George Ginn of Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines died 1812

Given what is happening globally, this is a topical post.  Even more topical given that it is a new discovery.  But some will find it unpleasant, and given that my wife is part West Indian, I find it downright distasteful.  For this is a post about slavery - and the wealth it produced.

George here was clearly a son (I suspect there were several) of George Ginn of Nevis - see my post of  28th June 2020 who clearly prospered.    I know very little genealogical information about George jnr here, the Nevis registers have not survived or if they have are not yet digitized, but I suspect he was born in the 1750s and therefore on Nevis.

George Ginn senior died after 1765, I do not know when and as yet I have not found any entry in any existing and available records for Nevis dealing with any inheritence, but George junior followed in the footsteps of his father and became a Millwright and Carpenter.

Carpenters were essential on the Caribbean Islands, the sugar plantation owners needed them to build and repair the windmills that processed the sugar and to build and maintain the other buildings and infrastructure on the islands.  You thus find quite a lot of carpenters and they were treated with respect often referred to as "Mr" in the church registers.

I know that George married, likely about 1770 and I know that the couple had children, but most were clearly born on Nevis and sadly the entries are in general lost to us at present as I say.

St Vincent is in the Windward Islands, nearly three hundred miles from Nevis.  And you have to wonder what other islands these Ginn carpenters may have worked on, most of the records gone, a few not yet researched, because it is clear that the trades people who worked the plantations (George was not alone in this) were often itinerant contract workers, they went where the work was, and there was a lot of work in St Vincent in the late 1790s.

St Vincent was originally French (the Windward Islands include Martinique) but were taken by the British after the Seven Years War in 1763.  The British then attempted their own settlement and people arrived from the British Isles, many from Scotland.  It was not easy to colonise because, ironically, St Vincent was one of the few places home to a good number of the original indigenous Carib people of the Caribbean, and they did not like strangers.  So there was dislike and fighting and the Caribs kept pretty much to the north of the island, the British to the south.

With the French Revolution and the wars with Britain that followed, the French stirred the Caribs up against the British and supported and instigated more fighting which eventually led to the Second Carib War which ended in 1796/7.  During this the Caribs marched south, armed by the French, and devastated many of the sugar plantations and destroyed many of the sugar mills and related works to the east and west of the island.

British troops arrived in numbers and soon the Caribs were defeated and (not a glorious part of British history) expelled from St Vincent, the majority subsequently dying of disease.

St Vincent obviously had to be rebuilt, and word clearly got around because there appears to have been quite an influx of new blood to the Island, including George Ginn and his family, the first entry for them dates to 1797.

                                      Nr.  Calliaqua in 1827

We know that George settled in Calliaqua, a town to the south of Kingtown the capital of St Vincent.

The end of the Second Carib War brought the first period of stability to St Vincent since the British had acquired it.  The stability was good for commerce.   And it brought greedy opportunists, because when the Caribs were expelled their lands in the north were confiscated.  It was good land for sugar production and the Crown made land allotments and hived it off.  Among the opportunists who arrived were one William MacKenzie, a Scottish aristocrat and his relation Robert Sutherland, both of Ross-shire in Scotland.

These gentlemen and others acquired former Carib lands, bought hundreds of slaves to work them and did very well for themselves.  The Caribbean (unlike the southern "Cotton States" of America, were not really settled by the plantation owners.  The Planters of these islands were exploiters, absentee landlords, the plantations were managed on their behalf and worked by the slaves, the infrastructure maintained by resident whites like George Ginn.  McKenzie for example made his will while in Bath in England, dying and being  burried on the "Grand Tour" while in Florence, Italy in 1819 aged 43.  Sutherland was buried in Hastings in Sussex in 1828.  

William McKenzie owned the estate known as "Tourama", Sutherland those known as "Waterloo" and Orange Hill", a map below shows the general layout at the time quite clearly.

So where in all this was George ?  Well he was a cog in the wheel.  The Plantation owners were related to and in business with those who ran the Merchant Houses and Banks who financed the slave trade and the sugar plantations, the money they made slopped back  and forth between them like gravy in a jug.  Money made money, just as it always has.

