THE FAMILY OF CAPTAIN JEAN PINEL (Baptised 1819)
Introduction
The following family history is based on notes compiled by BERNARD PINEL, the grandson of Captain JEAN PINEL, from an autobiography written by his father, JOHN PINEL, during the last four years of his life. This was written in minute detail, covering approximately 90 pages of an exercise book, which is now in the possession of his granddaughter, Mrs KELCEY EDWARDS.
Read The Adventures of John Pinel
It tells the story of the lives of the family of a younger son from a large farming family. It is probably typical of many young Jersey men at the time who, being unlikely to inherit the family farm, sought their fortune by going to sea. Where possible, I have quoted directly from Bernard Pinel’s notes.
CAPTAIN JEAN PINEL (1819-1895)
Captain JEAN PINEL was descended from the branch of the PINEL family who lived at the farm La Vallette at Mont Mado in the Parish of St John, Jersey. His line descends from the second marriage in 1700 of CLEMENT PINEL (baptised 1666) to JEANNE MAUGER.
His father was PHILIPPE PINEL, who was born 1785 in St John and married in 1810 MARIE HOCQUARD. He ‘was a small farmer in the Parish of St John on the north side of Jersey’. They had ten children; MARY baptised in 1811, ELIZABETH in 1813, PHILIPPE 1814, JEANNE 1817, JEAN 1819, NANCY 1821, THOMAS 1824, ELIZABETH 1825, MARGUERITE 1829 and JOSUÉ 1831. All were baptised at St John’s Parish Church.
MARIE married a JOSUE BLAMPIED
ELIZABETH (baptised 1813) died in 1823 aged 10 years.
PHILIPPE, being the eldest son, on the death of his father ‘inherited the farm, which he lived on and cultivated up to the time of his death at the age of 93 years.’ This was the farm then called La Grande Maison in St John and which became the home of BILLY BUTLIN during the 1970’s and 80’s. PHILIPPE married ESTHER DOREY and their youngest daughter, MARY ANN (baptised 1848) married JOHN ARTHUR VAUDIN in 1871 and they lived at the farm called Le Marinel in St John, where their descendants still live.
NANCY married in 1850 Captain PHILIPPE LE MASURIER who had inherited the property La Vallette from his grandmother ELIZABETH PINEL (baptised 1767), who was the last in the line of the senior branch of the PINEL family that had lived there since about 1675.
THOMAS died in 1824 whilst only a few months old.
ELIZABETH married EDWARD GEORGE LE BOUTILLIER and lived at the farm called Oakdale in St John.
MARGUERITE married in 1849 PIERRE RENOUF.
JOSUÉ, the youngest, ‘took to the sea and became part owner and master of a small trading schooner. He fell overboard and was drowned at quite an early age’. I believe that this was in 1857.
JEAN (baptised 1819)
JEAN ‘after a little education, served an apprenticeship in cabinet making, but that was too slow for him and he went to sea. About the year 1841/2, he found himself in India and joined the North East India Company as a carpenter on a small paddle steamer, which formed part of the fleet sent to China, and, in 1842, he was present at the attack on the Woosung forts, during which he was wounded in the leg. The wound, which was a bruise on the shin, got very inflamed and he was invalided to Calcutta. The doctor decided to amputate the leg but he got an attack of fever and was too weak to stand the operation, so it was delayed and, by the time the fever left him and he began to regain strength, the wound showed signs of healing and so the leg was left on and did him good service for the rest of his life’.
‘On his return, he joined with some friends in building a small schooner, called the Pandora, for the trade to the West Indies and took the command of her. After a short career, she was wrecked on one of the West Indies islands, after which he got command of a full-rigged ship and made several voyages to Australia and India. About 1853 he got command of a ship out of the Port of London, the Great Britain, which made him think his future was made’.
His first wife was REBECCA HART, born about 1813 in Gloucester. ‘Her father having been a cloth manufacturer in the town of Wooton-under-edge in Gloucestershire.’ She died in 1865 in Scotland at the age of 52 years. They had two children, JOHN born 1849 and OSWALD HENRY born 1856.
JEAN made several voyages to Australia and, in 1862, he was presented by the Committee of the Sydney New South Wales Anniversary Regatta with a Silver Candleholder for his ‘valuable services rendered in carrying out the objects in view’.
The following year, the same Committee presented him with a Silver Jug inscribed with the words ‘In acknowledgement of the courteous manner in which on that occasion he placed his ship the Tiptree at the Committee’s disposal and of his valuable aid in contributing generally to the success of the Regatta – Sydney 26th March 1863’.
At about the same time, he ‘built two ships, the Sea King and the Erl King. The Sea King was built in 1863. It was used as a troopship in 1864 to take troops to New Zealand for the Maori War. Later, it was sold and was refitted and used by the Confederates as a gunboat in the American Civil War, having been renamed the Shenandoah. It was later sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar and, eventually, wrecked in a hurricane.’
