Samuel Ginn or Gean of the Royal Navy and Greenwich died 1790

I would have loved to have sat and had a pipe and a pint with this guy in a Greenwich pub, as he had a few tales to tell did Sam.  He was in the Royal Navy before Captain Cook.

Sam was the brother of George in my last post, and son of William and Catherine in first post of  28th June 2020.  The first miracle is that he survived infancy, as he was orphaned with his siblings at the age of seven.

Who cared for Sam is a mystery.  He may have initially been taken in by relations, but he most likely was handed to the parish poor law officials (see below) as we know that ultimately they took responsibility for him.

Sam does not have a surviving baptism record, and nor does he have a surviving apprenticeship record, but what does survive, by some miracle, are a series of documents in the records of the Royal Navy that document his early life.  I have never come across anything quite like it.  Without the Royal Navy I would never have traced him.

                              Greenwich circa 1750

In his teens Sam Ginn was apprenticed to a Greenwich fisherman, Richard Wilkinson.  We know this, because Richard tells us in an affidavit he swore many years later.  He even went to the lengths of getting the parish clerk to check the baptism register at St Bartholomew the Less church so as to give the Navy and us full details of Sam's birth and parentage.

There is no doubt but that Sam was apprenticed out by the parish, that is he somehow survived until his teens and was then, about the age of fourteen (1731) apprenticed out under the Poor Laws to Richard Wilkinson.  We know this, not only because Wilkinson involved St Barts in his evidence above, but because whereas a normal apprenticeship lasted for seven years, until 1767 a parish apprenticeship lasted until the boy was a man of twenty four.   So Sam was effectively "sold" by the parish and bound to Wilkinson (who did not have to pay him  money and provide him nothing but his keep) for ten years.  What an existence.

What is worse, is that Wilkinson himself then effectively sold Sam to the Royal Navy, probably in the early 1730s.  He gave the Navy Board the original apprenticeship indenture (which I think may still be at the National Archives - I am looking into it) and expected each ship that Sam served on to forward the whole of Sam's wages to Wilkinson - you could not really make this story up !

So what we have here is Sam entering the Royal Navy in his teens.  It is impossible to research  "other ranks" in the Navy before the Crimean War (mid 19th century) because sailors did not have a "career" as such, ie did not sign up for a length of service until then.  The navy man was recruited for any ship and any voyage that might take him on and might then be ashore for a time.  So when a ship recruited, Sam would have joined the crew, when it finished it's voyage it would have paid him off and he would have been ashore until the next ship took him on.  So without knowing the ships ("chicken and egg") you cannot trace the man in the ship's muster and log records.  And the Royal Navy had a heck of a lot of ships.

But what I know at the moment is that Sam Ginn thrived in the Navy.  By 1739 there is reference to him being made a Boatswain ("Bosun") ie what was termed a "standing officer" being the best seaman in the crew save for the Ship's Master (ie the man - not the Captain - who effectively managed the ship).  There are a couple of warrants or appointments concerning this surviving and I am looking into what ships they relate to - as a Bosun was appointed to a ship.

But, ironically through the actions of Wilkinson, I know that in 1741/2 Sam Ginn was on board HMS Romney.  We know this because the Paymaster at Portsmouth (God bless him) had been so affronted upon seeing the Indenture and being told that he could not pay Sam ("now on the Romney") that he got himself in "a passion" said Wilkinson and defaced the indenture, paid Sam directly and sent the Indenture back to the Navy Board.

HMS Romney was a 50 gun 4th Rate ship of the line built in 1708.  She had been given a major refurbishment and relaunched in 1726.  Above is a model of a 1720 built (HMS Falkland) 50 gun 4th rate the model now in Greenwich Museum.  In 1742 the Romney was commanded by Thomas Grenville (later captain of HMS Falkland above and killed at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in 1747), after April 1743 by Henry Godsalve.

