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Chelsea Old Church, Wednesday, 19 March, 2025 Photo available for reuse under this Creative Commons licence. |
John Green (bap. 8 Mar 1730 at Chelsea Old Church) son of William and Sarah Green, married Mary Pritzler (b. 15 Oct 1738, bap. 5 Nov 1738 at St John's Church, Wapping), daughter of Christian Pritzler, Sugar Baker, and Mary Woodard, at Chelsea Old Church, a.k.a. All Saints on 13 Aug 1760.
Jonathan Green, in his history of George Green, dated November 2018, has fallen into the trap laid by numerous inaccurate transcripts, which claim that various events: baptism, marriage or burials took place at St Luke's, Chelsea, which is impossible as that church was not consecrated until 1824.
John Green's father, William Green, was listed as an Overseer of the Poor of Chelsea and the owner of the Lotts Brewery of Chelsea. There is even the well-known Lots Road in Chelsea, but there is surprisingly zero history online regarding this. The only possible mention I've seen is, "By 1729 William Green of Fulham, brewer, had built a brewhouse and other buildings on 2 acres which lay on the south side of King's Road at Stanley Bridge." [Source] Again from Jonathan Green's history, "The Greens had been longstanding brewers in Chelsea and Westminster. In 1682 George’s great-grandfather, John, had sold a ten acre meadow beside the river for £550 to the Commissioners of the Royal Hospital to form the riverside area of the Royal Hospital site."
As far as I can tell, the following children could belong to this couple:
- William Green bap. 8 Aug 1761, buried 1 Sep 1761 in Chelsea
- Maria Susanna Green bap. 23 May 1763, buried 12 Jul 1763 in Chelsea
- John Green bap. 29 Oct 1764 in Chelsea, purported to have died in 1786 "At Sea", Sulawesi Tengah, Indonesia (not seen primary source)
- Ann Green bap. 1 Apr 1766 in Chelsea
- George Green said to be b. 2 Nov 1767, the bap. 9 Dec 1767 in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, thus appears to relate
- Mary Green bap. 11 Apr 1769 in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire
- Charlotte Green bap. 18 Nov 1770 in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire
- Susannah Green bap. 3 Jan 1772 in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire
All of the above are listed as the children of John and Mary Green and owing to the common names, I have researched locally to see if there was another couple that these could relate to and there did not seem to be.
Johnathan Green says that, "Of their six children, four died young, leaving George and his younger sister Mary, born in 1769." It hasn't been possible to work out what happened to Ann, although it is claimed here she was buried in Liverpool in 1776, but died in 1792. My feeling is that she would certainly have expired a lot sooner, incarcerated in a coffin, with presumably no food and water for 16 years, but what do I know? There is a chance that Charlotte and Susannah don't belong, or maybe also died as infants, but I'd rather include them as possible. In the case of Susannah, there's additional reason to do so, I feel, because John Green had an elder sister named Susanna.
That George Green was born in Cheshunt, is stated in the Chronicles of the Blackwall Yard (PDF) by Henry Green and Robert Wigram, published in 1881. Although over 100 years after the event and often inaccurate, we have to trust that this was true, otherwise why would they dream up such a random location. The family could have had a 'country seat' in Cheshunt, but I find it curious that there appears no mention nor evidence of such.
Obviously (not to everyone) it was Mary Green b. 1769 who is thought to have later become the second wife of John Perry, Shipbuilder, said to have married 'Green's sister' and 'coincidentally' she had exactly the right birth year (not hard to find two people called Mary Green of the same vintage), but I still call that into doubt, because the Mary who married John Perry was a widow, therefore Green was her previous married name, not her maiden name. My theory is that John Perry married the widow of John Green b. 1764, who, as a sister-in-law, would have been considered a sister in those times. While I cannot prove or disprove it (I was hoping to find clues from this research, but just found more inconsistencies), I shall probably die on this hill.
There is one tree claiming that Mary Green, the daughter of John Green and Mary Pritzler, died as an infant of one year old, which would help support my theory and, if Charlotte, born the following year was theirs, I do think it reasonable to believe that Mary b. 1769 could have died in her first year. However, the claimed burial, for which they offer no source and I cannot find one either, in Nov 1770, was purportedly in Wing, Buckinghamshire, some ~45 miles from Cheshunt, which is just too far away to make sense.
Elsewhere, it is claimed that it was Maria Susanna Green who married John Perry. Quite apart from having been dead from around the age of 2 months, was, while baptised in 1763, supposedly not born until 1771. They managed to notice that the person was a widow upon marriage, but clearly without coming to the realisation that would mean she wasn't born Green!
When did John Green die? There seem to be as many people claiming he died in 1772 as there are suggesting it was 1776. There's no burial record in Cheshunt in 1772. There IS a burial, once more claimed to be at the as-yet-then-not-built St Luke's (therefore, must be at Chelsea Old Church) of a John Green on 29 May 1772. Bingo? Not so fast. There is a page for the burial claiming it to be of John Green, son of William and father of George Green, at Findagrave that still claims the burial is at St Luke's, so I'm not surprised that the photo request hasn't been fulfilled and am certain that the page was created, not from an actual grave, but from the burial record above. So, I had a look at the original burial record. Yes, it is the burial of a John Green. It even sounds like a 'quite important' position (as befits such a 'famous' brewer of the parish), as it details, "Head 21 feet from the back of the Vestry. Side 12 feet from North wall of the Church." There's just one problem. The church official has been very kind to put ages in brackets after the names on the page. It's round years for adults and a number and 'm' for infants. This burial is for an infant, because alongside in brackets, is (11m) for months.
