Arthur Ginn of Kent Island, Maryland, British America died 1676

 Arthur here is the first recorded Ginn in America.  So 2023 is a remarkable year in that he has been found.  The return of the prodigal perhaps.  More American discoveries will follow.

He seems clearly to be one of the numerous Arthurs in my Study (a possible connection to Devon having been ruled out) but I have no idea as to which one though have a suspicion that he was the Arthur born to the yeoman Robert Ginn of Anstey and Barkway in Herts in 1635 see post of Feb 18th 2021.  We will never know. Twelve of the fifteen recorded Arthur Ginn references before 1837 come from this Hertfordshire family.

The third settlement in British America (after Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620) was on the Island of Kent (shortly after Kent County in Maryland) in Chesapeake Bay.  Kent Fort was built in 1631 and a small settlement of about 120 English souls was established in 1642.

The Crown granted the proprietorship (right to receive the income) of Kent to Lord Baltimore of the Calvert family.  If there were no settlers then there was no income, so Baltimore devised a way of luring colonists from England.  The government supported the move as they wanted England to settle America as quickly as possible as a buffer against any French plans to do so.

The scheme devised was the "head-rights" system, whereby any man (or woman apparently) who could pay for their own passage to America (cost about £20 - a substantial sum) would be  granted 100 acres of land in America shortly after arrival, more if he brought wife, children and servants - ie rights "by head".  The rights attached to the people who were brought our or "transported" so a man who had paid the passage of another could claim the  extra land.  And these rights were assignable, so effectively a settler could acquire a fair chunk of land if he could afford to buy the rights attaching to a person who was brought out there.

The scheme worked - people began arriving from England in greater numbers (early settlers seem to have been almost exclusively English) and by the 1660s or so it is estimated that there were some 600 English settler on Kent, more spreading along small settlements along the Bay on the mainland.

For Kent was an island of sorts, a small strip of land joins it to Maryland proper  as can be seen from the 1866 map above.  

We cannot be entirely certain of the date because the evidence is circumstantial (court records) but Arthur seems to have arrived in

Kent in 1666/7.  He was certainly there by 1668.  His voyage from England (likely from London) would have been very hard and taken two to three months.

What we know of Arthur is that he was certainly English, he was literate and he must have come from the Yeoman class or similar, as he paid his own passage out (cost about £20) and was prepared for a very tough life working on the land.  This would fit the guy from Anstey.

The Kent County court (there was no actual Court House until after Arthur's death) likely met in taverns and alehouses as it often did in England.  It dealt with business matters, debts etc and Arthur is mentioned both as a juror and as a party to legal proceedings.  I was surprised to discover that English coinage was in short supply in all of the American colonies, so tobacco was used as the barter currency of choice.

                         Land Patent to Arthur 1672 (Maryland State Archives)

Arthur made an application for the 100 land grant that, as a free settler, Baltimore had promised him - and so in 1670 he obtained a Warrant acknowledging his claim.  In 1671 the land was surveyed, and in 1672 he received the formal grant of the land.  The 100 acres were to be called Cony or Conny Hall (the alternative spellings were still used later) and the land was adjacent to the head of  Great Thickett Creek the name of which is no longer used and it took me some months to track this down.  The boundaries were marked on the corners by marked (apparently notches were cut in each tree in a pattern unique to each owner to mark them out) pock hickory trees.  The terms "pock hickory" was the English phonetic rendering of an Indian word, the trees now known as Hickory of course and still common on Kent.

Conny Hall would, of course have been a wilderness that Arthur was obliged to clear before he could farm or grow tobacco, the principal crop.  Kent was pockmarked by creeks and it was somewhat damp and marshy.  For this reason the various native tribes who inhabited it and Maryland generally (they were very friendly to the English) chose to use the waterways and fish, rather than make any attempt to live off of the land.

At some point Arthur married a lady called Alice.  There is  no evidence that he married in England so America is the more likely, particularly given that  at this time the head right was 100 acres per person who came over to the Eastern Shore.  But although a sort of Anglican church was established at Back Creek from 1652, there are scant records and no mention of Arthur.  So the marriage remains a mystery.

So Arthur and Alice would have been working hard to clear the land, build a rudimentary cabin (nothing fancy) and make a living. He seems to have employed the odd indentured servant or two to help him  There is evidence (a set of cooper's tools in his inventory) that he took up that trade as a side line.  From what I can see this was the most popular and numerous trade in early colonial America as barrels were needed for everything, from tobacco to beer and numerous other liquids.  There is also evidence he also went in for fishing, a major food source for the native tribes and, obviously, hunting.  There were a few essential farm animals and he was growing tobacco.

