Philip Ginn jnr of Bishops Stortford d. 1715

As the eldest of the three brothers, Philip Ginn jnr inherited "The Pewter Pot" when his father died in 1684 as related in the last post. Like his father before him, Philip was a Tailor; at the same time joining this occupation to running an Alehouse.  He married a lady called Margaret Grave (sister of Martha Grave who married his brother Aquila and daughter of William & Margaret Grave, Poulterers of Sawbridgeworth) in about 1690, though I have been unable to trace a marriage entry.  Margaret was born in 1670 and therefore a trifle underage when they married. 

Her parents have been researched a little as two Ginn brothers married two Grave sisters and the links are interesting.  As I say, William Grave was a poulterer, the Grave family being quite large in Sawbridgeworth.  William married a lady called Margaret during the Commonwealth period and proceeded to have eight daughters, four of whom survived.  Of these, Margaret (1670) married Philip here, Martha (1661) married twice, her second husband being Philip’s brother Aquila,  Grace (1673) married James Curtin of Sawbridgeworth in 1692 and then William Baron at Sawbridgeworth in 1708 and Joan (1675)  married Thomas Mumford als Muntford of Aythorpe Roding at Hatfield Broad Oak in 1695.  William Grave himself died at Sawbridgeworth in 1685 and left a will (ERO) The family were close and the inter-relationships were of some confusion to me (various family members being mentioned in Ginn wills) until the discovery in 2006 or so of the 1716 deed (DE/Z120/44686 at the HRO) which mentioned all four sisters at the same time and enabled me to work out how the Grave family and all their various kin fitted in to the Ginn story.

This couple had a gigantic family, most of whom failed to survive infancy.  There are no Ginn descendants of this man, there were no surviving sons, but there are most certainly descendants through the daughters and the family have always greatly interested me and new information has come to light as recently as this year.
  
So, Philip and Margaret lived a quiet life in North Street, Bishops Stortford had a huge family and no doubt socialised a great deal with the Grave family and Philip's brothers Aquila and James. 
 

Philip Ginn (like his brothers) was quite educated, he could write a very good hand.  He was not, sadly, immune to the various epidemics that periodically beset Bishop's Stortford, and had claimed his father and sister and  unfortunately became ill in early 1715 and died the same year, he was 49. It was probably smallpox again.

Philip’s early death provoked a bit of a crisis.  He left a will (ERO) the original of which survives and the last page with his signature is shown above and made various bequests, chiefly to the children, many of whom were underage when he died.   Margaret was left with the pub to run and a number of young children.  She also had to pay the bequests.

It is not totally clear what was happening between 1715 and 1733 but they seem to have mortgaged the pub.  We are not on clear ground until 1733 (from which date there are surviving deeds) at which point James Ginn and John Edwards (Philip's son-in-law) appear to be paying off the mortgage for £83.  We are left in no doubt that John Edwards provided most of the money, because the pub was put in trust for him.

I have no information on when Margaret died – she was alive in 1716.  I have assumed that she left Stortford with one of her daughters, although her burial entry could be missed from the register. As some of her daughters went to London I have considered  a possible entry at St Leonards Shoreditch in 1746 but the woman is given as 63 and our Margaret was 76.

"The Pewter Pot" passed into the hands of the Edwards family as will be briefly related below.

As I say, Philip and Margaret had a huge family but only six  survived:  

Ann -  Ann Ginn married John Edwards of Bishops Stortford in about 1724.  I have not yet found a marriage and it is not impossible that he was her second husband.   John was a Tailor (who also ran "The Pewter Pot").  They had a number of children including three sons named after her father and Ginn uncles, Aquila, James and Philip.  John died prematurely, in 1747 (see Will ERO). Ann also, she died in 1749, aged 54 (see Will ERO).  "The Pewter Pot" was inherited by their eldest son, Aquila Ginn Edwards and there is a heck of a story here.


Elizabeth - the second of her name, she married William Knott a weaver of Saffron Walden in 1724.  Although a William Knott died as SW in 1729, in her Uncle Aquila's will drawn in early 1739 she was still said to be married to William. 

