From: Dartmouth History Research Group

Creekside Warfleet Dartmouth Devon TQ6 9BZ

Tel: 01803-833881

28/9/1904

Dear Mrs Williams,

Your letter asking for information about the Hayne family has been passed to me by the Dartmouth Town Clerk.

I have been collecting information about the Hayne family in Dartmouth for many years, in the course of researching for my books on the history of the town, and have much which may be of interest to you. I have compiled a family tree of the Haynes who were connected with Dartmouth, of which I enclose a photocopy in two A4 parts which you will need to stick together. In the top left hand corner I give my sources which include parish registers, port books, Burke’s Landed Gentry, wills, and material from albums of family papers compiled by the Seale and Hayne family.

It is true that John Hayne, merchant of Dartmouth, who died in 1671, was a man of substance and became the owner c. 1662 of Brownstone Manor near Kingswear, across the other side of the Dart. This passed down in the Hayne family until 1904. Though I have very little information about the man himself, he seems to have been involved in trade with Spain and Portugal, with agents or sons in Cadiz, Opporto and other places. The main trade was in importing wine, but Dartmouth was involved in the Newfoundland fishing industry which took dried fish to sell in Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean.

From the family tree you can see that John and Mariethia his wife had four sons and a daugthter. The eldest son, another John, died in 1684 and I have a summary of his will. He had five sons, all involved in the Peninsular tade, as well as five daughters. I have much information about this generation, summarised on the family tree. John lived in Opporto; Christopher was a merchant in Cadiz, wrote letters to Walpole and Townshend in the Government, and lost money in the South Sea Bubble. Lawrence was a merchant in Cadiz. William inherited Brownston and most of his father’s goods and bought a property called Fuge, west of Dartmouth. He was more into local politics, as he met William of Orange at Brixham in 1688, and was M.P. for Dartmouth in 1689, 1690 & 1695. However I do not think this William can be the one you are looking for, who you say was born in 1763, as he died in 1699. The elder sons left no children, so all the property passed to Cornelius, who traded with Norway, Holland and Newfoundland as well as the Peninsula.

Cornelius was connected by marriage with the leading families of Dartmouth - his daughter married John Seale - but two sons died young, no heirs, so the only Hayne of the next generation was Charles, 1716-1769. He and his wife Mary had only one surviving son, another Charles, 1746-1821, and two daughters, one of whom Sarah married another John Seale. This was to be of crucial importance. The young Charles never married, so had no children, and left his considerable wealth to his great-nephew Charles Hayne Seale, the second-born grandson of Sarah and John Seale, on condition that he took the name of Hayne. He therefore called himself Charles Hayne Seale-Hayne, 1808-1842. You could say that the Dartmouth branch of the Haynes died out in 1821. However there was one more Charles Seale Hayne, 1833-1903, son of the above. He was very distinguished in public service, helping to bring the railway to Kingswear, becoming a Liberal M.P. for Ashburton and Paymaster General under Gladstone 1892-4. When he died childless in 1903 he left most of his vast fortune to found a College of Agriculture, later built near Newton Abbot and called after him Seale-Hayne College. Sadly its future now is in doubt as there is some talk of closing it down and combining the college with Plymouth University - it is still under discussion. I have visited it briefly: it is laid out round a quadrangle like an Oxford college, and they have 18C portraits of three 18C Haynes, Charles, Mary and Sarah children of the Charles Hayne who died 1769.

To answer the question in your letter, your William Hayne 1763 - 1816 must be related somehow, though I suspect further away than a grandson, but the line living in and around Dartmouth has died out. I should be very interested to see a copy of your Capetown cousin’s family tree to see how he inter-relates to what I know. It is possible that there were descendants from one or more of the children of the first John Hayne - see family tree, second line, Christopher, William and Joanna, all of whom I found only in Burke.

Charles Seale-Hayne in his old age went through his old family letters and papers and selected out some which he stuck into four large albums which eventually were sold, and I found them in the hands of an antiquarian bookseller in Calne. He was in the process of selling off the letters separately (he made more money that way, especially as one slip of paper was addressed to Samuel Pepys!). I bought the four volumes with what was left, so as to keep them together, and transcribed and typed them out, with a list of contents. I later discovered there was another volume which had been bought by the Guildhall museum in London - I went there and looked at these, and had copies made of some of them. I kept the original four volumes for several years, then thought they should go to somewhere safe and where they would be valued in case I died, so I offered them to Sir John Seale. His brother Richard is their family historian, and they were delighted to have them as much of the contents are about them as well. I still have my transcripts and index, which fill four thick files, and Richard sends me transcripts of hundreds of Seale letters and papers which he has transcribed, all of which fill even more files.

I have never thought of publishing anything based on these albums as, to be honest, they are very ordinary, everyday, nothing dramatic or scandalous which would interest anyone outside the family. I feel sure that Charles Seale-Hayne (a lawyer by profession, and a politician) would have suppressed anything which could show them in a bad light.

I do not know the name or address of current members of the family, but would be interested to hear from any of them. I will send a copy of this letter to your cousin in S. Africa and hope to hear from him.

With good wishes,

(Mrs) Ray Freeman

Chairman: Dartmouth History Research Group