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London Metropolitan Archives

GASCHERIE, GASHRY AND HANROTT FAMILIES


IDENTITY STATEMENT

Reference code(s): GB 0074 ACC/2079

Held at: London Metropolitan Archives

Title: GASCHERIE, GASHRY AND HANROTT FAMILIES

Date(s): 1592-1913

Level of description: Collection

Extent: 0.9 linear metres.

Name of creator(s): Various.

CONTEXT

Administrative/Biographical history:

The Gascherie and Gashry families were related by the marriage of Suzanne Gascherie, daughter of Estienne and Suzanne Gascherie to Francois Gashry, a parfumier, at the church of St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, London on 10 December 1696. Gashry appears to be an anglicised form of Gasherie, and it is possible that the two families are related but their connection is not apparent from the documents in this collection.

Francois and Suzanne Gashry had 12 children. The eldest, Susanne Gashry (Gascherie) returned to La Rochelle and died there in 1762 (see ACC/2079/A1). Her sister, Madeleine Gashry (Gascherie) brought the law suit to claim inheritance of lands in La Rochelle against more distant relatives, the Bonneau family (see ACC/2079/A1). Documents relating to the Gashry family were produced to prove Madeline's title to the lands, as a direct descendant of Estienne Gascherie through her mother Suzanne Gascherie, wife of Francois Gashry (see ACC/2079/A1) and to show that Gashry and Gascherie were variant spellings of the same name. As these documents refer principally to the Gascherie branch of the family they have been put with other documents relating to the legal case.

Francois and Suzanne Gashry's son Francis Gashry was a commissioner of the Navy in 1741 and Treasurer and Paymaster of His Majesty's Ordnance in 1751 (ACC/2079/B1/004). He married Martha ,whose will survives (ACC/2079/B1/007) and died in 1762 (ACC/2079/B1/002-003). A daughter, Margaret Gashry married Abraham Ogier in 1767 and her will also survives (ACC/2079/B2/001). Another daughter, Mary Martha married Henry Henrott, thus making the connection with the Hanrott family (see ACC/2079/C).

The Hanrott family is another Huguenot family. Jonas Hanrot came to England from Sedan. The Hanrott family name is a corruption of the original Henreau and is found in various forms including Henrott and Hanrot. Jonas Hanrot married Marie Anne Bocquet (Bauquer, Boque) in 1688 and their son Henry Hanrott married Marie Marthe Gascherie in 1724. They had two sons and a daughter. One of their sons, Francis Hanrott, (ACC/2079/C1/001) had seven children, including Francis Gashry Hanrott (ACC/2079/C2/001) and Philip Augustus Hanrott (ACC/2079/C3). Philip Augustus Hanrott was apprenticed as a solicitor's clerk to the firm of Dunn Lancaster and Dunn (see ACC/2079/D) and later formed his own firms, Hanrott and Metcalfe and Hanrott and Son (see ACC/2079/E,F). He married Caroline Cory and had several children including Henry Augustus Hanrott (ACC/2079/C5) with whom he had the solicitor's partnership, and Philip Augustus Hanrott Jnr. (ACC/2079/C6). Henry Augustus married his cousin Louisa Cory and had two sons, Howard Augustus, and Robert Cory (ACC/2079/C7) who married Julia Hanson and had several children, including Conrad Hanrott (ACC/2079/C8).

Philip Augustus Hanrott was articled to the firm of Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn in 1795 (ACC/2079/C3/001). The papers in this group relate to cases dealt with by Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn, and retained by P A Hanrott. The Penn papers (ACC/2079/D/003) include the Cremorne papers which do not appear to have a clear connection with the solicitor's firm, but which may have been kept with other Penn papers as the Penns were related to the Cremornes by marriage.

Philip Augustus Hanrott formed his own solicitors firm after leaving Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn. The first partnership was with a Mr Metcalfe and it broke up around 1837 (see ACC/2079/E6/005). The second partnership was with his son Henry Augustus Hanrott, and there seems also to have been a partnership with Charles Cory, Henry's brother-in-law. The last partnership was dissolved on Henry's death in 1852, although the settlement of accounts took until 1857 (see ACC/2079/E6/008).

The Archbishop of York held extensive estates in Battersea, Penge and Wandsworth partly derived from the Bridge Court Estate. Hanrott and Metcalfe acted as stewards for the Archbishop, collecting rents etc. In 1813 and 1837 the Archbishop of York applied for Acts of Parliament to allow him to sell off the Battersea and Wandsworth estates, to keep the revenue in trust for purchasing similar estates near the home estates of Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire (see ACC/2079/F1/008-012). Hanrott and Metcalfe were involved in valuing the land, calculating fines and arranging the sale of the estates to the tenants. The Archbishop also purchased a London house in 1809.

CONTENT

Scope and content/abstract:

The records of this collection fall into two related groups: the records of three Huguenot families who came to England between 1685 and 1690 (ACC/2079/A-C); and the records of several successive firms of solicitors in which one of the descendants of those Huguenot families, P A Hanrott, worked (ACC/2079/D-F).

