In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his crew of over 120 men left England on board the expedition’s two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. Their goal was to finish charting the Northwest Passage, a sea lane through the Canadian Arctic. They did not achieve this goal. All members of the Franklin expedition died, and since no one was left to tell the story, what happened to them is shrouded in mystery.
George John Cann was one of the men on board HMS Terror. The crew of the Franklin expedition were recorded in a document called a muster book or muster roll in 1845. George J Cann’s entry listed him as an AB (able-bodied seaman) on the Terror and gave his birthplace as Battersea, Middlesex. He gave his age as 23 years old, so he was born sometime around 1822. In actuality, as we'll discover later, he was born in 1825 and was 20 years old when the expedition left England.
He had no prior Royal Navy experience, but he did previously work as a merchant sailor. According to his seamen’s ticket, he first went to sea in 1837 as an apprentice. He was 5’3”, with brown hair, a fair complexion, and blue eyes. He could write.
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| George John Cann's seamen's ticket. |
The above was actually his second seamen’s ticket. His original was cancelled and reissued, though for the life of me I can’t make out why.
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| George John Cann's cancelled seamen's ticket. |
Crew could give part of their salary to family, and this was recorded in a document called the allotment list. George allotted his to his mother, Margaret Cann, living at 44 Blackman Street, Southwark.
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| 1845 Allotment lists, HMS Terror. |
Looking at probate records, in 1854 his father, Thomas Cann, was named the administrator of George's estate. His residence at the time was given as Beaulieu Place, Western Hill, Saint Lukes, Norwood, Surrey. His occupation was given as Gentleman.
"Gentleman" in this context and time period did not necessarily mean he went around with a monocle, a top hat, and a fistful of cash. It was a vague occupation descriptor that just meant he was getting some money without having to labour for it. I've seen retirees receiving a pension use it, I've seen landlords and innkeepers getting rental income use it, I've seen pub owners who rent out a room or two use it, etc.
44 Blackman Street
A great place to start when it comes to tracking down family is the censuses. England's modern census began in 1841 and continued on a ten year basis. We know his mother's address in 1845 so we can check for her in the 1841 and 1851 census, and we know his father's address in 1854, so we can check 1851 and 1861 censuses for him. Once I get an idea of the sailor's family, then I can start going down the family tree and attempt to find modern descendants.
So, first up is 44 Blackman Street.
A mini rant: divisions of land in England confuse me so much. There will likely be errors and misunderstandings about them in my blog.
It’s my understanding that:
- The civil parish of St. Mary Battersea was inside the borough of Battersea, inside the county of Surrey. The civil parish was combined into the civil parish of Battersea in the 1890s. The borough of Battersea was combined into the borough of Wandsworth by the 1960s.
- The civil parish of St. Mary Newington was inside the hundred of Brixton, inside the county of Surrey. I’ve seen it both described as inside the borough of Southwark and inside the borough of Lambeth. Southwark seemed more common, and is the correct version in the modern sense, so that’s what I will use below.
44 Blackman Street was located in the borough of Southwark and the civil parish of St. Mary Newington. In the early 1800s, it was the site of a public house called King’s Arms.
Searching in the 1841 census shows that there is indeed a Margaret Cann living at Blackman Street, along with her husband Thomas and several children.
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| 1841 England census. |
His occupation is listed as "Victualler" which meant typically meant he was selling food or liquor. The website London Picture Archive has a picture of Blackman street in 1904 after it was renamed Borough High Street. At that time the address is described as a three-storey building, and it mentions that in the 1840s the landlord, Thomas Cann, lived there with his wife Margaret Cann and 4 daughters.
An 1843 post office directory shows Thomas Cann at 44 Blackman Street running the King's Arms pub.
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| Commercial directory, 1843. |
So Thomas Cann was the landlord of a pub, giving him a plethora of options to list for his occupation in documentation. “Gentleman” in the probate records because he was making rental income, “Victualler” in the census because he was licensed to sell liquor, and "Publican" would have been an option too, though he didn't seem to use it.
Owning property would have entitled Thomas Cann to vote. Voting-eligible persons were kept track of in a record called the electoral register. We can see in the register that he did have the property at 44 Blackman Street, but interestingly his actual abode is separate. In 1840, his abode was listed as 8 White Horse Lane, Mile End Road.
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| Electoral register, 1840. |
In the next register I can find, 1847, it’s changed to Beulah Place, Westow Hill, Upper Norwood. This matches the 1854 probate record, though the name appears to have been misspelled there.
