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)
HENRY MINTER and MARY BAILEY (9)
HENRY MINTER. Henry’s parents grew up in the Civil War and the Puritan Commonwealth that followed, but Henry himself was born in the more stable period of the restored monarch under Charles II.
Baptism. St James, Staple.
1673 Jun 2 Henry ye sonn of George Minter & Jane his wife
His father was a yeoman, and his mother was Jane Culmer, a yeoman’s daughter.
Henry was the second of six children, and the eldest son.
The family is particularly associated with the village of Ash-next-Sandwich, east of the Cinque Port of Sandwich, but Henry was baptised in the neighbouring village of Staple.
He became a yeoman like his father.
His mother died, probably in 1694, when Henry was 22. The family seem to have been living in Canterbury, and it was here that Henry was admitted as a freeman of Canterbury as a victualler by redemption (purchase). There is a later record showing his father as a victualler (innkeeper) of the Fleur de Lis in Ash, as well as owning 14 acres. It would appear that he combined this with farming, and Henry appears to have done the same.
It was in Canterbury that his father married for the second time, to Elizabeth Dodd. Six half-brothers and sisters were baptised in Canterbury.
Henry, too, was resident in Canterbury when he married Mary Bailey,
MARY BAILEY. We have the marriage of Mary’s parents in 1679. We know from their marriage licence that her father, Heny Bayley, was a bachelor and a blacksmith of Ash, aged 30, and that her mother was the 21-year-old spinster Elizabeth Goldfinch, daughter of Thomas Goldfinch of St Lawrence in Thanet, who consented. Elizabeth was also of Ash, where we often find the Minters, but the wedding took place in Wingham, 3 miles west, perhaps because Elizabeth was temporarily resident there.
The couple started their family in Ash.
Mary was their eldest child.
| Baptism. St Nicholas, Ash next Sandwich. 1680/1 Jan 2 Mary Daughter of Henry and Eliza Bayley.And here the trail runs cold. There are baptisms for Henry and Martha Bayley, children of Henry and Elizabeth, in Eastling in 1681 and 1683, but Eastling is 20 miles west of Ash, on the other side of Canterbury. We have not found a convincing burial for either Henry or Elizabeth.
We take up the story again with the wedding of Mary Bailey and Henry Minter. Mary is still living in Ash Most of their children were baptised in Ash, but the first two were in Ickham, halfway between Ash and Canterbury. They then settled in Ash, where they seem to have stayed for the rest of their lives. In 1705, we have a record of Henry Minter as a husbandman, living in Ash with his wife, three children, and six servants.[1] Later we find him as yeoman, but he seems to have started more modestly as a husbandman, farming on a smaller scale, 1705/6 Mar 10 Ann There is curious entry in the baptism register for 1706/7 These are hard to explain, since Henry was certainly, baptised as an infant. It may be that the minister at the time, John Shocklidge, did not consider John Benchkin, the rector who baptised Henry, sufficiently well qualified. Henry’s father was also baptised as an adult. In 1710, ten-year-old Robert was buried in Ash on Jul 9. Despite his second baptism, Henry was a pillar of the community. He served as churchwarden from March 1711 to March 1712. On Lady Day, 25 March, he signed the Parish Annual Return. In due course, in 1744. Henry’s eldest surviving son, Henry jnr, became churchwarden in his turn. He and his fellow warden “built the north wall [of the churchyard], and coped it with stones, and made a new gate at the east end. The gate of the west end, with the piers, were put up some years before by the father of the said H. Minter and John May, churchwardens.” Three more children followed, including a second Robert Henry was kept busy with overseeing the poor. Henry’s father, George Minter, died in 1717. Henry gave a bond to his stepmother Elizabeth for the administration of his father’s will. Henry did not live not long after his father. He died in 1721. Henry had made his will on 1 Nov 1721.He describes himself as a yeoman of Ash. It was proved in Canterbury on 3 Jan 1721/2.
Burials. Ash Next Sandwich. Mary lived to be 80.
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[1] I am indebted to the Minter Exchange for details about Henry Minter’s life. https://theminters.co.uk/getperson.php?personID=I612&tree=ash
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