John Ginn of Thorley d. c.1800

John here is son of John of Farnham in my post of  23rd March 2013. 

But I have chosen to begin this story early on, with a certain William Phillips who married a Mary Mallyon at Thorley in 1757. The couple had three children: James, John and Mary, before John died in infancy and his mother followed soon after in August 1763.

William immediately remarried, his new wife (Martha Nicolson) marrying him in Bishop’s Stortford in 1764 and having two further children (William & Sarah) before William himself died at Thorley in 1770.

William’s daughter Mary Phillips (born in 1763) married a certain John Waters at Thorley in 1781.  Waters was a labourer and the couple had five children before John’s untimely death in August 1789.  These children are important to this narrative and were as follows: Mary (1782) William (1783) Martha (1785) John (1787) and James (1790)

                       

Mary obviously had problems, with five young children and no father to provide for them.  John Ginn had arrived in Thorley (Militia List) in 1787. It looks like he travelled with his sister Ann.  His Farnham origins were confirmed by DNA matches in late 2022.  He was “living in” locally as an agricultural servant and in November 1790 he quite bravely took on Mary Waters (“widow”) and her children, all of whom were clearly alive at this date.

It was the fact that John had taken on a “ready made” family that influenced the choice of names for his own sons; a choice that had always puzzled me.  For Mary could scarcely have further sons by John that were given either his name or those traditional to the Farnham clan: i.e. John, James and William.  A little originality was thus in order.

The couple had a further five children, all sons, then John Ginn is known to have died between 1799 and 1801 as Mary is thereafter referred to as a widow in local charity records (D/P 108 25/1 etc. at HRO).  John has no burial entry at Thorley or in any other local register and it is just possible that he became worn down with the responsibility of providing for so many children and absconded, leaving his children in the care of the parish.  Three of his Ginn nephews at various times attempted the same.

John was a labourer and this couple were certainly poor, not least because of the number of children.  In 1799 the local charity doled out bread for the family, at that time counting them with 7 children, though most probably only children under 11 or 12 were considered eligible infants and unable to work on a permanent basis.  Widow Ginn and her children continued to receive bread for the next few years, and as the family’s circumstances were now dire it is certain that steps were taken to find early employment for the kids.

It is known that William, Martha and John Waters survived childhood: both William and Martha later marrying and John being mentioned in records compiled under the 1803 Defence Acts.  

In 1805 Mary had an illegitimate son - Frederick Ginn (see below).  She eventually got her elder children off her hands and in 1812 remarried a William Wrist (generally Rist) which though an unusual surname was not uncommon in the villages of nearby Widford and the Hadhams.  It seems clear that the William Rist in question was born in Little Hadham in 1760, because it was that chap who was later at Much Hadham, where Mary is known to have been living in 1814.  For in 1814 she received the little property and effects left by her deceased son Samuel, the army records (WO 25 2967 at the PRO) giving her address in July 1814 as “Much Hadham, Bishops Stortford, Herts”. William Rist died there in 1831 with Mary apparently still alive - I have not yet researched Mary further.

John and Mary had five sons

Samuel - went to war with the 95th Foot and was killed in 1813 - see post of 26th January 2013.  He gets more "hits" on his post on this site than anybody else save one here - a fitting memorial

George - see next post

David - see later post 

Benjamin - he married Mary Brace at Tottenham in 1825.  There is no trace of the pair thereafter

Charles - see later post

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Frederick - obviously not a “blood” Ginn.  Frederick was the subject of a maintenance order in 1806 against a Richard Osborn.  In  1811, he is mentioned in surviving records, being given a New Testament and Prayer book that year (Charity papers: HRO).  That he lived seemed certain, his half-brother Charles naming a son after him.

He was finally found in 2010.  He joined the army and died in York Hospital (in Chelsea) for wounded soldiers in 1827 aged 22.   We were not at war then and I suspect he died of tuberculosis.  I do not yet know which regiment he joined and it would be a nice touch to find he joined the Rifle Brigade (the former 95th)

David Ginn/Gynn of Tottenham and West Ham d. 1871

David, son  of John of Thorley in my post of today, began life as a Ginn and ended it as Gynn.  He was five when his father died or disappeared and does not seem to have known his Dad's christian name.  He was barely eleven when his eldest brother Sam marched off to war and Dave seems to have believed that his Dad was called Samuel.  David has been the very devil to research because he never stayed in once place for more than a year or two - a habit that seems to have been passed on to his grandsons in the Merchant Navy.

He arrived in Walthamstow with his brother George during the last year or two of the Napoleonic Wars and married Elizabeth Asquith there in 1814 , soon moving to Bethnal Green where the first three children were born. 

 He and Elizabeth then moved to Tottenham (brother George being there again) and was there for some considerable period but I could not find him in the 1841 Census (it is a big area) and lost him, my research at that time being in the original records, none such being available online in the early 1990s.   In 2007 he was found in the online 1841 census in Hackney. At this time he was a Coachman.  He was there as Gynn (indexed as Gunn in the census on Ancestry) and was confusingly in the same building as a David Ginn and his wife and two children from Ireland.

