Fay Sampson’s Family History
This site is a work-in-progress. There is a massive amount to cover. I have included both male and female lines, and some go back 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)
JOHN HAGON and MARY SCOTT (9)
A major source of out knowledge about this couple is their marriage licence of 1691
Marriage Licence.
Hagon, John, of North Yarmouth in North folke, mariner, ba, 28, and Mary Scott, of Deal, spr, 21, whose parents are dead. At Deal, May 31 1691.
“ba” and “spr” are “bachelor” and “spinster”.
JOHN HAGON. When pursuing our 17th– century Kent ancestors it is a surprise to find a Kentish bride marrying a groom from Norfolk. But their marriage licence tells us that this is so.
John Hagon is said to be from North Yarmouth and aged 28 in 1691. This gives him a birth date of1662-3, and leads to the following baptism.
Baptism. St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth.
1662 Aug 24 Jno Hagon of Tho and Eliza
He was the son of Thomas Hagon and Elizabeth Cox.
John appears to be the older of two children. He had a younger sister.
We have not found his father’s burial in Yarmouth. If he was a mariner like John, then he may have been lost at sea. If this happened early in the marriage, it would explain why there were no further children. His mother was a widow when she died in 1692.
John is described on his marriage licence as a mariner from N Yarmouth.
Yarmouth was a herring port. In the early 18th century, Daniel Defoe writes: [1]
Yarmouth is an antient town, much older than Norwich; and at present, tho’ not standing on so much ground, yet better built; much more compleat; for number of inhabitants, not much inferior; and for wealth, trade, and advantage of its situation, infinitely superior to Norwich.
It is plac’d on a peninsula between the River Yare and the sea; the two last lying parallel to one another, and the town in the middle: The river lies on the west-side of the town, and being grown very large and deep, by a conflux of all the rivers on this side the county, forms the haven; and the town facing to the west also, and open to the river, makes the finest key in England, if not in Europe, not inferior even to that of Marseilles itself.
The ships ride here so close, and as it were, keeping up one another, with their head-fasts on shore, that for half a mile together, they go cross the stream with their bolsprits over the land, their bowes, or heads, touching the very wharf; so that one may walk from ship to ship as on a floating bridge, all along by the shore-side: The key reaching from the drawbridge almost to the south-gate, is so spacious and wide, that in some places ’tis near one hundred yards from the houses to the wharf. In this pleasant and agreeable range of houses are some very magnificent buildings, and among the rest, the custom-house and town-hall, and some merchants’ houses, which look like little palaces, rather than the dwelling-houses of private men.
The greatest defect of this beautiful town, seems to be, that tho’ it is very rich and encreasing in wealth and trade, and consequently in people, there is not room to enlarge the town by building; which would be certainly done much more than it is, but that the river on the land-side prescribes them, except at the north end without the gate..
It was in this northern part of Yarmouth that John Hagon lived.
In 1719 Defoe had also published Robinson Crusoe, in which his hero sets sail from Great Yarmouth.
MARY SCOTT. She was 21 at the time of her marriage in 1691, giving her a birth date of 1669-70. Since she married in Deal, it is likely that she was born there, or nearby.
There are two possibilities:
Baptism. St Leonard, Deal.
1670/1 Mar 19 Mary ye daughter of George Scott and Elizabeth his wife.
Baptism. St Augustine, Northbourne.
1670/1 Mar Elizabeth daughter of Richard Scott.
The problem is that the marriage licence says that both her parents were dead in 1691. We have not found burials for George, Elizabeth or Richard, so we do not know whether this was true of either family.
John and Mary called two of their sons Richard, so this may be the name of Mary’s father, but this is not certain. We have no further information about Richard Scott. Mary’s baptism is the only one we have for him. This would be consistent with his dying young.
We have not found he name of his wife.
In George and Elizabeth’s marriage, Mary was the second child in a family of four.
We do not know how John and Mary met. As a mariner, John may have been a fisherman following the shoals south to Kent. Or he may have served on a cargo ship, calling in at Deal.
Jane Austen appears to have had experience of holidaying in both North Yarmouth and Deal. She writes in Persuasion:
“as snug as if we were at Kellynch, ay, or as we used to be even at North Yarmouth and Deal. We do not like our lodgings here the worse, I can tell you, for putting us in mind of those we first had at North Yarmouth. The wind blows through one of the cupboards just in the same way.”
John and Mary married the day after the licence was issued.
Marriage. St Leonard, Deal.
1691 Jun 1 John Hagon and Mary Scott
Although Yarmouth was still John’s parish of settlement when they married, they set up home in Deal. They had had six children baptised there.
Baptisms. St Leonard, Deal.
1694 June 24 John
1696 Oct 18 Mary
1698 Aug 28 Richard.
1699 Nov 2 Elizabeth
1706 Nov 24 Richard. His surname is given as Haggen.
1710 Oct 22 Lydia
There is no evidence of any of their children dying young, but we are short of burial records for this period.
In 1736 their youngest daughter Lydia married Henry May.
No burial has been found for John or Mary in Deal or elsewhere in Kent.
[1] Daniel Defoe, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain
[2] http://www.sailing-by.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/herring-fleet.jpg
NEXT GENERATION: 8. MAY-HAGON
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