Thomas Ginn of Highgate d. 1870

It  took me some time to trace this man, as I was researching before the computerisation of records that exists now.  I only found him by a reference in the Estate Duty records pertaining to his father's death - for his father Tom snr see my post of 17th February 2013.

Thomas Ginn married Caroline Constable at Hornsey in 1816.  It took me until 2007 to find the reference (Pallots Marriage Index).

Thomas was certainly living in central Highgate by the close of the Napoleonic Wars.  He was (of course) a Carpenter, and at one time was also the agent for the Alliance Fire Insurance Company.

In 1838 disaster struck.  The London Gazette reports that “Thomas Ginn, late of High Street Highgate Middlesex, Carpenter, Builder and Under-taker, and Assessor of the Queens taxes” a prisoner (obviously in a debtor’s prison) was effectively declared insolvent.  Thomas appears to have got himself out shortly afterwards, but his family would probably have had to go in with him (like the parents of Charles Dickens) and whether it be the Fleet Prison or the Marshalsea I have no idea.

Caroline Snr died in 1846, she was 51 and is buried at Hornsey.   It was not until 2007 that a second marriage for Thomas was discovered.  He remarried a Matilda Higgins under the name of Gin. 

The family always lived in the Highgate area.  In the 1851 census, they were at 148, North Road, Hornsey. 

Thomas died in 1870, aged 77 and is buried at Hornsey.  The certificate quotes gangrene as the cause of death (so he was probably a diabetic).

In the 1871 census, the widow Matilda has her mother, Priscilla living with her.  Her mother had the name of Treversh.  

In 1870, Matilda was the informant on Tom’s death cert.  In 1881 she was a Nurse (domestic) in Hornsey.  It is not known when and where she died.

Thomas and the two wives had ten children:

Thomas - married Ann Gascoigne in 1842.  The following children are known

            Ann Elizabeth 1844

            Caroline         1845

Both children died in infancy. Ann died in 1845 aged 28, giving birth to Caroline who followed a few weeks later.  Thomas (a Carpenter) died in 1848.  

Mary Ann - in the 1851 Census she was unmarried.  I seem to remember coming across her in a later Index in which she was also unmarried.

Caroline - alive but unmarried in 1851.  She later married James Bedford in 1855.

 

Charles -  see later

John and Emily - died infancy

Elizabeth - married Charles Bowmaker in 1849

Keziah - died in 1852, aged 23.  Buried Hornsey

Amelia Sarah - died in 1853, aged 17.  Buried Hornsy

Matilda - Matilda was a Dressmaker in Hornsey in the 1881 census.  It seems that she died a spinster in Elham district in Kent in 1939

Jacob Ginn of Edmonton d.1783

Son of Jacob in my post of 13th January 2013 , he got around a bit, did this lad.  He married Hannah Phillips of Edmonton at the Fleet in 1736 (RG7 686).  He was described as a Husbandman of “Edmington”. They were married by Walter Wyatt, one of the most notorious of the Fleet’s somewhat sordid clergymen at rooms called “Wheeler’s” in Fleet Street.  I think we can assume that the Enfield family were there because his first cousin Richard was to marry at the same rooms before the same clergyman little more than three months later.  He married Hannah in 1736, and they had three children (see below) before she died in 1758.  The same year he married Sarah Tatum.  She was stated to be an Edmonton girl, but the banns were read in the Parish of St Peter le Poor, in the City.  So Jacob (like one or two other Ginns) was clearly in and out of the City of London as the fancy took him.

                               All Saints, Edmonton in the snow

Sarah gave Jacob four more children, then she died in 1765.  He remarried Sarah Plater, but she was a widow and clearly past childbearing.

