Thanks to a new hint at Ancestry, I’ve discovered a useful new source: Holden’s Directory for 1802, which contains an alphabetical list, as its cover states, of ‘ninety and one hundred thousand names’ of London residents belonging to the ‘nobility and gentry’ of the city.
The original hint that led me to the directory related to John William Bonner, the nephew of my 5thgreat grandmother Elizabeth Holdsworth née Gibson. The directory finds Mr John William Bonner, who would have been 40 years old at the time, living at Marsham Street, Westminster. But the directory also lists three other men who share his surname: Captain Michael Bonner of 33 Paradise Street, Rotherhithe; Mr John Bonner of 9 Charlotte Row, Bermondsey; and Mr Charles Bonner of 17 Salisbury Square.
I confess that I don’t know who Charles Bonner was, or even whether he was a relative of John William’s (Salisbury Square is to the south of Fleet Street, near St Bride’s church.) But the other two men certainly were. The Captain Michael Bonner mentioned here is almost certainly John William’s younger brother, who spent most of his adult life in Rotherhithe; he would die at an address in Paradise Street in December 1811, nine years after this directory was compiled, at the age of 43. He shared his name, rank and profession of mariner with his and John William’s father, but the latter died at Charlotte Row, Bermondsey, very early in 1802, so he is unlikely to be the person referred to in the directory. As for the other John Bonner, who was also living at Charlotte Row in 1802, this is probably a reference to John William’s son, John Harker Bonner, who was born in Bermondsey and would have been 22 years old in 1802. Perhaps he was living with his grandparents at this time?
The information in Holden’s Directory sheds a little more light on our knowledge of John William Bonner’s life and career, and therefore indirectly on our general understanding of the lives of my late 18thand early 19thcentury ancestors. John was born in 1762 in Darby Street, off Rosemary Lane, in East Smithfield, London. His parents were, as noted above, Captain Michael Bonner the elder, a mariner, and Frances Gibson, who was one of the daughters of my 6thgreat grandparents John Gibson and his wife Mary Greene, and the younger sister of my 5thgreat grandmother Elizabeth Gibson.
By the time his younger brother Michael was born in 1768, the family had moved to Bird Street, in the parish of St George in the East, Stepney. In 1776, when he was 14 years old, John William Bonner was apprenticed to the curiously named (and probably German) merchant Other Winder of Lime Street, London. The next record we have for John William is for his marriage, on 22ndDecember 1781, to Sarah Ford, at St Mary’s, Whitechapel. John would have been 19 years old at the time. One of the witnesses to the wedding was his cousin Bowes John Gibson, an official with the East India Company, and the younger brother both of John William’s mother Frances and of my ancestor Elizabeth.
Between 1782 and 1786, John William Bonner was paying land tax in Bermondsey, on a property whose landlord was John Oxley Parker (1742 – 1826), who was a land agent and Deputy Registrar to the archdeaconries of Essex, Middlesex and Colchester. The Bonners were living at Bermondsey Buildings when their sons John Harker and George were born, in 1782 and 1784 respectively. However, by the time their daughter Mary Ann was christened in 1793, they were living in Mile End Old Town and paying land tax on property owned by George Kemp.
We know that John William Bonner was apprenticed to a London merchant in 1776, and we know from his tombstone that he ended his life, in 1817, working for ‘His Majesty’s Ordnance Office’, which was housed in the Tower of London. But between those two dates we know little or nothing about his professional career. However, the revelation that he lived in Marsham Street, Westminster, in 1802, is perhaps helpful here. The testimony of Holden’s Directory is borne out by land tax records from the same and subsequent year, which also find Bonner in Marsham Street, which is just a short distance from the Houses of Parliament. The Bonners must have made the move from Mile End to Westminster shortly after Mary Ann’s birth, since by 1795 John William was paying land tax on a property in Park Street, Mayfair.
As well as suggesting growing prosperity, these moves may also indicate that John William Bonner was working for the government for at least two decades before his death. His surviving children (we hear nothing more of son George after his baptism) maintained their connections with the east of the city. John Harker Bonner and his wife Mary Knight Christopher and their children lived in Mile End Old Town, while Mary Ann Bonner and her husband John Godfrey Schwartz occupied various addresses in Whitechapel, Limehouse and Bethnal Green before also ending their lives in Mile End Old Town. And of course John William Bonner himself chose to be buried in the churchyard of St Dunstan’s, Stepney, in the family tomb constructed by his great grandfather – and my 7thgreat grandfather – goldsmith Joseph Greene.