Finding Joseph Nunn

Things have moved on since I first tried to identify Joseph Nunn of Mistley, who’d married my first cousin eight times removed back in 1741. He appears in the 1758 will of uncle, Joseph Nunn of Bures Hamlet, but the will doesn’t indicate whose son he was. I looked everywhere, trying to trace Jooseph of Bures Hamlet’s brothers, but being unable to find a suitable baptism for him, I couldn’t slot him in.

Recently (late 2024/2025), I’ve been transcribing Long Melford’s parish register and started to look into the Drew family because they’re related to me via the Canhams of Beaumont. I found a connection between the Drews and the Chinerys, the same family who are related to Joseph Nunn of Mistley because a Sarah Nunn married an Edward Chinery. With far more records available online these days, I decided to have another look at Joseph Nunn of Mistley – and I think I’ve found him.

Despite Suffolk baptisms being available from 1650 through the Suffolk Family History Society (FHS), I still couldn’t find Joseph’s baptism. But I’d never looked for him on the Essex Wills Beneficiaries Index (another county FHS effort, this time from Essex). And in the index, I found a Joseph Nunn mentioned in the 1743 will of Edward Woodthorpe of Wakes Colne.

The Woodthorpes

In the process of tracing Joseph of Bures Hamlet’s brothers, I’d find out that one of them, Henry Nunn of Bures Hamlet, had married Rachel Woodthorpe, a single woman, in Wakes Colne in 1717.^[1]There is a Woodthorpe pedigree in the Visitations (archive.org), but it only says that Rachel married someone by the name of Nunn, and gives no further information. I’d found one child for them, in my Bures St Mary’s transcriptions: Rachel, baptised there in 1721. But she was their only child, as far as I knew. I hadn’t traced her any further. I thought I’d figured out Henry – there’s a burial in Harwich in 1766 for Rachel, wife of Henry Nunn, surgeon of Manningtree, and how many Henry and Rachel Nunns can there be?

Edward Woodthorpe’s will shows that he likely died a bachelor – he didn’t mention any wife or children of his own in his will, at least. He names a great number of nieces and nephews, starting with the children of his late brother, Isaac, then a niece who’d married an Isaac Chaplin, then the two children of his late sister Rebecca Cooke. Then three brother, Richard, William, and Philip, and Philip’s three children. Then he mentions the last two of his family: his niece Rachel, wife of John More, and his nephew Joseph Nunn. He even left Joseph his farm in Wakes Colne. Edward’s executors were two friends: James Patten of Wakes Colne, and Robert Nunn of Little Tey.

First of all, with so many siblings mentioned, I put together Edward’s family. They were all the children of Isaac and Rachel Woodthorpe, who were born in various parishes in north Essex: Borely, Liston, Wakes Colne, apart from the eldest, Isaac, who’d been baptised in Assington. Rachel was the youngest child, baptised in Wakes Colne in 1694, so she must be the bride of Henry Nunn at that marriage in Wakes Colne in 1717. I looked for marriages between a John More and a Rachel, and found that Rachel Nunn of Mistley had married John More of Little Bentley in Little Bromley (just to confuse everyone) in 1739.^[2]Given that Rose Nunn, the only sister of Joseph and Henry’s, married a William More, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if their eldest son John married Rachel Nunn.

I couldn’t see any other Nunn/Woodthorpe marriages, so it seemed very likely to me that Edward’s will identifies a previously unidentified son of Henry Nunn and Rachel Woodthorpe’s – Joseph. Given that there’s a gap between their marriage in 1717 and the baptism of their daughter Rachel in 1721, it would seem that Joseph Nunn of Mistley, born about 1718 if the age on his marriage licence is correct, is their son.

Robert Nunn

And then we have Robert Nunn of Great Tey. It could just be a coincidence that Edward’s sister had married a Nunn and that he befriended a Nunn, seeing as the surname isn’t unusual in Essex and Suffolk. But we know from Joseph Nunn of Bures’ 1758 will that he had a brother called Robert, and that Robert had a daughter who married a Robert Ray. I’d found a marriage for a Robert Ray to a Sarah Nunn, and when I put together Robert Nunn of Little Tey’s family, I found a daughter called Sarah, who would’ve been 19 at the time of the Ray/Nunn marriage. Robert’s wife was Hannah Parsons, and when they married in Little Tey in 1720, Robert’s abode was given as Mount Bures. And that is another piece of evidence that this is the right Robert and Sarah.

So Edward’s friend, Robert Nunn, was also the brother of his brother-in-law.

Henry Nunn

I started to get waylaid by the vast number of people in Edward Woodthorpe’s will and decided to look for his niece Mary, who’d married Isaac Chaplin – the name Chaplin comes up in connection with the Chinerys and the Drews, so… you never know. They even come up in connection with the Cardinalls of Halstead. I often find that if I go off looking at extended families, I can connect up branches of my tree.