I was astonished to discover in 2005 that this guy appeared in front of the Old Bailey in 1753.  He was charged (but acquitted) of theft and highway robbery.  The full text is given on the Old Bailey Proceedings website, but the gist is as follows

                             Hornsey, where Jacob jnr is buried

Jacob was working as a labourer on fields between Edmonton and Hornsey in the summer of 1752, lodging  in the house of a John Rumbold.  The fact that his son Jacob was buried at Hornsey in 1751 suggests that they lodged there for seasonal work for a year or two. The facts were disputed, but it appears that a dozen or so Irish workers (in England for the summer harvest)  came to Rumbold’s house at about 11 at night on July 12^th 1752 and started a fight with Rumbold and the two men who lodged with him.  It seems likely that Rumbold had refused to employ the Irish workers and they were annoyed.  The Irish set about Jacob and all and eventually Jacob (who had armed himself with a scythe blade) overpowered his assailant and cut him a little. Jacob apparently said (his friend’s evidence) that the Irishman was minded to murder him and “he (Jacob) had a good mind to cut his head off”.  The Irishman said that Jacob had started it and had also robbed him.

                                   The Old Bailey of the1700s

Jacob and all his friends were acquitted.  Independent witnesses supported their story and three men (one, George Hind, had known him for thirty years) gave evidence for Jacob’s character “a very honest pains-taking man”.  Whatever the outcome, it must have been a worrying experience for Jacob and his family.  For the full story see  http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17530111-12-defend130&div=t17530111-12#highlight

For a long time I could not find Jacob’s burial (the Edmonton register is very full) but he seems to have been the Jacob “Jain” who died in 1783 - he was 66.  Sarah died in 1774.

Jacob and his first two wives had seven children:

Judith - was the only survivor.  Born in 1760, she  got together with William Field of Edmonton (born   1755, son of Lawrence  & Sarah) in the late 1780s and they had Sarah, 1788, Samuel 1790, Thomas Lawrence 1793 and Lawrence in 1798.  William Field seems to have been a commitment phobe and in 1796 Judith had obviously got fed up with it and banns were read at Edmonton for her to marry a William Peel (lest this be an error and for Peel read Field)  but nothing came of it and she and William got back together and finally wed in 1798 at Enfield. For respectability's sake William claimed to be a widower (which was likely why they married at Enfield  as all the kids were stated to have Judith as the mother) but had clearly been living with Judith and the kids all along.  There are sufficient issue and descendants known to make me sure that the couple and thus Jacob Ginn have descendants alive today.  Judith died in 1831.

Jacob-two of the name died in infancy - one at Hornsey

John, Sarah, Elizabeth and Hannah - also died in infancy

Richard Ginn of Tottenham d.1810

At some point Richard  (see last post) moved from Enfield to Tottenham, he was certainly there by 1781.  Whether he actually married Sarah in church seems a moot point, it could have been one of the informal marriages quite common at the time.  I certainly have not found any likely marriage entry yet.  It does seem likely that Sarah’s maiden name was Roberts however, the surname used as the Christian name (so common at the end of the 18th cent.) being a good clue.

                        All Hallows, Tottenham in the 19th century

Richard Ginn was a labourer.  He lived in Tottenham “proper” but I have no idea where and his birth and death are pretty much all the facts known about him..  He died in 1810, being buried on December 9th.  The Parish Clerk has my undying thanks as he took his duties very seriously, noting that Richard was “aged 63”, exactly correct and confirming my long held theory of the Enfield / Tottenham link. Sarah was buried in January 1823, she was quoted as being 64 years of age.

Richard and Sarah had eight children:

Richard - Richard Jnr married Mary Cockett at Tottenham in 1802; Mary being a spinster and able to sign her name.  Richard was a Labourer and the couple always seem to have lived in Tottenham proper, in 1841 being at North Row (nr Scotland Green).  They seem to have been missed from the index of the 1851 Census, though as both were alive it seems certain that their surname was misread by the indexer

Richard has the distinction of being the last in a continuous long line of Richard's in his branch of the family that stretched back 300 years to 1572.

As far as I am aware they only had one daughter, Mary, who died in 1806. 