George was born in the West Indies, had grown up in the system and I have no illusions, George had aspirations to be a Sutherland or a McKenzie for George was acquiring slaves.  And this is sadly not a passing mention for this gets personal - we have names 

British Library EAP 688/1/1/22

George had a workgang of black carpenters - Jacob, Douglas, Fortune, Peter, Yaco, Grey, Dublin, Robert and Pompey.

Then Daniel, Alexander, Isaac, Edward, Howell and Charles ("Field negros - men") Catherine, Juliet, Frances, Love, Amy, Jennet, Phillis [sic} Ann and Cudjoe "her  child" [a babe in arms) Siley, Jane, Nancy, Betsy, Biddy, Sukey, Fanny, Venus,  Harriet, Prudence, Cordelia, Patty, Belinda and Lucretia ("women" -some would be field and others house slaves) Dick, Archy [sic] George, Abraham, Richard, Nelson, Franky, Ned, Dary, Blackie, William and Roger ("boys") Annabella, Charlotte, Polly, Catherine, Pheby [sic) and Kitty ("girls")  

In all, George had 56 slaves.  The carpenters and house slaves apart, (he seems to have had little or no land) - the rest were hired out as "jobbing slaves" to the plantation owners, Sutherland and McKenzie doubtless amongst them.  This was of particular profit after 1807 as we shall see.  The vast majority of these slaves by the way were born in Africa - they had known what it was to be free.

                               Cutting the sugarcane

Things took a turn of the worse for the plantation owners (and thus the economy of the West Indies) in 1807 - because moved by public sympathy back home, the British government abolished the slave trade.  It was rigorously enforced by the Royal Navy, by far the biggest in the world - there were no more slaves coming out of Africa.  This led to a labour crisis for the slave owners as existing slaves were no longer dispensable and could not easily be replaced by "fresh blood".  It was the beginning of the road to emancipation of the slaves, and the planters knew it.  For George it meant that he got more for the jobbing slaves he hired to others.

George Ginn died in early 1812 - we have no way of knowing his age - but I would put him as 50-60.  He made our  "friend" Robert Sutherland (below) his executor, in my view because even if George had adult sons to succeed him (he clearly did) they would not be as well versed in the detail of investing and buying and selling as Sutherland was, for George left something in the region of £5000 - his slaves alone worth nearly £4200 and some of those probably already working for Sutherland.

Now the annoying this is that George left a will calling himself
"George Ginn Esquire".  But poor conditions in the Court Office in Kingstown where it has been stored have meant that it has not survived intact, although I am looking into whether anything can be retrieved.  But we know that he provided for several legacies as it is mentioned in the deed books, and we know that he provided that his slaves be quote "rented out" for a year or so to provide the income to pay those legacies and any debts he left at his death.  Then the capital was to be realised - ie the slaves sold, and Robert Sutherland sold them all to William McKenzie in 1813 - McKenzie to pay for them in yearly instalments of one third of the price over the ensuing three years - taking us to 1816.  Who got the money ?

I have no way of knowing whether George's wife survived him.  But at least one son clearly did.  

We do not know how many children  George and his wife  had, because he moved to St Vincent so late but

William

Is clearly George's son.  I know very little about him.  He was likely born in the mid 1770s and in 1797 he married Elizabeth Selby at St Vincent's Anglican Cathedral in Kingstown.  The old building had been destroyed in a hurricane and the new and current building was not completed until 1820, so it must have been a somewhat makeshift  affair.  He and Elizabeth had a son William Samuel baptised there in 1802 - his great uncle had been a Samuel of course and he may have had a brother of that name.

                                       Kingstown in 1837

The Selby name in the West Indies is unique to St Vincent.  A Thomas Selby  clearly arrived in the 1780s with his first wife and Elizabeth and her brother Tom jnr.  The first wife died and Tom snr remarried a servant from the Governor's House (at Calliaqua funnily enough) the Governor being a James Seton - below.