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| Electoral register, 1847. |
Prior to that, he's present in the register in the 1830s, but no specific address is given, just “owner of a house” at Battersea-fields.
According to the website Map of London, Blackman Street “began at the southern end of Long Southwark near St. George Southwark and moved south towards the Parish of St. Mary (Newington).” The majority of the Cann’s children were baptized within the civil Parish of St Mary (Newington).
My understanding of the residences of Margaret and Thomas Cann based on census and baptism records is as follows: In 1818 they were living at Penton Place in St. Mary Newington, Surrey, which is a stone’s throw from the St. Mary Newington church where most children were baptized. At some point they moved to Battersea, Surrey and lived there from at least 1823 to 1832. They had the pub at 44 Blackman Street in St. Mary Newington, Surrey, by at least 1839, but only partially lived there.
Anyway, that's enough about houses and addresses. With the information we have from the censuses, we can research more of George's family.
George John Cann’s Family
George's parents Thomas Cann and Margaret Burton were married in 1815 in Hanover Square, Middlesex.
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| Cann-Burton marriage record. |
When they began having children they were living in St. Mary Newington, Surrey. They move around a bit but seem to stay south of the Thames, around the boroughs of Battersea, Lambeth, and Southwark in Surrey.
George John Cann actually had two baptisms: a private one in 1825, and then another one where he and his sister Eleanor (listed in the 1841 census above) were both baptized on the same day, 30 July 1828.
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| Private baptism of George J Cann, 1825. |
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| Baptism of George J Cann & Eleanor Cann, 1828. |
A private baptism may imply that he was not a healthy baby, and a public baptism was only given after he pulled through. The first baptism lists his birth as 1 April 1825 and the second as 4 April 1825; whichever one is correct, it makes him at least a couple of years younger than his given age in the muster book.
Note: It’s not abnormal for dates to be off by a few years at this time. Birth records did not exist yet, only baptismal ones, and most people didn’t have any official identification with their birth date on hand.
George John Cann belonged to a large family and had many siblings.
- Thomas Burton Cann (1816 - 1870)
- James Cann (1818 - 1819)
- Ann Pengree Cann (1820 - 1853)
- Eliza Cann (1821 - ?)
- Margaret Cann (1823 - 1907)
- Eleanor Cann (1826 - 1910)
- Susanna Cann (1828 - 1877)
- Catherine Sarah Cann (1829 - 1895)
- Isabella Adelaide Cann (1830 - 1915)
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| Baptism of Thomas Burton Cann, 1818. |
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| Baptism of Susanna Cann, 1828. |
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| Baptism of Isabella Adelaide Cann, 1832. |
Apparently Thomas Cann was curator of an insane asylum in 1832?
Something of note: George and Eleanor were baptized together at St. Mary Newington on 30 July 1828. If we look at Susanna's baptism, she was also baptized that very same day, but at St. Mary Battersea. Is this an incorrect record, a case of mistaken identity and I'm looking at the daughter of some other Thomas and Margaret Cann, or did they baptize three children in one day at two locations? I couldn’t find any evidence of another Thomas and Margaret Cann living in Surrey with children the right ages, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t. Eleanor and George were around 2 and 3, and Susanna was an infant. My current theory is they are indeed from the same family, and the parents preferred the church in Newington and took the older children there, but took the baby to the closest church in Battersea.
George's parents are present at Westow Hill in the 1851 census, along with his sister Isabella Adelaide. Thomas Cann's occupation now seems to be House property. Maybe he was the type of gentleman with a top hat and fistful of cash after all.
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| 1851 England census. |
All of their children had moved out by the 1861 census. Thomas' occupation there was listed as Gentleman, owner of houses. Thomas died on 14 Apr 1863. Margaret died of "dropsy" a couple years later on 11 Sept 1865.
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| Brooches showing Thomas Cann & Margaret Burton. Photographs by John Dunbar Bryce and Ann Margaret Bryce. Shared with permission from family. |
In my attempt to find living descendants of George, I first started looking into his sister Eleanor Cann. She seemed the strongest connection, being both present at Blackman Street in 1841 and baptized the same day as him. I ended up stopping there as I did find living descendants in her line.
I did briefly consider following the maternal line of his sister Catherine. She immigrated to Canada, and being Canadian myself I thought that'd be interesting. But the only viable maternal descendant of Catherine's that I'd found had married a Macdonald, and I didn't want to have to track down Macdonalds in Canada.
Eleanor has several living maternal descendants in New Zealand. One agreed to do the DNA test, and reached out afterwards to let me know that there hadn't been a match. The remains of George John Cann are not among those found.