 However, in 1841 a certain Mary Ginn Maynard was living with them; she was 12.  She was not part of the household and was clearly visiting. This was a mystery to me for twenty years - all I knew was that Mary Ginn Maynard continued to live in Tottenham and married a Henry Marriage at Hackney in 1857 - Richard Ginn was a witness.  She and her husband had a large family.  What link(blood, affection or both) there was between Richard, Mary and her was completely unknown.  Then in 2016 something turned up on Ancestry.  I mention it in full here because descendants may well not make the link otherwise.  A Matilda Maynard was born in Hackney in 1804 to a Thomas and Mary.  How and why is unknown, presumably the parents died, but Mary Ginn stated in 1829 that she and Richard brought Matilda Maynard up, certainly from her teens, as in 1818 or so Mary accompanied her when she went to work for a Richard Taylor gent of Finsbury Square as a servant.  She subsequently left there, and went to work in the lace mills in Tottenham where in 1829 she became pregnant by a William Welch who worked there and lodged in Lordship Lane near the Red Lion.  His family were said to come from Edmonton.  Matilda, having worked in Shoreditch was removed to Shoreditch workhouse where she gave birth.  Although she stayed there for some time it is said that almost from birth the child, baptised Mary (Mary Ginn Maynard - QED) Richard and Mary Ginn brought the baby up as well.  These people were a good couple.  Unfortunately Matilda's saga continued, she was out of the workhouse by 1833 and working at Bruce Castle Tottenham (Moss Hill) as a kitchen maid, but sadly by 1836 she was pregnant again.  She was an inmate in Tottenham workhouse in 1881

Mary died in February 1854: she was quoted as being 77.  Richard (whose surname was always spelled Ginn)  died in 1863 aged 82.

Thomas - I believe I have found him - details of the research will form the subject of a later post

William- see later 

Martha  - the Edmonton Banns book says that she married a Richard Hutchinson there in 1815.  The marriage register says that this was a James Hutchinson.  Yet two correspondents (descendants of the couple) say that the husband was a James Hutchin who came from Albury in Herts, the couple soon moving there.

Lucy - two of these died in infancy

John Roberts - died in infancy

Elizabeth - is untraced

Richard Ginn of Enfield d. 1750

The son of Richard in my post of  20th January 2013, it has taken years to track down Richard’s marriage, but in 2009 it was found he married Elizabeth Grassom or Glasson of Enfield at the Fleet in  February 1737. (RG7 687)  It was common for  people in the Home Counties to “make a day of it” when marrying, and rather than marry in their parish church go up to London and be married by one of the Anglican clergy currently in prison for debt at the Fleet Prison.

                       Marriages at the Fleet in the early 1700s

What was quite surprising was his choice of minister to perform the marriage.  They were married by Walter Wyatt, a notorious Fleet parson, the same man who had married Dick’s cousin Jacob less than three months earlier and, even more surprising given that Wyatt performed marriages everyday at sundry locations, the couple even married in the same rooms in Fleet Street  (“Wheeler’s”) that Jacob had married.  The Enfield and Edmonton Ginn families were obviously quite close.

Though described as a Husbandman when he married, Richard was pretty obviously a labourer.  Like the other Enfield Ginns he lived in the general area that is called Chase Side, appearing in the rate books with land worth £7 per annum (implying a decent cottage and plot of land).  In 1747 he was the tenant of a “new built cottage” in Baker Street (where the Civic Centre is now).  This land included three roods of garden and an orchard (see the deed in the Enfield Local Studies Library at Palmers Green and below).

Enfield was clearly a terrible place to live, so many of its population dying young.  This was the period of the virulent small pox and typhus epidemics (they died down in the latter part of the 18th cent.) and Richard died in 1750; he was  47 years of age.

I have no certain idea what happened to Elizabeth, there being a number of burials in the register

Richard and Elizabeth had six children:

Sarah - untraced

Philip - a lifelong bachelor, lived in Enfield and died in Enfield Poorhouse in 1819 as a Labourer with a   quoted age of 77, which was correct.  

William  - a lifelong bachelor like his brother Phil, he lived in Enfield and died in Enfield Poorhouse in 1814 as a Labourer with a quoted age  of 74 which was correct.  

Elizabeth - in 1767 she had an illegitimate daughter Sarah .  This Sarah married Joseph Deller at Enfield in 1803.  A witness was Mary Ginn (nee Cockett wife of  Richard jnr of Tottenham).  Joseph and Sarah had one child at Enfield and seem to have moved away.  An online resource concerning a study of the Deller/Dellow family claims they moved to Shadwell and had a fair sized family but this needs to be checked out.  Elizabeth herself is untraced.

Martha - married Matthew Gray.  

Richard - see next post