 Thomas Selby jnr died (accounted a Gentleman) but Elizabeth had two half brothers by the second marriage -  (Charles James and Joseph) who are listed as slave owners in Kingstown  in the earliest surviving  slave registers until emancipation in the 1830s.  There are people of that name still on St Vincent, supposedly those descended from people who working for the Selbys, took the surname post emancipation in the 1830s.

I have assumed that William was a Carpenter and this is currently all I know of him.  There is no Ginn or Gynn in any West Indian Slave Register which mostly commenced in 1813-7.  There is no further mention of him in the St Vincent records which survive forward to 1820 (there is then a huge gap).  The consensus is that he left the West Indies- the economy was in decline.  He could have gone anywhere - England, another Colony and the USA is a distinct possibility.  

NB "a son of George Ginn Carpenter" was buried at St Vincent's Cathedral in Kingstown in 1799. The clerk was not that efficient and he was clearly a young adult

Billett Genn of Ely d 1917

 Billett Genn was born to Billett Genn snr (see post of 4th June 2014)  ) in 1827.  In in 1841 aged 14 he was signed on as an indentured apprentice seaman (for 7 years) aboard the brigantine "George Robinson", a merchant ship which sailed for Newfoundland. 

 Billett kept a diary of his voyages which has survived, and after a short stay in Newfoundland he sailed for the West Indies in "The Garland".  In the West Indies he caught Yellow Fever and nearly died.

Soon after Billett arrived back in England, for some reason forgoeing the rest of his apprenticeship, he enlisted (in February 1846) into the 3rd Kings Own Light Dragoons, signing on for seven years as a trooper.

The 3rd had been stationed in India for some years and he was soon on the troopship "East Indies", sailing for India.  He fought in the Punjab Campaign of 1848/9 against the Sikhs.  The Sikhs have always been fine warriors and this and the usual thick headedness of some of our officers meant that there was some hard fighting, though ultimately the British prevailed and the Punjab was annexed by the British.  The 3rd Kings Own Light Dragoons were heavily engaged in all this, and their charge at Chilianwala is depicted below.

Billett was dishcarged back in London in 1853.  He received the Punjab Campaign Medal.

 This medal was awared to Billett's comrade in the 3rd King's Own Light Dragoons

 Returning to Ely, Billett became a Schoolmaster at Needham School in Ely which was a charity school for poor boys.  The old building survives (below) but is now used for teacher training.  Billett left and then returned and worked there for quite some years through to the 1870s.

Billett married Victoria Haylock, daughter of an Ely Miller on New Years Day 1867 - he was 40, she 23.  They had a number of children.  He retained the "cavalry" whiskers for much of his early and middle years as we can see below.

Even after leaving Needhams, Billett contiuned to work part time as a schoolmaster in Ely, doing so until the First World War when he was in his 80s.  He also continued to have an association with the volunteer forces in Ely, having loved his time in the army, and we see him below sporting his Punjab Campaign Medal

Billett and Victoria lived at 1 Lynn Road in Ely, the house of his father and opposite the Lamb Hotel.  I have been there a numer of times, it is now a shop

We see him and Victoria, he sporting a clay pipe in later life, but they are obviously visiting, as this is not their home. This is 1906, Billett is nearly 80 and Victoria 61. Below is Billet at nearly 90.

Victoria, who was well known in Ely in her own right,  died in 1913 aged 68.  Billett was the last of the Ely Ginn and Genn family to actually live there.  He died aged 90 in 1917, the last of a family to have been there continuously for 330 years. He was granted a full military funeral which is depicted below, the courtege is passing his house.

                                            

Billett and Victoria had seven children

Arthur Robert - the first Ginn in Ely  was Robert (1587) and his eldest son was Arthur.  The last Genn in Ely was Billett d. 1917 a descendant of Robert, so it is a little spooky that his eldest son was Arthur Robert.

Arthur Robert joined the 17th Lancers the "Death or Glory Boys" in 1898.  His very distant cousin Benjamin Ginn had left the same regment in 1891.

             17th Lancers on Parade before embarking for S.A

 Arthur fought in the 2nd Boer War and received the South Africa Medal with 4 clasps.