I could not find him in 1851 for ages, then he turned up as Gynn (indexed as Guynn) and by then was a shopkeeper in West Ham  with wife Ann and a couple of servants (possibly employees at the shop) and lodgers.  It is considered certain that the 1848 marriage at St Pancras (David Ginn to Ann Bailey) is him although the wrong father (Samuel) is given and the name is spelt Ginn - because he gives his occupation as gardener, which is what his daughter Eliza (below) said of him the same year, and it is likely as said he may not have known his father’s true Christian name. 

In 1861 he has turned up as Gynn born Thorley in West Ham with a grandchild, what is likely a housekeeper  and a host of  (6 – one from Thorley) boarders and was running something like a lodging house.  He remarried Sarah Gifford or Jifford at West Ham in 1862, he a widower and she widowed .

Whether he invested what money he made and lived off of the savings I known not, but in 1871 he was in Bromley (Poplar) as David Gynn born Thorley (indexed as Grave) and was clearly in lodgings as a “Gentleman”  He died later that year in Poplar aged 76.

David and Elizabeth had seven children

David - see later post

Emma  - in Hackney in 1841.  Married  Thomas Huddell at Edmonton 1842

Samuel - I tracked this lad down by going to the Greater London Record office in 2006 and looking up the marriage.  He married at St Leonard’s Shoreditch (as Gynn)  in 1846, a gardener.  Sarah Boulton was born in Esher.  In 1851 they were in Finsbury, Islington  and had one child, Eliza aged 4. In 1861 I found them as Gywn at Camden Passage, Islington – Samuel was still  a gardener and there were no children there. In 1861, Eliza/ Elizabeth was in West Ham staying with her grandfather though described as his niece.  She married Charles William Douglas in Islington in 1866.

 My friend Michael Ginn discovered that Samuel died at the age of 41 in Shoreditch from a stroke (1845)

Eliza - married Thomas Mills at Spitalfields in 1848

George and Elizabeth - not in the 1841 census and assumed to have died young

Maria - died infancy

Charles Ginn of Harlow d. 1848

Son of John of Thorley in my post of the same date, I currently have no information on Charles until he turned up in Harlow in 1825 when he married Ann Rowe that year.  He was a labourer, still living in Harlow in 1841.  

 Harlow was then a village of course.  Sadly I know nothing of this family save names and dates at present.  Ann died at Harlow in 1843, likely in childbirth with a quoted age of 39.  Charlie soon followed her in 1848, leaving five orphans:  The surviving children later seem to have scattered across London and Surrey.

Mary Ann - married Charles Perrin at Newington in 1846

Elizabeth - in the 1851 census, she was a 23 year old servant in the home of Charles Yardley, a Chief Clerk in a Police Office.  The family lived at 3 Bayham Cottages, Marylebone. She claimed her father to have been a farmer when she married William Perrin at Newington in 1857

Frederick - went to live with his uncle George when he was orphaned.  See last post.  Fred will be dealt with in a later post

Sarah - witnessed a family marriage or two, a servant in Newington in 1871 when she was 39

Emily - in the 1901 census, she is in Newington as a domestic servamt under her maiden name, aged 59

Charles and Emma - died in infancy

George Ginn of Tottenham d. 1878

Son of John in my last post.  Given the challenges of his early life, George did exceptionally well for himself.  He was originally with brother David at Walthamstow where he married Elizabeth Callandine in 1818, then 25. 

They moved to Tottenham  where George set himself up as a market gardener in Marsh Lane. He held 40 acres of land in and around Marsh Lane,  the market gardens were apparently on the north side, and employed 6 men.  

                                               Tottenham Baptist Church in 1909

Tottenham Baptish Church (which still stands) was built in the 1820s and soon built a congregation of several hundred people, which clearly came to include George and Elizabeth.  This was to have significant consequences, because George brought up his nephew Fred after his brother Charles died in 1848 and the Baptist link was passed on,  some of Fred's Ginn descendants were Baptist missionaries wordwide, being sent forth from this self same church.

Tragedy struck in 1837 when Elizabeth died in an accident.  The pair had been out in their gig and had stopped for their horse to take water somewhere in Kingsland, Hackney.  An omnibus came by and startled their horse which took fright and bolted with Elizabeth on board.  Elizabeth was thrown from the gig but when it crashed it ran over her head and she was killed instantly.  The Inquest is reported in “The Times” no less. 

Nothing of her death at all was known until this information was discovered in 2008.  Elizabeth was 45.  She is buried in a Maze Pond Baptist Cemetery in Southwark . George remarried Elizabeth Cambridge some time after in 1839.

George and Elizabeth took in his nephew Frederick when Fred was orphaned in 1848 and it seems clear that Fred and Uncle George were close,   Fred initially helping George with the business and then taking it over, for Fred was later to also be a Market Gardener.  After Fred married his uncle George lived with he and his wife until George's death.

Elizabeth died at Tottenham in 1852, George dying in 1878 aged 84.