His second marriage was in 1869 to HARRIET JOHANNA TERRY but she died in 1870 without issue and was buried in St John, Jersey.
‘The Sea King being sold,’ he ‘and the other owners decided to build an iron auxiliary steamer, somewhat larger, for the China trade an a contract was made with A & J Inglis, shipbuilders and engineers of Glasgow, for the construction of the same. The new steamer, named the Erl King, was of 1044 tons gross. She was barque-rigged, with a full poop and accommodation for about fifty first-class passengers.’
His third marriage was in 1872 to MARY FRANCES RISEBROUGH and they had four children; ARTHUR RISEBROUGH born about 1874, LILLIAN MARY born 1875, ERNEST JOHN born 1878 and FRANK HERBERT born 1880.
JEAN, with his nephew PHILIP LE MASURIER, founded PINEL & LE MASURIER WINE MERCHANTS, which they ran for three years 1884-1887 and which later became known as Ann Street Brewery, now Jersey’s largest brewery.
- ARTHUR was at one time a priest at Jagersfontein in South Africa but returned to Jersey. He was living at The Ferns in Don Road, St Helier, Jersey, when he died in 1920.
When JEAN died in 1895, the family were living at Sans Souci, St Saviour’s Road in St Helier, which is next to the Ann Street Brewery.
The Pinel family taken at their home, "The Ferns", Don Road, St. Helier, Jersey. (Produced by kind permission of Tony Moore).
Ernest John Pinel, born 1878, is at the back on the right and it is probably Frank Herbert Pinel, born 1880, at the back on the left. It is almost certainly the priest, Arthur Riseborough Pinel, born c1874, with his elderly mother, sister and another lady in the front. As Frank was in uniform, the photo was most likely taken between 1914 - 1918.
Ernest John Pinel, born 1878.
Frank Herbert Pinel, born 1880.
JOHN PINEL (1849-1930)
‘JOHN PINEL was born on 14th January 1849 at a house in Lempriere Street, in the town of St Helier, Jersey.’
‘Up to the age of nearly six years,’ he ‘lived with his mother in Jersey, occasionally making trips to London when his father arrived there from his voyages. He remembered little of what happened during those years, except that he had two illnesses; one was typhus fever of a severe type and the other a mild attack of smallpox.’
He ‘went to school in England until he was sixteen, interspersed with one or two sea trips for health reasons’. He ‘did have ideas of also going to sea. His father had other ideas, but signed him on in a semi-official capacity on his own ship, after which JOHN Jnr gave the idea away. In 1868 he got a job in the tea business, as a shipping clerk in Shanghai and ‘ later had various postings ‘up and down the China coast in the tea business, also in the Yokohama, Japan Office. Because of unsatisfactory health, in 1874 he returned to England’. The following year, ‘his half-sister, LILLIAN MARY, was born, his father having remarried. He returned to China, in the tea trade, until 1877, when he returned again to England and was in the tea business there with a Mr Oliver’.
He married EMILY CREMER in May 1880 at St Luke’s Church, Lower Norwood. His business did not prosper as well as it should have and in 1889 he decided to emigrate to Australia. ‘They went on board the Rodney on 29th May 1889. The ship finally left Gravesend on the 31st May, arriving in Sydney Harbour on 22nd August 1889. He had letters of introduction to people in Sydney, but, as there were no opportunities for work there, they proceeded to Tasmania’.
‘They left Sydney for Hobart on 13th September 1889, arriving in Hobart on the 16th, per S.S. Oonah. Here he obtained a job with the Examiner, a Launceston daily newspaper. His wife, EMILY, contracted typhoid fever and died on 26th January 1890. She was buried in the Church of England cemetery, East Launceston’.
‘He relinquished his position with the Examiner and proceeded to New Zealand, but things did not go well there and he later returned to Launceston’. His future father-in-law, ALFRED FIELD, was working at the Examiner as a collector and that was how he came to know the family. Before leaving New Zealand, JOHN had written to him and he had arranged for him to work as an accountant with Alfred Harrop & Son, commencing on the 29th May 1891, in their Wool & Real Estate section.
In Launceston, JOHN ‘boarded with the Field family at Beacon Lodge, Hillside Crescent, and that was how he came to meet’ his wife, ADA ELIZABETH FIELD. ‘They were married on Wednesday 22nd June 1892 and had a brief honeymoon in Hobart, returning to Launceston on the 29th of the month and taking up their abode at Devon Cottage in Howick Street’.
‘JOHN PINEL had started work with Alfred Harrop & Son at the age of forty-two years and continued there until July 1926, when failing health made it imperative for him to give up at the age of 77 years. The family wanted him to retire much earlier but he persisted as long as he could. He died on 18th March 1930 at the age of 81 years. ADA PINEL had predeceased him on 17th January 1921 at the age of 55 years, cause of death being pneumonia’.
Read The Adventures of John Pinel
His brother, OSWOLD HENRY, had emigrated to New Zealand and in 1889 married CLARA NEIL. He fathered a line on PINELS whose descendants are still in that country.