He subsequently joined the Bedfordshire Police and rose to Inspector.  He married and had issue and his son, the late Lt. Colonel Robert Seymour Genn left genealogical notes that have contributed research to this blog.  Arthur died in 1955

Algernon - actually Billett Algernon Manners Genn - hated his name.  I can scarcely blame him.  He went into Warwickshire as a young man and took an apprenticeship (Birmingham) and lived with a Haylock Aunt for a time.  He joined one of the Territorial battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment when he was 18 calling himself Albert.  He obviously feared his name being ridiculed.  In 1900, there were moves to encourage volunteers from the Territorials into the regular army, and he volunteered (calling himself Alfred !) into a volunteer company of the 1st Btn. Essex Regiment.  It is all the same man- he gave his place of birth and parents.  Like his brother he fought in the Boer War earning the South Africa Medal with 5 clasps.  This was issued to him as Alfred of course and I have noticed that the medal was recently sold in Australia.  He took early discharge which as a volunteer was allowed in mid 1901 and some months later married.  There were issue.  Algernon was later an Engineer and a Freemason.  He lived in Bedfordshire like his brother.  He died in 1937.

Margaret Elizabeth - married Frederick Bixby in Westminster in 1906

Victoria Blanche - married Frederick Chambers at St Mary's Ely in 1913

Florence Martha - was a Housekeeper in Dorset in 1891 but untraced thereafter

Marian Bewster - married Thomas Martin Phillips at Ely St Mary in 1915

Yerbury Emile - died infancy

Acknowledgements - I am indebted to the late Lt. Colonel Robert Seymour Genn for much of the information on Billett, and to Robert's daughter Helen for the wonderful collection of photographs of him

John Thomas Genn and the Genns of Oregon USA

 Due to the discovery (during Coronavirus induced Lockdown) of conclusive evidence linking the Ely Genn family to the Ely Ginn family (who came from Hertfordshire) I have extended my research efforts on the Genn family and have created new posts out of the old.

John Thomas Genn snr  you will find online as the father of John Thomas Genn jnr (1867-1939) but where he is mentioned there is no comment on where he came from, nor any marriage record for his supposed marriage to a Mary Bloodworth  nor any burial record.  There is a reason for that - the guy is fiction.  Until a correspondent wrote to me in 2023 I believed this online story.   John Thomas Genn jnr was the illegitimate son of William Mackinder Genn (see post of  2nd March 2014)) and his cousin by marriage Mary Bloodworth.

 William Mackinder emigrated to America, going out to New York on the "Neptune in 1862 with the Bloodworths, his cousins by his sister.  He is not indexed on the Ancestry passenger list but is there as William Gen aged 18.  For some reason they give his origin as Ireland - a typographical error.  He was indeed 18 went he went out. He and the Bloodworths went to Winfield in New York State, a small place ner Utica.

William enlisted from Winfield into the Union Army in 1862, very soon after his arrival. After William returned from the Civil War in 1865, he went back to New York State where Mary Bloodworth was still living with her family in Winfield (1865 census) near Utica.  They obviously had some form of relationship and in 1866 she became pregnant, the child was clearly born in the area in April 1867 but there appears to be no record.  John T jnr later (see below) gave his birth place as Utica and his father as William Genn.

                                 William M Genn in later life

The relationship broke down, William Mackinder departed to Chicago (where he is reputed to be in 1867) and Mary, a domestic servant,  named the child John Thomas Genn (which suggests some involvement by William - he had a late brother of that name) and was living with her sister Fanny and family in Winfield in 1870.

In 1872 Mary married a George Cox and moved to Illinois.  George then died and she remarried Thomas Cox who was George's brother - both George and Tom were born in England also.  Mary died in 1903.

John Thomas Genn junior married Clara Sophia Morse at Winnebago Illinois in 1890 and moved up to Oregon by 1900 or so.  He was a Real Estate Salesman, what we in England would call an Estate Agent.  He and Clara had two sons - Willis B. (known as Bill Genn) and Vernon.

John T. jnr died in 1939 in Eugene, Oregon and Clara in 1949.  Their memorials are below

When John T died in 1939 his son Bill (Willis) was the informant on the death certificate which is below.  John T's parentage is given.