To my astonishment, I found out where Arthur's plantation was and I think I know where he lived.  A researcher of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Cindi Schmidt,  has mapped the plantations granted on Kent Island in the 1600s.  And the Upper Shore Genealogical Society have helped me a great deal.  Combine this with my own research and we have a story.

Cindi produced a map, superimposed on a 1862 map of the landmarks of the 1600s, and I have in turn superimposed on that shown by the hatching the rough location of Conny Hall.

It is apparent that at some point in the late 1600s Conny Hall or at least much of it reverted to Lord Baltimore, the Lord of the Manor.  This was not freehold or leasehold land, but copyhold of the manor (which concept is now extinct in English law) and my suspicion is that it reverted back for want of a surviving male heir of Arthur and Alice.

But, in any event, the land of Conny Hall was subsequently to a large degree incorporated in the Plantation (later farm) called Barnstable Hill, which survives.  By the mid 1700s both Conny Hall and Barnstable Hill were in the ownership of the Gardner family.  Both passed down through that family and in 1866 (see map above) Richard Gardner was the owner (he died in 1870) and you will see mention of R Gardner, he was living in Conny Hall and I know that the Gardner family had their own family cemetery there, containing grave markers and stones from the 1700s to 1900 or so apparently.  The cemetery was allegedly illegally bulldozed about 20 years ago because it obscured the view of an advertising hoarding from the road.  I think it likely that the Gardners occupied the site of the cottage that Arthur had originally built in 1670 or so !

Kent, like much of the Chesapeake Bay coastline was obviously damp, marshy with a lot of creeks and whilst very cold in winter, damp hot and humid in the summer.  There are 59 species of mosquitoes in Maryland and in Arthur's day the freshly arrived English settlers got malaria and died like flies if you forgive the pun.  Many did not even last long enough to receive their land grant.  It was only the constant replenishment of new arrivals and the second and third generations building some resistance to the disease that kept the colony going.

So it is perhaps no surprise that in July 1676 Arthur got ill, he had perhaps been on the island for ten years - it was almost certainly malaria.  He and Alice seem to have lived in rural simplicity.  If he is who I think he is, he was about 41.

Arthur left Letters of Administration to Alice and she produced an Inventory of his goods to the Court.  Alice would have taken an interest in Conny Hall for life, but if she died without a male heir then it would have reverted to the Manor, which it clearly did as widows apart, most manorial courts did not recognize women as heirs.

Arthur had led a simple life, he had his cooper's tools, his fishing equipment, a fur coat for the winter, a knot or ball of tobacco at his death (some weighed 100 lbs before being placed into barrels - which he likely made himself)) some farm animals and, perhaps the greatest comfort to him, "an old bible".  I am very glad to have found him.

                     Arthur's Inventory (Maryland State Archives)

Post script

Conny Hall and Barnstable Hill have been absorbed into Barnstable Hill Wildlife Reserve.  The land that Arthur broke his back trying to clear has gone back to nature.  I doubt he would mind.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Jennifer Abbott of Maryland State Archives and particularly David Baker of the Upper Shore Genealogical Society of Maryland for their help and assistance

Mary Ginn and the Bownest family - a mystery

As I type this post the research is fresh and the mystery here like that in a Michael Connelly novel (a favourite author and like me born in 1956).

In my last post, I referenced an indirect link between the Ginn family and the Bownest family of Little Hormead in Hertfordshire - there is another, but in this case a direct link - it is one of the mysteries that intrigue me.

The pertinent year was 1614.  William Shakespeare was 50 and living and working in London.  He had less than two years to live.  In that same year the Globe Theatre (destroyed by fire - a common occurrence in wooden and thatched London) was rebuilt.

The Bownest family were established in Little Hormead and were  there in the early 1500s.  Their origins seem to be obscure.  They were a minor gentry family that acquired a property called Stonebury (it no longer stands) which like Bandons in Anstey, was what we would see as a large farmhouse.

A Thomas Bownest died at Stonebury in  Little Hormead in 1577 leaving a will (PCC)  He had a second son John and it is was clearly this John who  married and moved up the road to Buntingford (a small market town - not a parish in itself but forming part of Layston, Wyddial, Aspenden and Buckland parishes) in the year that his father died.