Martha - it  has taken  me 23 years to trace her, even with the clues as to her husband in Ginn wills – the record of the marriage was simply not available.  Martha Ginn married James Sutton at  St Leonard’s Shoreditch in 1730.   James was a Tailor - no surpise there.  They lived in St George in the East parish in London (effectively Wapping) which was a new parish and had a new church

 and had  known children:  Margaret 1732, James 1734 (d) William 1736, Elizabeth 1739, Ann 1741,  at which point Martha was 42. They lived in Church Lane which became Backchurch Lane in Victorian times.   At this time the area was relatively rural though was developing swiftly.  James Sutton (Tailor) died in 1741 at St Georges.  I am working on what happened after that.

Margaret - the second of the name, she was alive and still a spinster in 1739 when she was 36.  I have not traced her.

Mary - as of writing this blog she is still being researched and what follows are my "work in progress" notes. She was known in early 1739 (Ginn wills) to have been the widow of a Humphrey Hill and in 1742 to have been the wife of someone with the surname Hermon.  I tried to trace her, considering Essex the most likely bet and had no success at all.

In 2012 I purchased the trade token of her gt. uncle Richard Ginn (who had had the “Half Moon” Alehouse) and whether this brought me spooky luck or not I have no idea, but exactly the next day after it arrived I traced her.

I was idly writing up the notes of her sister Martha (above) when I noticed that on the same page as the marriage of Martha in St Leonards Shoreditch there was the marriage of a Mary Bridges to a Humphrey Hill, scarcely a common name.  I then did a search for a marriage of a Mary Ginn to a Bridges and found a Fleet marriage.  Then, having scoured the transcribed Fleet Chapel registers (which had helpfully been incorrectly indexed) I found the original marriage entry.  A chinese puzzle solved !!

Mary Ginn married John Bridges (a gardener from Cheshunt in Hertfordshire) at the Fleet in London in 1724.  She was 19 and thus under age which may have led her to the Fleet as the marriage may not have met with Mum’s approval.  The Minister (if indeed he was a proper minister) was John Evans so the couple likely married at the tavern called “The Fighting Cocks” in Fleet Lane, Evans apparently doing a lot of his business there.

John Bridges was likely born to Peter and Susan (nee Walker) at Cheshunt in 1699 and there is no evidence the couple returned to Herts.  They likely settled in London.  No children have been traced but John Bridges died in the late 1720s, possibly dying at Eagle Street, Holborn in 1726 or maybe (even) being the John Bridges transported for grand larceny (Old Bailey records) in 1728, in any event his being off the scene by 1730 or so.

In 1731 Mary married Humphrey Hill at St Leonard’s Shoreditch.  By 1737 the couple were at St Nicholas Olave in the City where they had a daughter Mary that year. This church (on the west side of Bread Street Hill) had in fact burnt down in the Great Fire and was never rebuilt but the churchyard was used and the parish combined with St Nicholas Cole Abbey. From what I can gather, Humphrey was a good deal older than Mary  (26 in 1731) Humphrey being entitled to be entered into the Company of Merchant Taylors but  actually entered into the Company of Weavers in 1704 and it seems likely he was a middle aged widower and known to her sister or one of the other tailors or weavers in this family. Unfortunately Humphrey Hill  died at St Nicholas Olave in 1738 and Mary was a widow again. She either married or unofficially got together with someone with the surname Hermon by the year 1742 but I have not traced her again yet. In fact I was delighted to trace her at all 

                  Bread Street Hill with St Olave churchyard to right

Susanna - the second of her name, was still a spinster in 1739 when she was 28.  She may have gone to London with her sisters and died  at Holy Trinity the Less in 1745 - it is speculation.

Philip - two sons of this name died in infancy

Grace - one died in infancy and though the second survived she was dead by 1739. 

William - died in infancy

Philip Ginn of Bishops Stortford d. 1684

Philip Ginn was another son of Aquila Ginn of Great Hormead, mentioned in my post of 14th August.  He was a Tailor.  In 1663 he married a lady called Elizabeth at Great Hormead church: unfortunately her surname was missed from the register.

We can plot the movements of this man very precisely. In late 1663, possibly early 1664, he moved to Bishops Stortford.  He and Elizabeth took up residence very close to Philip's brother Richard, in North Street.  This property had just one-hearth in the 1664-6 Hearth Tax, but I have reason to doubt that it was the same property as Philip later owned, or possibly he had it enlarged.

In 1664, Philip and Elizabeth had their first child, a daughter.  At this point things were going quite well for them.

In the summer of 1666, to be precise from June to December, the Great Plague swept through Bishop's Stortford.  It killed 231 people, some one-fifth of the population.  Philip and Elizabeth did not wait around.  Elizabeth was pregnant, and Philip rushed her and his daughter to Great Hormead, to the relative safety of his parents' isolated house at Little Hormead.  It was a wise move.