Now the interesting thing is that Sam obviously knew that Richard Wilkinson was coming after him, because when you research the Muster and Paybooks of HMS Romney 1740-1745 (ADM 33/352 at the National Archives) you find that Samuel Ginn is now Samuel Gean and had signed on as an Able Seaman, not being able to get a "ticket" as the Bosun.   Sam was not illiterate, this was an attempt to disassociate and distance himself from Richard Wilkinson (see muster entry below)

The British were pretty much always at war during the 1700s, and at this time we were embroiled in the War of Austrian Succession (don't ask) and (having a German King) were on the side of the Austrians, the old enemies being France and Spain.

HMS Romney was stationed at Port Mahon in Menorca (below) as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.

She patrolled the area around there and the Straits of Gibraltar, and in March1743 the Romney sighted a Spanish treasure ship, a ship with a very valuable cargo, some estimated it at nearly £150,000 sailing from Veracruz to Cadiz..  The ship was taken, Grenville was promoted up a notch, but more important, to Grenville and all of the crew at least, was the prize money.

The Admiralty down valued the prize, which must have infuriated the crew, but Grenville received about £30,000 getting a fair chunk of the pot.  A quarter of the pot was shared between the other ranks, and the ship having a full complement of 300 men, leads me to the conclusion that our Samuel here received between £50 - 100.  Sam's luck had turned.  The men would have lined up to receive the money in gold paid into their hats on the drumhead, and knuckled their forelock on receipt..

Godsalve now became Captain, but things went down a notch for all concerned in February 1744.  The British were blockading Toulon in France where a Spanish squadron had taken refuge.  France, not officially at war with Britain, was on the Spanish side and secretly planning an invasion of England.

Command of the  British Mediterranean Fleet had been given to a Thomas Matthews who had not been to sea since 1736 and had never had command of anything bigger than a squadron.  Second in command was a man called Lestock who could not stand Matthews, so things were not set to go well from the start.

The British Fleet attacked the Spanish who came out of Toulon attempting to escape.  The British outnumbered them, but Matthews muddled his signals to the Fleet and on a day with little wind the British fleet was scattered all over the place and could not "form line" and concentrate their numbers so as to crush the Spanish.  Lestock had a squadron, which included HMS Romney, but seeing Matthews in difficulty, Lestock smirked and held his ships back - some five miles (!) from the main British force.

Matthews knowing the situation was critical, seeing the Spanish escaping and the French fleet gathered in Toulon, engaged the Spanish with those ships he could bring to line, too few, and was given a mauling, upon seeing which the French fleet sailed out and finished the job.  The Royal Navy were accustomed to constant success, the public ("Hearts of Oak") disgusted, Matthews was dismissed the service and Lestock court martialled.  I think we can guess the words Sam Ginn and his mates uttered on the fiasco.

                             The plan of battle at Toulon

Sam Gean as he now was came home.  At the moment I am not sure if he ever went back to the Navy again.  He certainly went back to Greenwich where he quite likely used his prize money to buy a boat.

Sam married three times.  In February 1745 he married Mary South at Greenwich St Alphege by Licence, saying that he was 28.  Mary died in 1759 or thereabouts and in 1760, also by Licence (below) Sam married Elizabeth Scanlan which you can see bears his signature.

Elizabeth died in February 1776, and in November of that year Sam married a Mary Moore, again by Licence. 

As I say, we do not know if Sam returned to the Navy after 1745, the fact that there were no children from any marriage leaves the question open, but we do know that by the 1750s at least Sam had bought a boat and set himself up as one of the Greenwich Fishing Fleet, who sailed the east and south coasts of England and trawled their catch. They sold their fish at Ship Stairs and at the Greenwich Market which was set up in 1700 and is still active and on the same site today.

At some point Sam bought a house in Cold Bath Row in East Greenwich.  He is in the Greenwich Land Tax of 1780 as a property owner.  Bank of England records also show that by 1781 he had acquired a few stocks and shares. You have to admire the guy, from having less than nothing, Sam made lemonade from the lemons that life had given him.  

Sam Ginn or Gean  "Mariner" in the register, died in 1790, he was 72.  He left a will (PCC) calling himself "as Gentleman" and leaving everything he owned to Mary..  He is buried at St Alphege Greenwich which is today as it was built in 1712 and still known as "The Mariner's Church".  Mary remarried a William Wheatley of Greenwich in 1797.