As for their two sons:

 Willis Burr Genn (known as "Bill") originally joined the Merchant Navy.  He had an ancestor and two Genn cousins who went into Law enforcement so it was no surprise to me to find that he joined the Oregon State Police and rose to Sergeant.  He married more than once but I do not believe  there were children.  Bill died in 1954. See below

                                                                 Willis in 1919

                            Bill is seecond from left (1925)

Vernon Chathburton Genn - worked as a manager for General Motors and spent some years as Japanese Sales Manager and in charge of a factory in Osaka.  A successful businssman.   He married, had three sons and there are known descendants.  Vernon  died in 1953.

                                                            Vernon in 1915

Frederick Ginn of Tottenham died 1904

If postage stamp collecting, market gardening and baptist missionaries are your thing, then this post is for you !

Fred Ginn here was born in 1836 and was the son of Charles Ginn of Harlow in my post of 16th November 2014 and nephew of Samuel Ginn who was killed in the Napoleonic Wars (see post of 26th January 2013).  Fred was an orphan early on and he was brought up by his childless uncle George Ginn of Tottenham (see post of 16th November 2014 ) and effectively was his son in all but name. Fred  was almost certainly named in memory of  his half-blood uncle Frederick Ginn who like Sam joined up and died in the army.

Fred took over his Uncle's nursery in Marsh Lane, Tottenham and was a successful market gardener.  Marsh Lane like Cheshunt from where I come is in the Lee Valley, and until relatively recently the Lee Valley had a major horticultural industry.

Fred married Elizabeth Giles at Newington in 1863 and they had seven children.  Fred died in 1904 and Elizabeth in 1910.

Of the children:

Frederick jnr - I started stamp collecting briefly at age eleven and it sadly left me cold, but Fred jnr here started collecting postage stamps as a boy and it became his life's work.  Fred was trading in stamps from his home in Tottenham in his mid teens, ie the 1870s.  When I was at University (long before my Ginn research) I bought a  Victorian book which I later realised had Fred mentioned in it - he was exhibting stamps, exhibitions being a 19th century obsession, at Bruce Castle in Tottenham (below)

On leaving school Fred entered the tea trade, but kept up stamps as a side line, trading from home, and he became so successful that for decades he ran a shop in The Strand in central London opposite the Gaiety Theatre.

The Royal Philatelic Society say that he had one of the finest collections of American stamps in the world.

Fred jnr married twice but only one child (Dorothy) is known though there were likely more.  Dorothy was a Baptism Missionary in Asia and married a Baptist Reverend at Lahore Cathedral in 1929.

Fred junior died in 1938

George Charles - you might have thought that one stamp collecting obsessive in the family was enough - but there were three.  George and his brother Ernie started the well known philatelic company Geo. C Ginn & Co, they were in Moorgate in London and traded internationally and traded international stamps.

George married twice and had four children.  Geo. C Ginn & Co had a strong presence in Canada and George's one son Ivor obviously had no interest in stamps and emigrated to Deep Creek, British Columbia in Canada in 1923, became a dairy farmer, married there and had no less than twelve children.  There are a huge number of descendants.  George died in 1945.

Ernest Burnett - Ernie was a  partner with his brother George in the family firm of Geo. C Ginn and Co.  In the philately world this was a well  known and respected company.  He married and had three children including a son Arthur who flew airships in World War 1 (Royal Navy) 

Arthur then joined the family firm.  Ernie died in 1948.

Elizabeth - was a teacher all of her life.  She never married and died in 1956.

Lucy - was a paid companion to a socialite (a little bit "Agatha Christie") never married and died in 1946.

Ada- married and had four children and died in 1953

John - became an ordained Baptist Minister and Missionary in India, obviously under the continuing influence of his late gt. uncle George Ginn of Tottenham who was also a Baptist.  He worked in India, returned to England with ill health and had connections with Frinton Free Church below.  He married but I have no idea whether there were issue.  He died in 1935.

Robert Ginn of Nuthampstead, Barkway and Anstey died after 1680

 I realised in 2020 that I have never written this guy up, which was an omission, and also that to do so properly I would need to create a new post.  So here it is.