I found the 1730 marriage in West Bergholt of Isaac Chaplin of Chappel and Mary Baker of West Bergholt, but I haven’t yet found a Woodthorpe/Baker marriage.^[3]There’s no sign of Isaac’s daughter Mary in the Woodthorpe pedigree, so it seems likely to me that she’s the mother of Mary Baker. This seems correct, though, as Edward and Rachel Woodthorpe’s father, Isaac Woodthorpe, mentions a granddaughter called Mary Baker in his will. I started to look at Chaplin wills, and found the (very long) 1722 will of Isaac Chaplin of Fordham, right next door to West Bergholt. There is an Isaac mentioned, so maybe he’s the one who married Mary Baker. I noticed that Isaac’s brother-in-law was John Potter of Wakes Colne, gentleman. I’d already seen this name because when I searched for “Henry Nunn” on the Essex Archives catalogue, the probate of his will comes up. John wrote his will in 1721 and mentions a “freehold messuage and land” in Brantham, Suffolk, which had been occupied by John Scarlett, and by 1721 was occupied by… Henry Nunn.

Brantham is directly opposite Manningtree and Mistley, so it was circumstantial evidence. If Henry and Rachel were Joseph’s parents and lived in Brantham, then it’s pretty likely that when he was old enough to strike out on his own, Joseph just crossed the river to Mistley. And remember, I still thought that Rachel Nunn was buried in Manningtree…

I looked up Nunns in Brantham’s parish register and only found two relevant records, both burials: “Rachel wife of Mr Nun” on 5th May 1722 and “Henry Nunn” on 16th July 1766. So I’d found them, and then I realised that the burial in Manningtree wasn’t the right Rachel at all. Henry and Rachel’s grandson Henry (Joseph’s son – his 1819 PCC will says he was a surgeon of Manningtree…) was a young widower (only 29) when he married Mary Carrington in 1772. It turns out that his first marriage was tragically short – he married Rachel Phillips of Harwich in June 1766, then she died in November that same year. So the burial in Harwich for Rachel wife of Henry Nunn of Manningtree, surgeon, is his wife, not his grandmother!

Henry’s wives #2 and #3

Returning to Henry Nunn the grandfather…. After losing Rachel in 1722, and with two young childre on his hands (recall that his daughter Rachel had been born only the year before), he married again. On 22 September 1722 – so only a few months after his first wife’s death, he married Elizabeth Parsons at St Peter’s in Colchester. The marriage licence has fortunately survived, although the information in it is not entirely correct (this isn’t me bending the facts to suit my theory – information in marriage licences can be correct, but I have seen errors in them before). It states that the groom was a 26-year-old bachelor from Brantham, a farmer, and the bride was a 29-year-old spinster from Little Tey. Henry would’ve been 30, and he was a widower, but we do know he lived in Brantham and was a farmer, so it can’t really be anyone else. An Elizabeth Parsons was born in Little Tey in 1700, so she would’ve been 22 at the time of the marriage, not 29! But it fits, because Henry’s brother Robert had married a Hannah Parsons of Little Tey and the Elizabeth Parsons born there in 1700 was her sister. I’ve seen it happen many times where a man is left a widower with young children and he quickly marries a relative – sometimes, as in this case, his brother’s sister-in-law. Sometimes, they might even marry their late wive’s sister, which wasn’t allowed… but that didn’t stop it from happening. And the bondsman on the marriage licence? Who else, but Robert Nunn of Little Tey?

Then, in 1741, Henry married again. Elizabeth had died by this point but I haven’t found her burial yet, and I’m not sure if they had children. Henry’s third marriage was to Abigail Nelson, a 40-year-old spinster from Manningtree; Henry was a 48-year-old widower from Mistley.^[4]Ages etc from marriage licence. So it seems that by 1741, Henry was no longer farming in Brantham, but was probably buried there because it’s where his first wife was laid to rest. I haven’t found Abigail’s baptism yet, but I do know that she was the sister of James Nelson, surgeon and apothecary of Manningtree.

James is interesting – he wrote his will in 1770 and left his sister “Abigail Nun” an annuity (she never remarried and was buried in Manningtree in 1782, perhaps with her brother and his family). And if his occupation and abode sound familiar, then you won’t be surprised to learn that in 1759 he took on an apprentice called Henry Nunn. Yes, that’s right, James’ apprentice was his sister’s step-grandson!

Found

So I think it’s safe to say that we’ve found Joseph Nunn of Mistley’s parents. It’s taken online wills, beneficiaries’ indexes, wider access to transcribed parish registers, and my collection of transcribed marriage licences (Henry was there all along…), but in the end the pieces all fell together. Some of it is circumstantial evidence, and some of it even sounds wrong, like that Nunn/Parsons marriage licence – but every piece of evidence is a piece in the puzzle, and when it’s all put together, the picture that results appears to be the right one.

By Helen Barrell
Published 19th June 2025