Do you know the Sugar Baker?

In today's research I came across an occupation that was new to me. Just what is a sugar baker? As it turns out, a sugar baker was really an importer/trader of sugar; more along the lines of a merchant. They would import sugar from the Caribbean, refine it and then sell it on to their customers in England.

I don't actually know very much about George Leech. In February 1624 he married my 10 x great-aunt Margaret Bridges in the parish church of St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney in London. After their marriage they settled in the parish of St Helen Bishopsgate. Here they had at least two children. Katherine and George. Katherine was baptised at St Helen Bishopsgate on 23 August 1629 two days after her brother George was buried. According to the parish register young George was drowned in a sink in his father's house. Maybe poor Margaret, still recovering from the birth of her daughter, had been unable to supervise her young family as she would like.

Certainly George the Sugar Baker was dead by 1639 because at this point Margaret remarried a gentleman named Bevill Prideaux . She died in 1663 leaving her daughter Katherine, who had married a gent called Henry Gould of Pinner, executrix of her will. I am guessing that as Margaret's will states her place of abode as Harrow on the Hill that she might have been living with her daughter and son in law as Pinner and Harrow on the Hill are very close.

 By Roger Vander Steen [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

A couple of other unrelated but interesting facts I picked up are that St Helens Bishopsgate was the parish church of William Shakespeare in the 1590s, so about 40 years before the Leech family were worshipping there. Also, it is one of the only City of London churches to have survived both the Great Fire and the the Blitz.

Jane Austen - No NOT that one!

It is always amusing to discover an ancestor that shares a famous name. This one is even sweeter as she has been very elusive for a long time. Jane Austen is my 9 x great grandmother and it was only through a series of fortuitous wills and the appearance of the name Austen as a first name that I have been able to definitely identify her. 

Jane was born in Tadmarton in Oxfordshire in about 1605 to John Austen and Susannah. I have her as the eldest of six children. In about 1625 she married a chap called John Goodwin who had been born in the nearby village of either Epwell or Alkerton. I have not yet found a marriage record but it is quite clear from the wills of her father, mother and brother that this is indeed what happened. 

Jane and her husband John had their first two children, Susannah and William, while they were still living in Oxfordshire. They were baptised at Tadmarton in 1628 and 1629 respectively. Some time in the early 1630s the young family moved to Combe, a hamlet close to the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, where John was eventually employed as a steward on the estates of Sir Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden. Between 1633 and 1642 the Chipping Campden parish registers show baptisms for another seven of John and Jane's children - Elizabeth, Mary, Hopestil, Constance, Nathaniel, Martha and James. I have also identified another three children from wills, burials and marriages - Hannah, John and Thomas - but have not yet discovered baptism records for them. Our ancestor is Martha, who married Thomas Bridges in 1664.

The Goodwin family were peripherally involved in an intriguing incident in English history, an enigma which has remained unsolved for nearly 350 years. Known as "The Campden Wonder", it is considered one of the most baffling "murder" cases of all time.

The steward of the Noel estates, William Harrison, disappeared and was feared murdered for the rent money he was collecting. His servant confessed to having robbed and killed his master and also implicated his own mother and brother in the crime. Despite the fact that no body was found, the three were tried, convicted and hanged and John Goodwin was employed to manage the Noel estates. Two years later the supposed victim returned home, safe and well. He claimed he was kidnapped by three unknown horsemen and, aged 70, sold into slavery in Turkey, where he eventually escaped and made his way home. For a more thorough account of The Campden Wonder and the people and places involved I can recommend some time spent browsing here.

There is a much smaller mystery of when did Jane Austen die. Clearly it was on or after about 1642 and the last recorded baptism of her children. John Goodwin, her husband, died in April 1669 and was buried at Chipping Campden. 

High Street, Chipping Campden 2017. Elizabeth Viney.