Now the John who interests us married a Mercy Cook in 1577.  No marriage entry survives, but a Marriage Licence does, and we know that Mercy came from Great Chishill in Essex, just over the Hertfordshire border and not too far away.  John is described as of Little Hormead.

Mercy came from the family of Cooks in Great and Little Chishill that were minor gentry, owning land there (they had a lease of the Parsonage of Great Chishill ) and owned a house called "Osbornes" but also (including the Manor of Bottisham) owning land in Cambridgeshire, the Chishills being on the Herts, Essex and Cambridgeshire borders.  Her parents were Thomas and Margery and she had many siblings namely, William (the heir) Samuel and sisters Anne (wife of Thomas Meade) Katherine (Rowley) Elizabeth (wife of Robert Wallis) and Grace, the latter was unmarried in 1584 when Thomas Cook died (Will - PCC).   Her father modestly called himself a Yeoman, but he was a little more than that !  He bought Bottisham Manor in Cambridgeshire the year that he died (sold by son William in 1592) and had a lease of Chishill Hall Manor that eventually found its way to son Samuel.  It seems likely that the Elizabeth Cook who married Robert Ginn in 1559 (see post of 7th July 2012 ) came from this family and may even have been Tom's sister and thus Mercy's aunt. The Ginns had had a connection with Great Chishill since 1554 and the Cooks back to at least 1560 or so.  We are hampered in knowing more, because the Chishill registers do not survive for this early period.

There is sadly a great deal of nonsense about the family and Mercy's origins on Ancestry.  It looks like an American researcher or two had made claims that have been replicated in publicly available trees so many times that they have been accepted as fact.  The truth is a little more mundane, but fascinating nonetheless.

There is some evidence that the Cooks did not view the Bownests with quite the affection that the Bownests viewed the Cook family.

Thomas Cook's heir was a William who had married an Alice. By his death Willian owned the manor of Chishill outright. They had several children including two sons, but the children were young when William died too soon in 1597.  His will (PCC) was made in the presence of several witnesses including his brothers in law John Bownest and Thomas Mead.  But in the background was Will's younger brother Samuel, and, in 1612 there was a land dealing that  involved Alice Cook the widow, her eldest son Thomas Cook Esq (now in Cambridge) Samuel Cook and John Bownest. Alice had sold the manor of Chishill to Samuel Cook, her eldest son Tom entering into a quitclaim (it having been his birth right). The Cooks by the time were calling themselves gentlemen, which they were of course, William taking that title in 1597.  But in the 1612 Deed (Ref 4008 Herts Archives) they described John Bownest as a yeoman - ouch - he was far more prosperous than that.

After John Bownest married Mercy the baptisms of their children were entered into the Layston (Buntingford) parish registers.  At this point John was indeed mentioned as a Yeoman and there is some evidence that he owned the White Hart Inn in Buntingford which is still there, now a refurbished house.

But in 1612 John Bownest amassed the monies to buy Popes Hall in Buckland, slightly to the north of Buntingford.  This came with manorial lands and thereafter John referred to himself as a gentleman.

The Popes Hall of John's time is long gone - it was probably thatched and of wattle and daub on a timber frame.  It may have been destroyed by fire as a lot of these buildings were - but the reconstruction of the 1700s is there still (below).  I drive past quite often.

John acquired land in several parishes around and forming part of Buntingford and he also had land in Great and Little Chishill, which I assume came to him on marriage from his father in law.

John and Mercy had several children, including three sons who survived, in order of age these were Thomas, George and Samuel.  There were several daughters, including Mercy jnr who married William Faucet at Layston in 1611 and of whom nothing more is known, Alice who married William Norton of Bishops Stortford at Layston in 1604 (more of her later) and Frances, who was unmarried in 1615 but seems to have married subsequently.

John Bownest died in 1615 leaving a will (PCC)  As he had some manorial land in Buckland there was an Inquisition Post Mortem.

By rights his eldest son Thomas was the heir.  But Tom as we shall see had done very well for himself in London, so John, who clearly knows that Tom has other fish to fry in London and does not need, let alone want his inheritance, makes provision in his will for his lands to be divided up between his sons if "God forbid" says John, Tom turns them down.

What Tom did was to enter into  an agreement with his brothers in 1616, this was to divide the lands up as to who got what, and that deed ( ref:4009 ) survives, is at the Hertfordshire Archives and is shown below and then in subsequent detail.