(Not to mention that the aforesaid burial page links to another, which claims that John Green's father, William Green, died at the age of two. Really?)
Elsewhere, a burial on 2 Apr 1772, in Prestbury, Cheshire is cited. Full marks for that being the burial of John Green whose father is listed as William Green. But ignoring that the same page claims he died in Cheshunt, in 1776, and the unlikely location of this burial, if a deceased's father is listed on a burial, it can be guaranteed that this again is the burial of an infant.
Despite copious digging (pun intended) I can find no convincing burial for our John Green in either Chelsea, or Cheshunt, neither in 1772, nor 1776. There also exists the possibility that he was buried in or near Westminster. Or Timbuktu for that matter. Wherever and whenever, there are just too many people named John Green to nail it down with absolute certainty.
There is a Will and Probate for a John Green in 1772, which may be what some people have accepted as evidence for this John Green's death. It begins, "This is the last Will and Testament of John Green of West Smithfield City of London (You might call that far west in the City 'Westminster' if you wanted to be posh.) Brewer (I will admit that the word 'Brewer' is indistinct, but the word seems to be the same shape as on documents pertaining to John Brown, who was also a brewer) made this 28th day of [unreadable] in the year of our lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy two." But then he mentions "my dear wife Elizabeth Green". Was that a simple error? Was he drunk? Had he committed bigamy? Any of those are possible, or else this is not the right person. It goes on to mention a sister Elizabeth Green and a brother Thomas Green, as well as children (not by name). The Will was proved on 20 Jun 1772. With that many inconsistencies and wrong family members and common name, I'm convinced that this is NOT 'our' John Green.
Referring back to Jonathan Green's history, which again points to John's death being in 1772 (doesn't say where), he states that "extravagant living by John and his partner and nephew, Pitt Burnaby Green, saw the brewery and all its public houses sink under a mountain of mortgages". Elsewhere I've read that John Green ran the business along with his brother Richard Green.
After John Green's death (whenever that was), it is said that his widow Mary moved her family to Battersea. Jonathan Green says that, "Mary Green, with her two young children, went to live in Dulwich". Of course, we do not have the luxury of census returns to cross refer anything in this period, so it is very difficult to be sure of any of the details. But do we actually know she went to Battersea with two children, or is that just an assumption based on the belief that it was her biological daughter Mary Green who later married John Perry? We only have the reference that George Green was with his mother there in the Chronicles of the Blackwall Yard, which says that George Green "was in the habit of frequently walking from his mother's house, near Battersea, to Blackwall Yard". Land Tax Records certainly place Mrs Mary Pritzler, Mary's mother, in Battersea in the 1780's and she is listed here as Mary Pritzler of Devonshire House (44 Vicarage Crescent, Battersea, London). (Mary Pritzler, then a Mantua Maker, had taken an apprentice in 1747; then after her husband died*, she appeared, from 1755, in directories as a sugar baker still in Wellclose Square. Mary Pritzler (née Woodard) died, aged 80, in 1790 and was buried in the vaults at St Mary's Church, Battersea.)
(* Have not found the burial of Mary's father, Christian Pritzler (b. ~1704), however I'm sure he had died by 1755 because the will of Christoph Frederick Pritzler of the City of Zittau, Saxony, Germany (which says it was translated from High Dutch - I'm sure they meant Hockdeutsch (High German) in 1755, mentions the six children (five daughters and one son) left in London by his deceased brother Christian Frederick Pritzler, formerly Sugar Baker. The Lost Squares Of Stepney say of Wellclose Square, "By the early nineteenth-century, the square was losing its respectability as a consequence of its proximity to the docks and the gradual industrialisation of the East End." "As the numbers of lodging houses, pawn shops, pubs, and music halls multiplied, so did the sugar refineries. These refineries (or ‘bakeries’) had first appeared in the area in the seventeen-sixties. Manned mainly by poor German immigrants and belching sickly fumes into air, they did not help to improve the desirability of the neighbourhood." Clearly our records show that the Pritzler's sugar refinery was there earlier than that, "Some of the London-based German merchants, like the Pritzlers of Herford, diversified into manufacturing and insurance. In the eighteenth century London was the largest sugar-refining centre in Britain and one of the Pritzlers mentioned above became a sugar refiner. They ran a refinery at Wellclose Square for several generations. They [Theophilus Pritzler (1747-1809), Mary's brother] also sat on the board of directors of the Phoenix insurance company." [Source]) There is evidence too that in 1791, John Perry may have been one of the principals financing the expedition named the Butterworth Squadron, along with London ship-owner Theophilus Pritzler. (The wreck of another ship that had belonged to the London shipowner and merchant Theophilus Pritzler, the Earl of Chatham, was identified in 2025, off the island of Sanday in the Orkney Islands. The son of Theophilus Pritzler, his namesake, thus Mary's nephew, became Sir Theophilus Pritzler (1777-1839).
Of Mary Green (née Pritzler)'s burial on 16 Feb 1818, with her age at death correctly listed as 80, I am finally confident. Most likely, this was arranged by her son George Green. Once again the transcript at Ancestry cannot be relied upon, claiming that the burial was at All Saints Church, Poplar - this church wasn't built until 1821-23 - but on the original record is clearly written Chapel Poplar (Poplar Chapel, St Matthias Old Church), that was built by the East India Company and used frequently by the Perry family.
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