An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY On the 25th October, 1799, he married at Kelvedon, near Ongar in Essex, Mary, the daughter of John Gibbs, 1 -0f Wells, by Susanna Cubitt, his wife, who was daughter of Thomas Cubitt, of Honing, a supervisor of Excise at Wells. Her mother had relations near Ongar, her aunt, Susanna Cubitt, having married the Rev. Thomas Chappell, of Terling. This was probably the reason she went there to be married. He is described as of Blackmore, an adjoining village, where I presume he only went to qualify for bann~. She was ten years older than he, having been born on the 3rd and baptized 14th July, 1764, at Wells. She died in 1840, aged 76. I do not think she brought him any money, but was well connected on her mother's side, and -seems to have been a very competent, not to say dictatorial, person, and no doubt helped him to make the moderate fortune of which he died possessed, though he lost much -0f it by imprudent investments. On reaching London he became a freeman of the Needlemakers' Company, December, 1801, it being then necessary to be a freeman of the City before you could trade in it. In 1803, his eldest son, Edward, was born and was baptised at St. Andrews. He seems to have thrived at once, tor in 18n he was .one of the original shareholders (£1,ooo I believe) in the the New Waterloo Bridge which was an entire loss, and on October 24th, 1817, he paid £1,200 for an annuity of £180 from Sir Hy. Conyngham Montgomery, Bart., of Ham Common, secured by conveyance to Trustees of the lands in Co. Sligo, Ireland. I have always understood this money was all also lost. His mother died 1816, and was buried at Baconsthorpe, as was his father in 1829, both having lived to see their son prosper. On September 4th, 1816, he obtained a nomination from Archdale Palmer to St. Paul's School for his son Edward, whom be had sent previously to acquire the language to a French school at St. Omer. His only other son, George, died young throngh a childish desire to :find out what the steam of a tea kettle tasted like when inhaled through the spout. 1 Gibbs is a very old trade-name at Wells, for Robert Gibbs occurs on the Subsidy Rolls there in 1332 and 1382.