The gist of this was that Tom effectively gave up most of the land.  His brother George Bownest, Gentleman got the lands in the Chishills and never married dying in 1650 (will PCC).  George also seems to have ended up with the Parsonage and thus the advowson in Thunderley (not Thundersley in Essex as seems to be reported) in Saffron Walden in Essex.  Their brother Samuel Bownest, Gentleman (who marrieed Helen Stapleton in London in 1617) settled at Wyddial where he took lands.  Nothing much further is known of him as the registers for Wyddial do not survive for this period - but George mentions the couple in 1650.

But it is Tom we are concerned with.

Thomas Bownest was apprenticed into the Grocers Company in London in about 1592, he became a Member of the Company and consequently Citizen of London in about 1600.

Now Grocers were not what we think of, they were wholesalers dealing directly with the merchants whose ships had come into port bearing foodstuffs from everywhere.  And it is clear that Tom intended to make his fortune cutting out the middle man.

The East India Company (a joint stock company) was born in 1600 to trade with India and the Orient.  The Levant (Turkey and Persia) and the Virginia (eastern America) |Companies soon followed.  These were exciting times for the English merchants, they were now trading in areas of the world that had been newly discovered or closed to them before, English ships were sailing the world and the roots of the British Empire (no apologies for that on this blog!) were beginning to grow.

And they were exciting times for Bownest too, because in 1614 he was introduced by another Grocer to the East India Company, he seems to have become involved in quartering and furnishing the ships.  Soon after he was a member of the Levant and Virginia Companies.

He married Mary Ginn in London, most likely the daughter of Robert Ginn and his cousin through the Cook family as I say (see post of 7th July 2012) that same year, ie 1614, and my suspicion is that it was a marriage of convenience, for appearances,  Bownest needing a wife to help him further his ambitions in trade.  And it was that that made Bownest somewhat distanced from his father's wish he take up his inheritance in 1615, in truth Tom had no need of it.

Thomas Bownest's sister Alice Norton lost her husband.  And she and two sons ended up in Virginia, British America, soon after - one of her sons was a Church of England Minister, but somewhat Puritan. Now Tom Bownest was not only a member of the Virginia Company, but he knew a certain Abraham Jennens, a Merchant and Ship owner of Bristol, who was also a member of that Company, heavily involved with trade in Virginia and elsewhere and a member of the Council of New England, caught up in the colonisation of British America.  Bownest must have know the guy quite well because he took Jennens' son Ambrose (Jennens had a ship "The Little Ambrose|") as apprenctice.  It is my guess that Jennens or his sons had some involvement in getting the Nortons to America, perhaps also other Bownest relations.

Bownest's rise was meteroric.  By the 1630s he was a Director of the East India Company.  I know that in that decade he explored the possibility of the English trading with Japan as well as China, but turned it down as the original involvement of the English in Japan (think the book and TV series "Shogun" based on a true story) had not turned out well "they [the Japanese] do not like foreigners" said Tom, and they were fickle, the English had to plan their woollen cloth exports in advance and "one year the Japanese favoured one colour, another the next".

By 1628 Thomas Bownest had moved out of the City of London and across the Thames into Putney. there are various surviving Certificates of Settlement (National Archives) that tells us that, but he still retained property in Hertfordshire.  Putnry was a boat ride from London and the disease and squalor  I am sure that Mary was dead before 1630, though I cannot find a burial entry.  They never had any children so far as I know.

Now something intriguing happened during the English Civil War.  Because the Mary Ginn who I think married Tom if I am correct came from the Ginn/Genn families connected to Huntingdon and Ely, and the men of those families I have proved were acquainted with Oliver Cromwell.

The first English Civil War ended with a victory for Parliament.  And in 1647 the officers and many men of that army came to Putney Church for what are known as the Putney Debates - to discuss democracy, its nature and the future of England.  Some great words were spoken "the poorest hee that is in England hath as much a life to live as the greatest hee" (Thomas Rainsborough) words that proved an inspiration to the Americans in 1776.

The men were quartered on local residents or lived in tents, the senior officers stayed with local gentry for a month or so.  Oliver Cromwell was Second in Command of the Army in 1647 - he stayed at the house of Thomas Bownest !  Did Tom know him through the Ginn connection ?

Thomas Bownest Esquire died in 1658 -  he is buried in Putney Church, where the Debates were held.  He was quoted as being 80 which indeed he was, the move to Putney had likely added decades  to his life.  His will (PCC) is very informative and taken with the will of his brother George gives an insight into the lives of numerous cousins and relations.  The guy may not have descendants, but his was a fascinating life.......