 Philip Jnr was therefore born in Great Hormead, away from the contagion.  When the danger was over the couple returned to Stortford.  They were not to be so lucky the next time.

At some point, Philip started to use a property in North Street as a Tavern.  As I said, t is very doubtful that it was the same one-hearthed property mentioned in the Hearth Tax (unless he extended it) because there are later indications (chiefly in the Land Tax) that it was the size of "The Half Moon", i.e. a substantial place.

I have assumed that Philip's opening up the Tavern had something to do with the death of his brother Richard in 1670. Perhaps Philip acquired the brewing equipment, or just saw a business opportunity.  It is possible that Aquila (in Great Hormead) wanted an  outlet for his brewing barley and supplied the grain, Philip clearly brewing his own beer.

So, Philip opened up what he decided to call "The Pewter Pot", known as "The sign of the Pewter Pott" in contemporary descriptions, the Inn sign being painted with a pewter tankard.  The tankerds of these alehouses were themselves often inscribed with the name of the Inn, to avoid theft.

 

A contemporary tankard from a London Inn

  It is mentioned very briefly in Joe Smith's "Bishop's Stortford Hostelries”.  The writer says that nothing is known of it but, n fact, a whole series of deeds (from 1733 ) have been given by the brewery to the HRO.

"The Pewter Pot" was also in North Street.  The deeds refer to it as bounding North Street "towards the East", so it was on the west side; as was "The Half Moon”.

Bishop's Stortford was a major Herts market and malting town.  Before 1800, it sent more malt to London than any other town in England. It was also on a major route north and many well known people, including Sam Pepys used to travel through there and stay overnight. It had so many inns, taverns and alehouses that it became a joke and poems have even been written about it.  However, the locals sank a few pints themselves, for on a rainy night in the early 1700s  you could have walked down the west side of North Street, going from pub to pub and not even got your feet wet. You would have started with the 15th century "George" (still there) and staggered to the "Chequers".  You might have made it to "The White Horse" (now a restaurant), but been on your knees by the time you got to the "The Pewter Pot".  By the time you got to "The Half Moon" you would have forgotten your name.  And that was just one side of the road!

As I have said, the implication of later records is that the pub was quite large.  In 1768 one of Philip's descendants split it into two parts: one part (towards the south) being the pub, which he sold, the other (to the north) being a property which he continued to live in.  There was a large (beer) cellar under both; that gave the lawyers some worries.

I have made extensive efforts to prove exactly where the pub was, without success.  It does not seem to have been bounded by one of the other pubs (whose surviving deeds are the main points of reference) but North Street is not very long, it had less than 30 properties in the old days, and my feeling is that "The Pewter Pot" was near the "White Horse” which still stands pretty much as it was built.

Philip and Elizabeth had just the four children.  I have assumed that Elizabeth was in her early thirties when they married.

As I have said: Stortford was unhealthy.  Epidemics were common.  They had a particularly savage smallpox epidemic in 1684 which still lives in Stortford folklore as some families were wiped out  Unfortunately (having escaped the Great Plague) Philip and his daughter were caught in this epidemic and Phlip Ginn died of smallpox aged 47, his burial entry is marked with the smallpox "x". I have assumed that running an alehouse in the 17th century was a good way of meeting somebody carrying disease.

Philip's death left the family in turmoil.  His eldest son (Philip Jnr) was 18, and it seems clear that he and his widowed mother ran the pub from then on.

There is no record of what happened to Elizabeth, neither her death entry or a note of a remarriage.  I would be very surprised if she had married again, and assume that the death entry is simply missed. The details of what followed will be dealt with in the next post.

Philip and Elizabeth had four children:

Philip - see next post

Elizabeth - she died of smallpox in 1684; she was 20.

Aquila - see later post

James - see later post

John Ginn of Cape Town, South Africa d. 1819

John Ginn here was a direct  descendant of William Ginn in my post of  4th September.  More details of the intervening years will be disclosed in due course.

John was to be one of a number of the Ginn family of Hertfordshire that saw service during the Napoleonic Wars.  In April 1797,  John joined the 23rd Light Dragoons, a light cavalry regiment which was largely Irish.  I do not know where he enlisted, merely that he did.  The regiment did not see any active service that I can see and was disbanded in 1802, partly because of the Peace of Amiens and partly because of the fact that the Irish dragoons were considered unruly, the 26th Light Dragoons being renumbered the 23rd.