Robert Ginn was born in 1602, the son of Robert and Lettice, nee Benn - see my post of  23rd July 2012.  He was a popular guy - his uncle Arthur Ginn was clearly fond of him and Bob junior here had high hopes of a successful and prosperous life if he applied himself.

 

Two events happened to him in 1630 , when he was 28.  Firstly his uncle Arthur Ginn died and left fifty acres of land or more  in Anstey, Nuthampstead and Barkway which was to go to this guy.  Secondly, Robert married Sarah Ferris at Layston (above), daughter of William Ferris and Ellen of Layston (Buntingford) William being a blacksmith from several generations of the  same in Buntingford.  Ellen's maiden name was Peede, and as the wife of Bob's brother Francis also came from Layston and was called Peede,  I think we can assume Bob married his cousin.

At this point  Robert was in a very good place.  He and Sarah had settled down and were having children.  His father had a fair bit of land and Robert here had inherited a bit.  By 1642 this guy was the only Ginn in Anstey to be prosperous enough to be taxed in the Lay Subsidy of that year.

But I knew something had gone wrong, and I found out what it was in 2020.  Robert, like so many of this blog in the 1600s, had got himself into debt.  Owing money never works out well.

The truth is it was very easily done in the 1600s, as now.  There were no banks, and people with spare cash, having no safe place  to deposit it - put it in small loans to small traders and farmers secured by bonds.  It stimulated the economy, but it was also risky, because the loans could be called in and anybody with low liquidity could be asked at very short notice to sell assets to meet their loan. Potentially they could be ruined.

Now the strange thing is that I knew years ago that Robert here did not prosper after he was about 40, and I also knew that his father was selling quite a bit of his land in Therfield in the 1640s, and the answer is here.

A Richard Preist [sic] an Attorney at Law launched a court action in the Court of Common Pleas in 1642 (CP40 2495/6 National Archives).  He sued Robert Ginn, his brother Thomas Ginn of  Therfield, a William Smith  of Barley and a James Elliot of Lidlington in Cambridgeshire, all expressed to be Yeomen, for £30 a piece.  Not a lot you might think, but that amount could buy a house at the time, and to find it quickly would have put a strain on all of these men.

We do not know the result of the case, but given that so much land was sold I think we can assume that the defendants lost.

Although Bob and Sarah obviously survived, their fortunes took a marked turn for the worst, and in the 1663 Hearth Tax, Robert only had the one hearth, implying her inhabited a cottage, rather than the three or four hearthed farmhouse I would have expected.

Although Robert and Sarah used Anstey and Barkway churches, I am virtually certain that they lived at Nuthampstead, a tiny hamlet and not a parish on its own, being affiliated with Barkway.  I assume that after the court case this chap was best described as a Husbandman rather than a Yeoman.

Robert and Sarah had a good number of children, but they were not lucky with the survival of sons.  Sarah died "wife of Robert Ginn" at Barkway (below) in 1680 aged 71.  Robert was alive then aged 78.  Assuming that he did not died elsewhere, his burial entry is missed from the registers

Robert and Sarah had six children

Robert - died in 1663 aged 16 "son of Robert" and buried at Reed

Arthur - may have died at Barkway in 1668 aged 33 or he may (he is the favourite known candidate) be the Arthur who emigrated to Maryland, British America in the 1660s. His father's money from the land sales may have helped him by giving him a start when he came of age. The guy who died in 1668 could be another Arthur, known to me to have been alive in 1652 but untraced.

Martha - is untraced

Hannah - "of Anstey" married Daniel Brand "of Great Hormead" at the gorgeous Little Hormead Church (below) in 1663.  I have been there and it is lovely.   Daniel had two hearths in the Hearth Tax.  They had a few children then Daniel sadly died in 1677 aged 36 .There is no obvious remarriage.  I know that the couple lived in Hare Street at Great Hormead which still has a few thatched cottages, one of which was possibly theirs.

Sarah - two Sarahs married at Great Hormead in 1661.  One of them was this girl.  My guess is she married William Aldridge.

John - married Martha Rayner.  More on this in due course