Help appreciated: untangling the Holcombs of Godstone

[ciderdrinker]

No It was you that gave me the idea.

Ciderdrinker

[jbml]

Oh wow, Trish and Cider drinker ... this is MAGNIFICENT. Thank you so much. I always knew there was a bit of money in this family.

Now all I need to do is check this against my notes and correct anything that wasn't correct, incorporate all the new material, and ... phew! It might take a while!

I'm still trying to see where Iron Pear Tree Water from Holcomb's New Well fits into all this. It HAS to be this Holcomb family ...

[trish1120]

All I can see it that Holcomb and Baldwin sold it in London.

The Product: Known as the "Iron Pear-Tree water," it was a natural mineral water sourced near Godstone, Surrey, and packaged in specialized stoneware bottles around 1740–1750.

I am sure you know all that.

They were Merchants and in the Book business.

This was interesting;
The association between Holcomb and 18th-century mercantile trade is best known through the work of contemporary historian Julie L. Holcomb

Mercantile Boycotts: Her research meticulously documents how 18th-century Quaker merchants and consumer activists organized boycotts against slave-labor goods—specifically targeting products like sugar and cotton—to fight the transatlantic slave trade

[jbml]

Ooohhh ... I knew everything up to when you said you were sure I knew all that ... and nothing that came after.

My Holcombs were in Nutfield (the next parish to Godstone) and Godstone, so I am sure it must be the Iron Pear Tree Water family. But I have not yet been able to prove it. It is tantalising, to say the least!

[jbml]

This was interesting;
The association between Holcomb and 18th-century mercantile trade is best known through the work of contemporary historian Julie L. Holcomb

Mercantile Boycotts: Her research meticulously documents how 18th-century Quaker merchants and consumer activists organized boycotts against slave-labor goods—specifically targeting products like sugar and cotton—to fight the transatlantic slave trade

Oh blimey ... she ain't gonna like what my great x4 grandfather did, then! After my branch of the family moved away from Surrey they ended up in Chippenham, near Newmarket, where my great x4 grandfather Anthony Holcomb was for 60 odd years the Bailiff of the Chippenham Hall estate.

Chippenham Hall was the English seat of the Tharp family.

And the Tharps were wealthy Jamaican sugar planters.

The Tharp who held it when my Holcombs arrived there inherited in 1809. His inheritance was valued at £500 000. (And no, that's not been "adjusted to modern-day values" ... that's 1809 values!) A lot of that has to be slaves ...

[trish1120]

She probably would not like that

Family history it what it is and we can not be responsible for things hundreds of years age.

I had a quick look for Julie and shes based in the US.

[jbml]

I had a quick look for Julie and shes based in the US.

Indeed. I've just sent her an e-mail. Let's see if she replies :-D

[trish1120]

Good work was going to suggest that.

I contacted many years ago the biographer of Iris Murdoch.
The presumption was she was very Irish.

They really hadn't researched her Grandmothers line well as she was my Grandmothers Sister and born in New Zealand to English Parents
Louisa Shaw 1871 married Wills John Hughes Murdoch 1888 in NZ
( I have the M/C)

My Grandmother Martha Shaw was her Sister

Trish   

[jbml]

OK Trish and ciderdrinker ... I've finished chasing the Holmans around Surrey. Great fun. Took me to the Wheatly family of Guildford, two generations of whom were parish clerk at St Mary's in the 16th century (the local historian in the congregation of St Mary's wasn't aware of that one ... )

Also found one of them who was a farmer at Ewhurst in the 17th century. Can't find out which farm he had ... but would be highly entertaining if it turns out to be Woolpit Farm. My paternal grandfather bought that farm in 1951 (the Surrey History Centre has a set of the auction particulars for that sale). What a coincidence it would be if my maternal forebears owned that very same farm 300 years previously ...

ciderdrinker's pedigree looks bang on to me and I need to double check the references and get it written up now. Shouldn't take too long given that they're so clearly presented. But it does now change my original question into "so who the devil were Benjamin and Ann Holcomb?" ... and, more importantly, how (if at all) do they fit in with MY lot? After noting down that wonderful memorial inscription on my field trip to Godstone a few years back (QUITE a few years back ... I haven't been on any FH field trips since Covid ... ) it would be a pity to find that they don't "belong" to my family at all. But if they don't, they don't ...

Looking at the Thomas Holcomb / Elizabeth Burtenshaw marriage licence ... do we think the surety John Holcomb was Thomas Holcomb's father? He ought to be, oughtn't he?