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GSSA
The 1820 Settler Correspondence
 as preserved in the National Archives, Kew
 and edited by Sue Mackay

Additonal Information

This is pre 1820 information mainly taken from actual images of UK parish registers and other primary sources which I have personally researched. Further information about the settlers and their families once they reached the Cape can be found at https://www.1820settlers.com/

Sue Mackay

DEARMAN, Joseph - Extra Data

Written by Sue Mackay on .

 

Listed in WILLSON's Party as

Joseph (25), wife Mary (23) and children Joseph (12), Osborn, (11) John (9) and James (8)

 

Family Search:

 

Baptisms for Threadneedle Street, French Huguenot, London to Joseph DEARMAN and Benon POMMIER.
Joseph 19 March 1809
Osborn 10 June 1810
Jean 23 Feb 1812 (French for John?)
Anne Marguerite 31 October 1813

 

London Metropolitan Archives:

Joseph DEARMAN, bachelor, married Benon POMMIER, spinster, on 5 June 1808 in St.John's, Hackney

Both signed their names.

Witnesses: Margaret POMMIER and Jaqueline CROZIER

 

It seems clear that Benon was the mother of Joseph's four children. Anne Marguerite presumably died in infancy. No baptism found for James.

 

Burial in St.Matthew, Bethnal Green 28 March 1818

Benon DEARMAN, Baker Street, aged 55.

 

The age of Joseph DEARMAN quoted in The Settler Handbook must surely be wrong. If he was only 25 in 1819 he would have been extremely young to have a 12 year old son, especially if his wife was 55 in 1818!

 

There is a marriage in St. Dunstan's. Stepney, on 12 July 1818 between Joseph DEARMAN, widower, and Susannah BILEY (less than three months after Benon's death), but no marriage has been found to a Mary.

 

Paul Tanner-Tremaine writes: " I am convinced that the Dearmans, no matter what their supposed ages were supposed to be, never sailed with Willson’s party. I have found marriages for Joseph junior, and Osborn in London in 1841 and 1852 respectively, and the latter indicated that their father had died. The GRO has a death for a 71 year old Joseph Dearman in Greenwich registered in Q3 1845, ie born C 1774, which makes sense. Others may have sailed in their place!"

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