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Jaime
Kaminski
Sussex Archaeological Society
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169 High Street
Lewes
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This paper investigates the family background of Thomas Turner (1729-93), shopkeeper (mercer) and diarist of East Hoathly, and supplements the work of previous writers on the subject. It identifies a number of relatives named in the diary as members of the Ovenden family of Boarshead, Rotherfield (his mother's connections), and shows how his father John Turner alias Fann rose from illegitimate beginnings in the Groombridge area of Sussex and Kent to be himself both a mercer at Groombridge (later Framfield), and the owner of a 74-acre farm at Chiddingstone Hoath in Kent.
The diarist's paternal grandmother, Sarah Fann, later married to Thomas Bennett, is shown to have been of a Frant yeoman family with London trading connections. His paternal grandfather cannot be certainly identified, but is likely to have been from a family of farmers in the Ashurst/Groombridge area of Kent, closely related to the Turners of Alksford Farm, Withyham, by whom John Turner may have been brought up. Links are demonstrated to the Constables and Combridges, earlier mercers at Groombridge, and to John Luck of Penshurst, from whom in 1712 John Turner inherited his farm.