George Ginn of Nevis in the Leeward Islands died after 1765

George Ginn here was the son of William in my last post and brother of Samuel.  He was born on April Fool's Day 1716 - which was an unfortunate start.  I first came across an entry that related to him on a very busy day of research at the Guildhall Library in the City of London, many, many years ago.  I had no idea who he was, made a note and moved on.  So it was a huge shock to find that he has a place here.

George was an orphan at the age of seven.  In the City, in an age of smallpox epidemics and numerous fevers, with the likelihood of  the Overseer of the Poor taking charge of him - he had virtually zero chance of survival.  But survive he did.   Something intervened.

 That "something" was the institution known as Christ's Hospital.

Christ's Hospital (which still exists but now in Sussex) was set up in the 1550s in Grey Friars in London in Newgate Street.  It was set up for destitute children, mostly boys, and particularly (as it turned out) for the sons of City Freemen, ie those members of the London guilds who died with their children unprovided for. whether as orphans or leaving a destitute widow.

                      The original admission & discharge for Geo.

                                       Christ's Hospital 

The parish of St Bartholomew the Less were left with at least three orphaned sons of William and Catherine when William died in 1724. Two, the parish dealt with in the way that parishes dealt with destitute children at this time, but George here the parish presented to Christ's Hospital who took him in.

Admission was granted at the age of seven and, you guessed it, George became a "Bluecoat" boy in 1724, the children wore blue coats.

By George's day, the School had also acquired premises in Hertfordshire of all places, actually in Hertford and Ware, and I know the premises well for some later buildings are still there.  It would appear that from the age of seven to twelve or so George would have been sent to Hertford, to learn to read and write and get a passable education.  The school (purpose built in Fore Street in 1690 (below in 1830)

was a rather grand affair.  The Hospital owned some similarly purpose built terraced cottages there and in Ware which, were each occupied by some ten or so boys and in the charge of nurses paid by the hospital, some of which were diligent, others less so.  The cottages at Place House in Ware are shown below.

  So for a few short years George, came "home" to Hertfordshire. He would have  then returned to Newgate Street.  There, in the evening the "Blues" would have supper in the Great Hall, below.  Somewhat reminiscent of "Harry Potter" and Hogwarts.

When  a boy reached 14 or 15 he faced a crossroads.  If he were gifted academically, then he could be chosen to stay on at the school to be prepared for university - ie Oxford or Cambridge at that time.  If he were not, and the vast majority were not, then he was put to an apprenticeship or indentured, often to the colonies.

                            Blue coat boy of c1720 from

                         an original illustration at Christs

George was indentured out in 1730, with the agreement of his cousin Anna Maria Harding, of which more below * . Christ's called her in to sanction George being indentured to the Plantations of Thomas Butler in Nevis in the West Indies no less.  The indenture was for seven years, assuming George survived the voyage (Child Apprentices in America from Christ's Hospital - original record above)

Thomas Butler (d. 1744) was a Merchant of Camberwell in Surrey.  His father, Captain Thomas Butler who died circa 1688 had acquired two sugar plantations in Nevis, one called The Grove and the other New River.  The Butlers are famous (or infamous) on Nevis and had estates there (there is a Butler's Estate there still) until emancipation of the slaves and later, because of course we are dealing with slavery here.

The slave voyages followed a triangular route.  The voyage would start in Bristol or London and the ship sail to West Africa where it would pick up it's cargo of slaves from the slave traders.  It would then sail across the Atlantic to the West Indies or North America, sell what was left of it's cargo (many slaves died en route) to the Plantation owners and then pick up it's new cargo of sugar or cotton and sail back to the UK.  It was hugely profitable.