The collection is of interest for the study of Huguenot families, and contains a good deal of genealogical information (see for example the Gascherie family tree in AC/2079/A/1/24). Papers of the Gascherie and Chesneau families are arranged in four groups. The first group is the largest and consists of documents relating to a legal action brought by Madeleine Gashry on behalf of her mother Suzanne Gascherie, widow of Francois Gashry (see ACC/2079/B1), in La Rochelle to reclaim lands inherited by more distant relations on the death of her sister, Suzanne Gashry (Gascherie) in November 1762. The case required extensive proof of family relationships and copies of baptism, marriage and burial register entries were produced, as well as wills and marriage contracts and other legal documents relating to the lands in question (ACC/2079/A1/003-036). The case was conducted by agents in La Rochelle as Madeleine Gashry and her mother were in Amsterdam and The Hague at the time (ACC/2079/A1/001-002). Although these records partly relate to the Gashry family, they chiefly refer to lands held by Estienne Gascherie, Suzanne Chesneau, his wife and the inherited title of their daughter, Suzanne Gascherie, widow of Francois Gashry. Other records of the Gashry family are listed in section B.

The second group consists of other papers of Estienne and Suzanne Gascherie, including receipts for soldiers billetted on them in La Rochelle in 1685 (ACC/2079/A2/001) and a bond concerning a ship which may have been used to bring Estienne Gascherie to England (ACC/2079/A2/002).

The third group represents the papers of Brigadier Paul de la Gascherie, son of Estienne and Suzanne Gascherie, whose invention concerning sails and keels of ships won him a pension from the Estates General of the Netherlands (ACC/2079/A3/001). He worked all over Europe fitting his invention to ships of various fleets. He went to Moscow and Poland (ACC/2079/A3/016-025) and was in Portugal at the time of the Lisbon earthquake (ACC/2079/A3/008).

The fourth group of papers relates to the Chesneau family, principally the parents of Estienne Gascherie's wife, Suzanne Chesneau. They were French Protestants, and it would seem that Suzanne's father was imprisoned (if not even sentenced to death) during anti-protestant feeling in 1656 (ACC/2079/A4/001). This may explain the context of the exhortation written by Suzanne's mother to both her children, encouraging them to stand firm in the Protestant faith (ACC/2079/A4/003).

The records of the Archbishop of York's estates are interesting for a study of development of the Battersea and Wandsworth areas. The arrangement of the documents reflects these four aspects of their work. ACC/2079/F1 consists of general documents relating to the sale of the Battersea estates, the original deeds, precedents for the Archbishop's tenure of the estates, schedules of deeds and leases, and correspondence relating to more than one property. ACC/2079/F2 consists of documents relating to the Battersea and Wandsworth estates arranged alphabetically by tenant, as the holdings are not described fully enough to arrange them topographically. ACC/2079/F3 refers to the purchase of estates in Bishopthorpe and ACC/2079/F4 to the purchase of Lord Petre's house in Grosvenor Square.

There are also several items in the collection which do not appear to have any connection with the families or the solicitors' firms (ACC/2079/G). P A Hanrott collected a large library, and it is possible that these records were also collected by him.

ACCESS AND USE

Language/scripts of material: Latin, French, German, Dutch and Portuguese.

System of arrangement:

It was originally arranged in bundles which cut across groups of related records. These bundles have been broken up to allow related records to be catalogued together, but a note of the original bundle arrangement has been made in each entry so that the old arrangement can be reconstituted if necessary.

ACC/2079/A: Correspondence, legal papers and family papers of Gascherie and Chesneau families;
ACC/2079/B: Family and legal papers of Gashry and Ogier families;
ACC/2079/C: Family, official and business papers of Hanrott family;
ACC/2079/D: Papers of Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn, solicitors;
ACC/2079/E: Papers of Hanrott and Metcalfe (Hanrott and Son), solicitors;
ACC/2079/F: Papers of Hanrott and Metcalfe (Hanrott and Son), solicitors concerning administration of Archbishop of York's estates;
ACC/2079/G: Various papers and correspondence collected by PA Hanrott unconnected to the families.

Conditions governing access:

Available for general access.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Copyright to this collection rests with the depositor.

Physical characteristics:

Fit

Finding aids:

Please see online catalogues at: http://search.lma.gov.uk/opac_lma/index.htm

ARCHIVAL INFORMATION

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Records deposited in February 1985.

ALLIED MATERIALS

Related material:

In the LMA History Library, the publications of the Huguenot Society are on open shelves, and include printed registers of various churches and letters of denization which include references to members of the families mentioned in these documents.

DESCRIPTION NOTES

Archivist's note:

Rules or conventions: Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions: Records prepared May to September 2011.


INDEX ENTRIES
Subjects
Estate management | Land management | Land economics | Agricultural economics
Estates (land) | Land use
Family archives | Personal papers | Primary documents | Documents | Information sources
Family records | Personal papers | Primary documents | Documents | Information sources
Huguenots | Christians | Religious groups
Legal case records | Documents | Information sources
Property owners | People by roles | People
Property ownership | Civil law | Legal systems | Law
Right to property | Civil and political rights | Human rights
Property law x Right to property
Genealogy
Property

Personal names

Corporate names
Archbishop of York

Places
Battersea | London | England | UK | Western Europe | Europe
Wandsworth (district) | Wandsworth | London | England | UK | Western Europe | Europe