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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

KEEN, Thomas - Extra Data

Written by Sue Mackay on .

 

(member of WAIT's Party)

 

Death Notice (Cape Archives) says he was born in Buckinghamshire, which is where the majority of WAIT's Party was recruited. His parents are listed as Thomas and Elizabeth.

 

The date of birth for his daughter Mary Ann is given as 4 December 1813  - See her Death Notice (Cape Archives)

 

Most trees list the name of Thomas KEEN's wife as Margaret COFFEE, but no marriage has been found and the death notices of those children born at the Cape simply give her name as Margaret KEEN. 

 

Buckinghamshire Baptism Index

 

Thomas son of Thomas and Elizabeth KEEN baptised 19 May 1793 in Saunderton, Buckinghamshire

 

This seems the more plausible baptism, though most trees in South Africa seem to list the baptism of Thomas KEEN in Hawridge, Buckinghamshire on 19 April 1795. The mother on that baptism is listed as Mary, not Elizabeth. More importantly there is a marriage in Hawridge in 1818 of a Thomas KEEN to a Mary HORWOOD and this couple went on to have a numerous family in the village. That Thomas appears on the 1841 census for Hawridge with Mary and the children, with an age consistent with being the one baptised there in 1795, and his wife Mary was still there as a widow in 1851.

 

Nottinghamshire FHS Transcriptions

 

Mary Anne daughter of Thos. and Margaret KEEN , Pte R. Middlesex Militia, Quartered here, baptised 25 December 1813 in St.Peter and St.Paul, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

 

 

 

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