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An Adamthwaite tale of Tragedy, Bigamy and Intrigue
- the ORANGE Adamthwaites
John Allen
Adamthwaite (1795-1850)
Many thanks to Mary for providing an
image of this portrait of John Allen Adamthwaite |
Like his father Thomas,
John
Allen Adamthwaite was a Notary Public. He attended the
Merchant Taylor School from 1805 until 1808, and we know that by 1823 he was living in Dalston as his name appears on a subscription list of that date.
John Allen Adamthwaite was admitted
as a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners on 11 Mar 1818,
by Redemption. By 1836 he had become of member of the Livery
of that Company, and on 1 August 1838 he was sworn into the Court of
Assistants where he continued to keep a room until his death in
1850.
In
1834, at the time of the birth of John Allen Adamthwaite’s son
Joseph Gibson, the family were living at Woodberry Lake, Stoke
Newington (source The Court Magazine and Belle Assemble). There is
an entry in Piggots Directory of 1839 for ‘Adamthwaite and Friend,
Notary, of 6 St Michael’s Alley Cornhill’. In evidence given at the
Central Criminal Court in 1839, a John Sly, clerk to Mr Adamthwaite,
notary to the house of Williams, Deacon and Labouchere, Bankers
stated that Mr Friend, Adamthwaite’s partner had ‘gone away and
could not be found’. By 1841 the Post Office entry just reads ‘John
Allen Adamthwaite, Notary’, with an office address still in St
Michael’s Alley and a private address at 10 Queens Square,
Bloomsbury. Between 1828 and 1840, John Allen was a Gentleman
Pensioner of the Royal Household, and entries in 'The Times' record
his attendance at a number of official functions at Buckingham
Palace. |
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John Allen
Adamthwaite also appears in the records of the Supreme Grand Charter
of Royal Arch Masons of England in 1845, as a Grand Officer. (See
his obituary below). The address of his office may be significant,
because in the early 19th C, St Michael’s Alley was the
location of the Jamaica Coffee House and the Africa and Senegal
Coffee House. The Jamaica Coffee House (now the Jamaica Wine
House – see right), was built on the site of the first coffee
house in London and was known to be the meeting place for West
Indies Merchants and the captains of the slave ships – is this the
link between John Allen and Susan Anglin BRYAN, whose family had
owned plantations in Jamaica? |
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On 4th
June 1829, at St George, Everton, Lancashire, John Allen Adamthwaite
married Susan Anglin BRYAN. Susan was born about 1804
(estimated from age at death) in Montego Bay, Jamaica – the daughter
of Susannah Anglin MOORE and John BRYAN who married in
Jamaica in 1793. Susannah was a cousin of James SCARLETT, 1st
Baron Abinger. The Bryan
family are known to have owned plantations in Jamaica and had links
with the ANGLIN, APPLETON, LAWRENCE, SCARLETT and DICKSON families who were all
plantation families – they seem to have returned to Liverpool in the
early 1800s, presumably at around the time of the abolition of
slavery; Susan’s sister Mary Sophia Lawrence Appleton (nee Bryan) is
also buried in the Adamthwaite family grave at Nunhead Cemetery and
Mary’s daughter Fanny Dickson Appleton was living with John Allen
and Susan in the 1841 census. Mary Sophia was married to Raynes
Waite Appleton, the son of William Appleton a West Indies merchant.
Two members of the Appleton family were witnesses at John Allen and
Susan’s marriage, along with Geo. Wainwright (another East and West
Indies Merchant, who was married to |
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Mary Appleton) and John Allen’s brother
William Vipond Adamthwaite. The record states that John Allen
Adamthwaite was of the parish of St John, Middlesex (source
Parish Records and
Liverpool Mercury, from PY). Slave records reveal that Susan and her
sister Mary jointly inherited slaves from their mother's estate - in
1817, a total of seventeen slaves owned by Susan and Mary were leased to
William Stanford Grignon - by 1829 the five remaining slaves were
purchased by William Gordon, attorney to William Appleton.
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John Allen
Adamthwaite’s wife Susan died on 13 Jan 1848 at Nun Head Passage,
Peckham from disease of the liver (upward of 2 years) and dropsy,
aged 44 years. Her death was reported by Martha Dimmock. Susan was
the first family member to be buried on 20 Jan 1848 at Nunhead
Cemetery . Their three last born children had all died in infancy,
and though we have copies of their death certificates, we have to
date not discovered their burial records.
John Allen
Adamthwaite died on 24 Aug 1850 age 56 at Nunhead Passage, Peckham
Rye from disease of the liver (two years) (his death was reported by
Martha Dimmock) and he was also buried at Nunhead Cemetery,
Camberwell, Surrey. The following Obituary appeared in the
Freemason’s Quarterly Magazine and Review of 1850:
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Bro. JOHN A.
ADAMTHWAITE, Died August 24th. He was initiated in the
Tuscan Lodge, No. 14, 20th November, 1820, in which he
served all the offices. He was a G. Steward for 1833, and in 1843
was appointed J. G. Deacon. In Arch Masonry, he was exalted in the
British Chapter, 10th Feb., 1849, and served all the
offices; and was appointed Assistant-Sojourner of the G. Chapter in
1843. the deceased was also a Governor of the Boys’ and Girls’
Schools, and served the office of Steward to those charities, and
was a Governor of the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution for Aged
Freemasons and their Widows.
A copy of his
Will [link
to will] is published on
the Adamthwaite Archive website. We have recently learned that
there was a family dispute about the Will, which was still going on
more than 25 years after his death - we shall of course be trying to
find out more about this!
The photo above shows
the place where the Adamthwaite family grave used to be at Nunhead
Cemetery. We originally believed that all the masonry was removed some years ago
when there was large scale demolition at the Cemetery, but recently
donated letters from Nunhead Cemetery to an Adamthwaite descendant dated
1948 and 1949 state that there was no memorial erected on the family
grave. However, the burial record book
survives and this records the family members in the order in which they were
buried there and the depth in feet at which each was buried:
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