The owners of the plantations in the West Indies were largely absentees, being on their estates on occasion, but mostly living in Britain and giving power to those managing the plantations on their behalf.  There would then be under managers, and under them the slave overseers and supervisory staff, the managers, overseers and the majority of the rest white, often born in Britain (because there was a prejudice apparently against the native, island born white man, a "creole" (who could also be of mixed blood) so the plantations needed a fresh supply of  young white men from Britain on a regular basis, to replace those dying of the numerous tropical diseases in these islands and those leaving for home or America itself.  This is just a synopsis of how this worked and for further information please read the excellent study of the team from Bristol University on the Mountravers Plantation on Nevis at this time - https://seis.bristol.ac.uk/~emceee/mountraversplantationcommunity.html

Now George must have felt a mixture of excitement and terror at going out to the West Indies in 1730.  This was the tail end of the period of "The Pirates of the Caribbean" (roughly 1680-1730) and Nevis "The Queen of the Caribees" had been devastated by pirates several times after 1700.

I despaired of finding any record of George once he had left Britain's shores.  The Nevis parish registers are not available.  The Nevis records generally have not been cared for in Nevis with the lack of any archives office locally.  Given that, and the fact that tropical disease wiped out most of the British emigrants and George was only fourteen when he went, I thought that was it,  Not so.

The British Library have been funding the preservation and digitizing of what they consider to be "endangered"  Caribbean records, and the University of Bristol under a  team lead by D. Small and C. Eickelmann have been trying, heroically, to preserve what is left of the records on Nevis..  I contacted Christine Eickelmann and, to my astonishment, she had George Ginn here in her notes.

This research is currently live, and in the absence of parish records is likely to take years and I may well be dead myself before I know that much more, but George got to Nevis safely and finished his time working on the Butler Plantations in 1737 or so.

At some point he was trained as a Carpenter and Millwright, ie the highly skilled men who build and maintain mills.  This was a vital job on the plantations, as skilled men were in short supply and the sugarcane was ground down by the mills as part of the sugar producing process.  Every plantation had at least one mill and most several.

 George clearly started working on his own account as we start to see court cases concerning him in the Nevis court records regarding small debts (see below), money he was owed for jobs done and money he owed for materials supplied, and these continue through to 1765 at least (I am still researching) when George was nearly 50.

Due to a similarly amazing discovery, it became apparent in 2021 that George Ginn both married and had issue.  The records of this are at present not available but work is apparently afoot to try to digitize the parish and other records on the Island for this period ( court and council minute records are now available), but until that is completed I cannot really move forward.  But we now know that he had at least one and likely more sons.

George obviously died after 1765.

Known issue

George jnr - see post of 15th August 2021

*  A Richard Harding married Susanna Van Limput at St Olave's Southwark, Surrey in 1701.  Susanna was Dutch.  A lot of Dutch people came into England when William of Orange became King in 1689.  The family lived near Grub Street, St Giles Cripplegate.  Richard Harding was a member of the Turner's Company. In 1707, the couple had Anna Maria Harding who later claimed to be a cousin of George Ginn in 1730. I do not know how.

                        from Christ's Hospital

Anna Maria Harding (there is a story within a story here) married Adrian Crownfield in London in 1735.  Except his real name was not Crownfield but a corruption of it - for Adrian was the eldest son and heir (born 1699) of Cornelius Crownfield of Cambridge, Printer and Bookseller (connected to the Cambridge University Press no less) who was a Dutchman!  Sadly, whilst Adrian had children from a prior marriage, he and Anna had no children and they both died very prematurely within days of each other in 1740, likely of smallpox.

Acknowledgements:  I am indebted to Christine Eickelmann of the University of Bristol and Clifford Jones and Ken Mansell of Christ's Hospital for their help and assistance in researching George.

William Ginn, Hatter of St Bartholomew the Less, London died 1724

William Ginn here was the son of George Ginn of Bermondsey - see post of  4th November 2018 .

In September 1702, at the age of about 15, he was apprenticed to John Thompson of the Feltmaker's Company.  He was to train as a Hatter.  William was literate and the original indenture survives (below)

I could not find anything about John Thompson until 2021, researching in London in any period is not easy.. Thompson was born in Manchester (to a Feltmaker) in the late 1660s and came into London as an apprentice Feltmaker in 1682.  By the 1690s he had set himself up as a Master and had acquired premises in the parish of St Bride (Bridget) in Fleet Street.  This surprised me because I knew that the feltmaking trade (which needed a large supply of water) was centred in Southwark and Bermondsey where it used the Thames.

