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.
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
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