A Buckinghamshire family who link Captain Cook with a Colchester department store.
In 1801, my great-great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Griffin, was born in the Buckinghamshire village of Aston Clinton. At the age of 17, she had married in London, and after having ten children, she died a widow in Shoreditch in 1847.
As I found out about Elizabeth’s uncles, aunts and cousins, more stories came to light. Her uncle William Griffin (1755-1839) sailed with Captain Cook, and her brother – another William Griffin (1789-1864) – moved to Colchester in Essex and established himself as a linen draper, a business that in 1963 would become Williams & Griffin department store. Along the way there are plenty more linen drapers, as well as publicans, Dissenters and farmers, and a man who went to Australia, came back to England where he installed a statue in Aylesbury. There are long, well-lived lives and lives sadly cut-short, and lives that intertwine. And there are corners yet to be explored.
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- William, Elizabeth, Mary, Daniel, Margaret, Jane and John: Griffins in Stoke Poges, Bierton and Wingrave
- William (1729-1799) and Mary Griffin (?-1808): a farmer in Drayton Beauchamp
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- John Griffin (1753-1820)
- William Griffin (1755-1839) and Elizabeth Edge (1757-1824): a cooper’s adventures with Captain Cook
- Elizabeth Griffin (1782-?) and James Watson
- Ann Griffin (1783-1819) and Joseph Firth (1780-1828): a pub on Holborn’s Middle Row
- Alexander Griffin (1788-1865)
- Sarah Griffin (1792-1865) and George Chorley (1788-1848): doing the Lambeth walk
- Charlotte Griffin (1790-1884) and William Collins (1778-1833)
- Thomas Griffin (1794-1881) and Martha: the man who went to Harlow
- Daniel Griffin (1757-1835) and Sarah Fowler (1762-1807), and Elizabeth
- Thomas Griffin (1788-1860) and Mary Cleaver (1801-1862): a grocer and oilman in London
- William Griffin (1789-1863) and Charlotte Lainson (1794-1860): a Colchester draper who founded a department store
- Sarah Griffin (1791-1875) and John Barrell (1795-1865): a Herefordshire draper travels England
- Daniel Griffin (1793-1844) and Rebecca Neville (1789-1858): cotton reels in West Ham
- George Griffin (1796-1819) and Alic or Alice Griffin (1803-?): short lives
- John Griffin (1798-1840) and Ann Phillis Carr (1801-1885): a draper in Camberwell
- Elizabeth Griffin (1801-1847) and David Nunn (1786-1841): an oilman in Shoreditch
- Charles Griffin (1805-1880) and Eliza Boucher (1813-1868): a Clerkenwell milliner
- Harriet Ann Griffin (1816-1907), Daniel Sutton Olney (1816-1848) and Opie Rodway (1822-1904)
- Elizabeth Griffin (1759-1839) and Robert Burnell (1745-1823)
- George Griffin (1761-1840): the man who found God in New Mill
- Thomas (1763-?)
- Henry Griffin (1765-1825)
Miscellaneous
- Griffin wills
- Occupations in the Griffin family
- Who is in Sarah Ann Firth’s will?