But the City of London that I worked in as a lawyer nearby forty years ago, is not the City (save for some famous landmarks like St Pauls) that Bill Ginn here knew.  For I had reckoned without the Fleet River.

The Fleet (which means "flood" and it flooded a lot over the years) was, by the 1600s, polluted and stagnant.  But before the Great Fire of London in 1666 it had been used by the Hatters.  After the fire, with the City ruined and being rebuilt, Charles II ordered the Fleet to be cleared, widened and even made navigable for barges as far as Holborn Bridge.  So that was carried out and the Hatters came back, but Londoners are stubborn and within  a few short years the watercourse (it was now known as the Fleet Ditch) was polluted again.

Jonathan Swift (who wrote "Gulliver's Travels" ) also wrote a satirical poem " A description of a City shower"  in 1710 and mentions the Fleet in rain thus

Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,

Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud,

Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood

In 1720, the historian Strype in his "Survey of London" walked the area and said

"Bridelane cometh out of Fleetstreet by St Bridget's Churchyard which, with a turning passage by Bridewel and the [Fleet] Ditchside, falleth down to Woodmongers Wharfs by the Thames.  This Lane is of Note for the many Hatters there inhabiting.  It took its Name from St  Bridget's Church unto which there is a passage up Stone Steps...

Fleet Ditch

William Ginn would have become a Freeman of the Feltmaker's Company in about 1709, the Feltmaker's records for that and the few years following do not survive, but Christ's Hospital say that he did become one, though I doubt that he ever practised the trade other than as a journeyman, that is, not on his own account.

William Ginn married a Catherine (likely surname Foster) in about 1712.  I cannot find any marriage entry, it may have been wrongly transcribed.  The Fleet record transcription of a William "Ginn" marrying a Catherine in 1707 is wrong- the name was "Gunn".

The first records we have of William and Catherine is in 1713, when had a daughter Mercy at St James Clerkenwell in Islington, then they had a son William at St Bride's Fleet Street in 1714.

There is no evidence that they lived in St Brides, thought it tempting to think that Bill was working as a Feltmaker there,but shortly after this, certainly by 1716,  they were in St Bartholomew the Less Parish where they lived until they died.

Unfortunately, whilst the burial records for this parish survive for the period, the baptisms do not.  So while I have three names of children who survived infancy, all sons, there could have been more, though likely not more than one or two.

William does not appear in the Land Tax for Farringdon Ward Without, for that is where he lived, so I must assume the family rented rooms. That Ward included St Brides and, frankly, if he continued to work as a Feltmaker he was never more than a half mile walk to the Fleet Ditch.

.

                                    St Barts the Less

Hatters were not allowed to "hawk" ie sell hats, but some did and I query whether he always worked as a Feltmaker.  For there is an interesting record in the old Bailey records (1721) which is likely him, although the parish given for him is incorrect, so I cannot be sure.  But you will note that the chap sold hats (rather than made them) and given what later happened to this family it is probably Bill.  It could have been that the offence was committed in Bow and the record is in error.

The jury clearly thought that the offence was in doubt, given the punishment, but the court judgment would have ruined the  guy's reputation and his job prospects.

William and Catherine had a good number of children and then Catherine died at St Barts in 1723.  William followed the next year aged about 37.

So here we have a number of orphans, none of them older than 10. They were split up, likely never saw or ever heard from each other again, but they are reunited 300 years later here. What should have logically happened at such a time to these kids is that they go to the "Parish Overseer of the Poor" who would then in the nature of things negelect them and they likely die within a year or two.  That is not however what happened - a miracle occurred..  The story will be continued over the next couple of posts.

William and Catherine had at least five children

William - born in 1714.  He seems to have survived infancy but at the moment I cannot trace him for sure.  I would assume that the parish took him like they did his brothers and he may, just may, be the William Ginn I have in Henry Cornwall's Regiment of Marines in 1745.  Work continues.

Mercy - born in 1713 and died in infancy at St Barts in 1716.

George - born in 1716.  See next post.

Samuel - born in 1717.  See later post.

Foster - 1722 - died infancy at St Barts