in response to the Jacobin plot of Bonnie Prince Charlie.  It seems clear that he left Bishops Stortford shortly afterwards and I have never found a definite burial entry.

 Anthony Mayhew was apparently the only surviving child and it seems clear that he was brought up and trained by his Uncle Cornelius Ginn as a Wheelwright.  He married but had no surviving issue and died in 1803 at Stebbing in Essex aged 64 (will - ERO) leaving a bequest of £10 to Uncle Cornelius who was by then 80 years of age.

        Elizabeth - died in infancy

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       Richard Guy Ginn - like his half brother Cornelius he moved swiftly away after his father's death, being in the East End of London by 1747 or so.  I have assumed that he was a wheelwright.
Unfortunately, while many saw London as a destination of promise and prosperity, for most it simply brought an early death.

  Richard married Bethia Philips at St Leonard's Shoreditch in 1748 and they appear to have lived adjacent to Slaughter Yard, Whitechapel until 1749 or so when they disappeared.  I suspect that Richard was already ill (probably tuberculosis) and they may have gone to the workhouse. There were no children and in 1757 Richard Guy Ginn died "poor" and was buried at St James,

Dukes Place in Aldgate which is sadly no longer there.  Bethia (of St Botolph's Aldgate) remarried James Frankland  a widower , also a Cooper and Citizen of London, at St George in the East in 1759 and had two sons by him, James Fall (1760 - died) and Thomas (1761) the latter being accepted into the Wordshipful Company of Coopers in 1790.  I hope he prospered.