Ann Downes (née Kinghorn)

Natural daughter and co-heir of Hon. George Kinghorn (q.v.), whose husband the London merchant John Sheen Downes with his two partners Henry and John Living was made bankrupt in 1812. Despite this, the couple appear to have succeeded in placing their numerous children into the English gentry, with marriages for their daughters into clerical and army families and careers for their sons in the professions, the colonies and the army, including:

1. Rev. Richard Downes was at Trinity Oxford and became Vicar of Sundon, dying in 1857. Through his marriage with Charlotte Smith his descendants came into possession of Aspley House in Bedfordshire; their children included John Sheen Downes (who d. 1947) and Lt. Col. Charles Villiers Somerville Downes (d. 1907).

2. John Pepper Downes was a settler in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario in Canada, where he bought and remodelled the Grove House (now the House of Falconer).

3. The eldest daughter Ann married the Rev. Harry Martin and the youngest daughter Kate married William Woolby Cavie at Stoke Devon on the same day in 1838.

London Gazette No. 16668, 14 November 1812 p. 2307. No will has been found for her by LBS to date: she was almost certainly the Ann Downes whose death was registered Q2 1853 at Stoke Damerel.

1. http://bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/CommunityArchives/AspleyGuise/AspleyHouse.aspx [accessed 10/09/2019]

2. https://www.thecounty.ca/media/pe-county/documents/countyoffices/Heritage_Committee_PictonsFergusonsPartofTown_walking_path.pdf [accessed 10/09/2019]

3. The Gentleman's Magazine, NS Volume X (July-Decmeebr 1838) p. 656.