My family originate in Cheshunt and I was born and resided there for fifty years, so Uriah and I have walked the same paths many times. Indeed, my father attended Robert Dewhurst School 250 years after Uriah Ginn jnr did (see below).
Uriah was born in 1606, one year after Guy Fawkes met his fate. He was born in Cheshunt proper, but Cheshunt church (St Marys) was then and is still a long way from the centre of Cheshunt, which was a large village at the time strung out over quite a large area, perhaps three miles across, encompassing Hammond Street and Cheshunt Common at one end, the High Street and Turners Hill in the middle and Waltham Cross on the far south side, towards London. If you lived in the centre it was a long walk to Cheshunt church, and you could just as easily walk to Waltham Abbey which was across the border in Essex, across the River Lee.
It seems that Uriah initially settled towards Waltham Cross, because in 1635, aged 29, he married Mary Shepperton at Waltham Abbey (a lovely church) and had all of his children baptised there.
At some point though, certainly by 1650, he had moved to Turners Hill in Cheshunt which is close to the High Street and a stone's throw from the alms houses where his mother died. In fact her being there may of course have motivated the move or it could be that he took over his father's cottage, Henry having died in 1647. He was certainly back in Cheshunt "proper" because Mary died in 1653 and is buried at Cheshunt.
Uriah remarried at Cheshunt (where my parents married three centuries later) in 1654, his new bride was Elizabeth Cock "widow". Elizabeth was born Elizabeth Askew at Cheshunt in 1615 and had married a John Cock there in 1637 and had had several children by him. Although only 39 when she married Uriah, there was no evidence that they had had children until a document was discovered in late 2021. This was because the children were born during the Commonwealth (ie when Cromwell ruled in the 1650s) when parish duties were often neglected and baptisms went unrecorded.
St Marys Cheshunt
From the 1650s the Vicar of Cheshunt was one Stephen Tothill, who with a view to collecting tithes did a tour of Cheshunt in 1669 listing who owned what (Theobalds Park and Cheshunt Park excluded) and published his findings as the "Perambulation of Cheshunt (HRO) in which we find (Uriah was 63) -
Uriah Ginn holdeth by free deed as garden to Cock his son in law (stepson) a cottage a garden plot taken hereto forth from the lands of Elisha Garrett and a garden plot oute of the Lord's waste and lying on the north side of forsed lane
Uriah lived on the west side of Turner's Hill and south of Pentbrook Street, so he lived not far from the "Old Pond" as it is known, ie central Cheshunt. His son Henry having gone to London by 1669, he and his wife clearly lived with one of Elizabeth's sons, likely Leonard Cock. Owning his property freehold probably gave Uriah the vote, relatively few men passed that property qualification. It seems very likely he was his father's heir, Richard his elder brother having died in 1640.
Uriah Ginn died in 1681 and is buried at Cheshunt - he was 74. It is unclear what happened to Elizabeth.
Their children
Uriah and Mary had three children:
Henry - see next post
Mary - died in infancy
Christopher - a mystery. He was born in 1643 and is untraced. He may well have died young in the 1650s when the Cheshunt registers were poorly kept, but his brothers survived - so he may have done too. The name is somewhat unique this early on
Some American researchers online quote a reference for a Christopher Ginn in Virginia in the American colonies in the 1690s. I checked this out and the reference is spurious. The Virginia State Library told me that have no record of it and told me that they have no Christopher Ginn or similar in the indexes to early documents
Uriah and Elizabeth likely had at least two children but the only one known is
Uriah - he must have been born in 1659 or so, and he went to school. See post of 19th January 2022
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