For three years John drifted, then in August 1805 he was at Stratford in East London where he re-enlisted into the 83rd Foot , yet another Irish regiment !  They obviously suited him.  The muster for the 2^nd Btn of  the  83^rd shows that he was recruited by a recruting party who went out from Chichester to Tilbury Fort.  He was 5ft 7, hazel eyed, with a dark complexion and brown hair.  By trade he had been a Labourer.

                         British Dragoons in Napoleonic Wars

In August 1806, he was transferred to the 1^st Btn of the 83^rd Foot and sent out to Cape Colony, South Africa as it is now.  The British had taken Cape Colony by force in a military expedition of December 1805/January 1806 as shown below, which had involved the 1^st Btn 83^rd Regiment who had stayed on as a garrison to secure the Colony against the French.

The man led a charmed life as had he stayed on with either the 23^rd Light Dragoons (cut to pieces in fierce fighting in the Peninsular War and sent home, and once reinforced later involved at Waterloo) or the 2^nd Btn 83^rd Foot (subsequently heavily involved in the Peninsular War) he would likely not have survived the Napoleonic Wars unscathed.  As it was, he spent the period 1806-1818 on garrison duty in various places in the Cape of Good Hope and does not seem to have been involved in the Xhosa Wars, was discharged to pension in 1818 and decided to stay on in the Colony.

A number of Ginn family members went to South Africa at various times (some are still there), the next (excluding likely soldiers) being a John Ginn from Hertford who went out in the 1850s, but John here was the very first Ginn in the Colony.

Various people helped me try to trace him once he left the army, and special thanks to Charles Fison who indexed the relevant register and emailed me the entry, for John died in Cape Town in 1819 and is likely buried at the Anglican chapel in the Castle of Good Hope there (shown below), there being no Anglican church at the Cape until some years later.  He was 40.  Ironically, I visited the castle some years ago being ignorant of the connection at that time. 

There is no indication John ever married but I cannot entirely rule it out, his having had a fairly settled garrison life. I was glad to have traced him.

Arthur Ginn of Bocking d. 1748

Arthur here, the brother of Thomas in my last post, has the title of being the last Arthur Ginn.  Not the last in this blog, nor the last to be mentioned here in the Fyfield family, but the last surviving Arthur Ginn to be a direct descendant of Robert Ginn in my post of  25th June,  a series of Arthurs that covered nearly 250 years.

Arthur was left £100 in his father’s will of 1687.  Both  Clarks and Gibbs were charged with the payment

In 1702, the Deeds report that Arthur agreed to take £80 in full settlement of his inheritance, £40 from Fenwick and a £40 bond from his brother Tom.  It seems questionable whether the second £40 was ever paid given Tom's financial troubles and his death in 1707.

Arthur was supposed by me to have led an uneventful life, (and in truth I knew little about him though had traced his burial) and then as little as a fortnight ago I found out something quite surprising about him, so it is wise in genealogy to keep an open mind.

Arthur was in Waltham Abbey in Essex in 1722, he was a servant (ie an employee - likely a clerk or in  the shop) of a William Marriot who had a tallow chandler's business in the High Street, not far from the Abbey Church.  Arthur was then 42 .  He had managed to get a certain Ann Waller of the town pregnant and in that year the child was born.   Arthur initially stood up to his responsibilities, admitted fathering the child and obviously at first instance had thoughts of marrying Ann as the child was baptised "Arthur Gin".  

Unfortunately things deteriorated rather badly after that, the relationship fell apart, Ann seems to have decamped to London and next we hear is the burial of  little Arthur "Arthur Gin a foundling of St Leonards Shoreditch London" who had obviously been abandoned and left to the parish to bury late that same year.  Little Arthur Ginn is buried at Waltham Abbey.

Because of the financial dealings of his sister in law Rebecca (see last post) Arthur, as he had had some financial interest in the property Clarks until 1702, was required to declare any such interest relinquished in 1725 and the deed is shown below with his signature.  He was accounted "Mr" on the deeds, being technically son of a gentleman, even if financially he could not be considered such.  It is possible that Rebecca paid Arthur any monies still outstanding from the second £40 as part of that deal.

 In 2007, I discovered that Arthur died at Bocking in Essex in 1748 with a quoted age of 70 – he was  68. There is no will.  With him went the last Arthur Ginn.