|
This page is part of a website based on the life and
achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort.
Please email site controller Eric Alexander
with any comments or queries. |
Attwick
and Burges Families
Attwick
family origins
Ironmonger John
Attwick arrives in Gosport from Portsmouth, early in the eighteenth century.
In 1722 he wins
a contract to supply the
Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth.
This contract will remain with the business under its various owners
into the nineteenth century.
Items supplied include bolts, nails,
staples, hooks. rings, hinges, locks and tools of many types. Mooring chains, anchors, even coal, also
feature in the business.
Some of these items are made at a forge in Gosport, but most are
bought elsewhere, notably the West Midlands.
Attwick
family details
John is married
twice, fathering twelve children in all.
Of these, four
are named John, showing that three have died in infancy. The youngest John survives his father by
less than a year.
Only two other
sons survive their father.
Jeremiah, the
elder, is cut out of John's will, which leaves the business to William when he
reaches the age of 21 in 1751.
John's daughter
Ann marries lawyer Thomas Haysham. They
have six children, but only Ann the eldest and Elizabeth the youngest make it
through to posterity.
Ann marries John Becher in
1761. Elizabeth becomes Henry Cort's second wife in 1768.
John's daughter
Susanna marries ship’s surgeon William Wood.
They have one child. Her second
marriage is to George Hamilton, her third to Henry
March.
Burges family
fortunes
John Attwick's daughter Joanna marries Thomas Burges (described
later as a watchmaker in the will of John's widow Mary) in 1745. Three children are baptised in Gosport between
1751 and 1755.
The family have close links with the Ives and Missings of Titchfield.
When daughter Joanna marries James Watson
there in August 1777, Edward Ives and John Missing sign as witnesses. (It is probably a different, but closely
related, John Missing who will join the service of
the East India army, arriving in Bengal in September 1782.)
By 1797, when Thomas makes his will, he is in India. It is clear from this document, however,
that he is well ensconced there by the time his daughter arrives with her
husband James Watson in 1796. Among Burges associates are surgeon Michael
Cheese and East India army officer Thomas Dowell,
both of whom are witnesses to Edward Burges's will in 1800.
henrycort.net
p9