The Early Lewins.

Abraham Lewin (see Abraham Lewin, the Gardener of Wormingford) was baptised in Great Waltham, Essex on 11th June, 1786. He was the fourth of nine children born to Abraham Lewin and Rachel Morrill and was the last of the Lewins in my line to have been born in our 'ancestral' village.

Great Waltham had been home to Lewins for many years - they appear in the Church registers from the earliest days. It is therefore possible to trace Abraham's ancestors back into the sixteenth century. However there is rarely any corroborating evidence for these early relationships. We assume a stable community and the common pattern of human life: A marries B and sometime afterwards C (whose parents match A and B) is born. About twenty-five years later C marries D and the whole process repeats. We assume that all As Bs and Cs are identical, but we can't exclude the possibility of a coincidental match. In time, maybe, wills and other documents will be found to confirm or confound our assumptions. In the meantime we follow Occam and try not to assume more complications than are necessary!

The earliest likely Great Waltham ancestors are Peter Eve and Jane Rainberd who were married in the church in 1571 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Their daughter Joan (baptised on the 3rd November, 1583) married William Lewin 1 on 13th October, 1605 - early in the reign of King James Ist.

The line probably passes through another three generations of Williams: William 2 (1605/6-1674) married Anne (d.1672); William 3 (1645-1720) married Mary French (d. 1692) in 1667; William 4 (1670-1732) married Mary (d 1732).

William 4 started a trend for Old Testament names: his son Abraham 1(1700-1751) married Catherine Sapsward in 1725, Abraham's second son, Isaac (1727/8-1778), married Susanna Revell in 1749. Isaac's second son Abraham 2 (1755-1815) married Rachel Morrill (d. 1812) in 1780 and their son, Abraham 3 (1786-1865) left for Wormingford where he married Elizabeth Knopp and had three sons including William 5. (see Abraham Lewin, the Gardener of Wormingford).