Joseph Ginn of Potton d. 1807

Joseph Ginn here was son of Thomas in my post of  31st December 2012 .  He had three brothers who also seem to have survived childhood with him, Thomas, Benjamin and Robert but try as I might (I have looked very carefully and in some unusual records) I can find no trace of any of those three at all.  It is all very strange.  Joe named his sons after himself and his brothers which suggests that his siblings did live.

Joseph met Jane Game from Ashwell in Herts, quite some distance from where he was born.  This suggests that he was very much on the move looking for work.  Jane was born to Richard and Jemima Game (nee Saunders) in 1761 and Joe and Jane married at Ashwell in 1781.

Something induced the couple to move to Potton in Bedfordshire by 1784, the cause most likely being the availability of work, for in 1783, Potton (a successful market town) suffered a great fire "The Great Fire of Potton" which substantially damaged the town as the summary below sets out:

There was a great fire in Potton in 1783 in which many important documents and buildings were destroyed. Before the fire Potton was a busy, prosperous market town dealing mainly in wool. Around the market square were the large houses and stores of the wool staplers, farmers and gentlemen. On 14th August a hay stack in King Street burst into flames and the resulting sparks set fire to half the town in half an hour. Four hours later the fire was out and the best part of the town burnt down. Two great inns and the buildings all round the market place and in the road leading to it, along with the great houses and woolhouses, stables, grain stores and barns belonging to Messrs Raymond, Livelong and Butler, were destroyed. The workshop of Mr Millar and the furniture and clothing in the curate’s house were gone. Every house except one in King Street had burnt down. The town never fully recovered its former importance.

As I say, by 1784 Joe and Jane were in Potton, my guess being that the great rebuilding required labour and Joe needed work.

Joseph died in 1807,  he was 51.   Jane soldiered on alone for a long while, she died in 1842 with a quoted age of 84, she was 81.

Joe and Jane had seven children:

Joseph - see later post

Thomas - see later post

Robert - see later post

Benjamin - see later post

Charlotte - the second of that name married Joseph Lenton at Potton in 1819.  Had a good number of children.  Joe was an Ag Lab and they lived in Potton.

Jane - is untraced

William Ginn/Gynn of Tottenham d.1860s

William Ginn here was son of Richard in my post of 24th March 2013 .  Over his life (not I suspect as a result of a conscious decision by Bill but more because of the spelling by the parish clerk - his surname became Gynn and this it stayed.) 

Bill was a labourer in the brickfields at Tottenham for much of his life. He married Sarah Merry who was also from Tottenham (born 1804 to William and Ann, William being a Sawyer) at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire in 1823, possibly marrying there because Sarah was underage and did not have her Dad's consent, her mother having died in 1814.

For the greater part of their early married life (at least until 1851) Bill and Sarah lived at Ship Yard which was next to the "Ship" public house on the west side of the High Street.  Research indicates that this was built in the 1830s replacing a nearby Inn which had been demolished years before.   The pub still stands and is shown above.  There was a yard at the back which now seems to be what is perhaps optimistically called a "beer garden" and I believe that there was a cottage there where the Ginn family lived. 

As I say, the Ginn surname went through a transformation to Gynn during Bill's lifetime.

Both Bill and Sarah were alive in 1861, but the Tottenham churchyard closed in 1857 and neither of their deaths being registered, I do not know exactly in the 1860s when the couple died.

William and Sarah had ten known children, they were not scrupulous in having them baptised and there could be more:

Caroline -  born in about 1827, she was a Corset maker (Gynn indexed as Gegan) in the 1851 census.  She claimed to be 24 and was at Stoke Newington.  No record of her thereafter has been found

William- see later post

James - see later post

Louisa - In 2010 she was traced and clearly married George Partridge of Camberwell in Surrey in 1852.  I cannot find them as a couple thereafter, George later appearing as a widower.  She likely died in childbirth soon after the marriage

Eliza Perry - A servant at Stoke Newington in 1861.  Married William Rule at Shoreditch in 1865.   They were at Tottenham in 1871 and she died in Whitechapel in 1881.  No children known

Elizabeth Jane - married Joseph Sawyer at Edmonton in 1856

Richard - died infancy

Sarah - there were three of that name, unfortunately none seem to have survived childhood

William Ginn of Great Munden d. 1828

William here was the son of John in my last post.  It is to be regretted, but as so often with the Munden family, I know nothing more than names and dates.

William was a Labourer.  He lived in Gt. Munden all his life and died there in 1828, aged 75.  The age quoted in the register is exactly correct.  Sadly that is all I know.

 

A Hertfordshire couple of a slightly later period but the smock frock of the labourer was universal of the 19th century

Sarah, "the wife of William Jenn" died in 1794, presumably in childbirth.  There is no evidence that William remarried.

William and Sarah had five children:

Thomas - went to live in Sacombe.  See  later post

James - likely went to Cottered - see later post

William and John - have not been traced.

Sarah - married James Lincoln in 1818