Eleanor Cann
George's sister Eleanor was born on 22 November 1826 in Battersea. She was baptized the same day as George, 30 July 1828. As mentioned above, in 1841 she lived with her parents at 44 Blackman St, the address in George J Cann’s allotment. By the next census in 1851, she was living with her brother Thomas Burton and sister Catherine Sarah at a different address, 17 Church Street, Hampton, Middlesex.
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| 1851 England census. |
In 1854, the same year the men of the Franklin expedition were declared dead, she married a portrait painter named Charles Ferdinand Bischoff.
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| Bischoff-Cann marriage, 1854 |
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| According to Suffolk Artists, and various relatives on Ancestry.com, this is likely a self-portrait of CF Bischoff. |
In 1855 Eleanor and her husband sold most of their belongings and immigrated to New Zealand aboard the Merchantman, arriving there on 6 September 1855 according to the New Zealander issue from the 8th. Fun fact: A painted Sir John Franklin miniature was advertised at their estate auction prior to moving.
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| Suffolk Chronicle, 7 April 1855. |
Shortly after arriving in New Zealand, her husband was advertising his portrait services, as well as art lessons, in the paper. However, soon the family would move to Waiuku and take up farming.
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| New Zealander, 20 October 1855. |
Eleanor wasn't the only sister of George John Cann to immigrate to New Zealand. Isabella Adelaide moved there as well. She married a man named John Hull, who was a Justice of the Peace. The Hulls were a prominent family, and it's likely there are maternal descendants in her line as well, though I didn't pursue that.
Eleanor and Charles had five children in New Zealand, three sons and two daughters. Charles died on 15 July 1898. Eleanor died on 11 Mar 1910.
On Friday Mrs. Bischoff, widow of the late Mr. Charles F. Bischoff, passed away at the advanced age of 83 years. The deceased, with her late husband, was one of the earliest to settle in the district, having resided here for about 50 years and passing through the hardships of the Maori war in the early sixties. The funeral, which took place on Saturday, was largely attended. -New Zealand Herald, 15 March 1910.
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| 1910 death record. |
The descendant that did the DNA test — we'll call her C — told me some of her family's oral history. Apparently Charles Ferdinand Bischoff was the grandson of a German oculist who came to England with Queen Charlotte. According to C, her grandmother said Eleanor got engaged to Charles after both her brother and her fiancé were lost "frozen in." They decided to come to New Zealand as a result of all of that. C hadn't been aware of the full context of the Franklin expedition and where they were "frozen in" prior to my reaching out.
The fiancé was news to me! Unfortunately, I don't think much documentation exists for engagements, so I've got no idea who on the crew this could be. There is, of course, a chance that some details got twisted in the telling over the last century and a half, and that no such fiancé exists. However, C's grandmother was right about the brother, so I think it's more likely than not that she was right about the fiancé, too. The timing seems to fit as well; she married Charles in December of 1854, the same year the members of the expedition were declared dead. Perhaps she was still holding out hope until then?
C mentioned that the Bischoff and Cann families were relatively well off. Charles taught art on arrival in Auckland, but it was really his father who was the serious artist. Multiple watercolours of his remain in the family to this day. Eleanor & Charles were not well equipped for life in a pioneer setting, but they did eventually do well on their farm outside of Auckland, which was undeveloped back then.
Eleanor Cann's Maternal Line
Overview
Because this research was solely focused on finding a living descendant from an unbroken female line in order for a DNA test, I only included details on male relatives if they were relevant to identifying the female ones, and did not focus much on female relatives who had no children. This is not a complete tree, this is only a small subsection of the very large family of Cann descendants. This information can also be viewed on Ancestry.com.
The majority of individuals in this maternal tree were from New Zealand. For all births, marriages, and deaths, I included what I believe to be the correct registration number for their record on New Zealand's BDM Online.
Eleanor Bischoff (nee Cann) (1826 - 1910)- Adelaide Bischoff (1855 - 1891)
- Eleanor Madden (nee Bischoff) (1863 - 1925)
- Eva Kathleen Wilson (nee Madden) (1887 - 1969)
- Kathleen Frances Harrison (nee Wilson) (1925 - 2019)
- Living Descendants
- Dora Christina Woods (nee Madden) (1889 - ?)
- Isabel Ruth Hooker (nee Woods) (1915 - 1948)
- Living Descendants
- Florence Josephine Lewis (formerly Carson) (nee Madden) (1894 - 1965)
More Information
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| Marriage announcement in New Zealand Herald, 1 February 1886. |
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