Our Family History

The Genealogy of Robert and Christina Barritt

1762 - 1808 (46 years)

	Date	Event(s)
1	1762	1762: Great Britain - John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, 'created' the Sandwich. This Englishman was said to have been fond of gambling and, during a 24 hour gambling streak, he instructed a cook to prepare his food in such a way that it would not interfere with his game. The cook presented him with sliced meat between two pieces of toast. Perfect! This meal required no utensils and could be eaten with one hand, leaving the other free to continue the game. 1762: Great Britain - The Earl of Bute is appointed Prime Minister. He becomes very unpopular and employs a bodyguard 1762: France - Spain declares war on Britain; Britain gains West Indian islands from French, Cuba and Manila from Spanish
2	1763	1763: Americas - Treaty of Paris returns Cuba and Manila to Spain, keeps Florida, recovers Minorca; returns West Indian islands and trading stations in India to French, keeps Canada
3	1764	1764: Great Britain - James Hargreaves in England invents the spinning jenny which can produce 8 threads at one time.
4	1765	1765: Great Britain - Rockingham ministry. The American Stamp Act raises taxes in the colonies in an attempt to make their defence self-financing 1765: Great Britain - Earliest known children's pop-up book 1765: France - The very first restaurant, by that name
5	1766	1766: Great Britain - Chatham ministry. Repeal of the American Stamp Act 1766: Great Britain - Priestley discovers Law of Inverse Squares (electricity), Louis XV convulses with laughter when line of monks leap into air as electric shock is administered 1766: France - Louis, Marquis de Cussy was born. French gastronome, a friend of Grimod de la Reyniere, who stated that Cussy had invented 366 different ways to prepare chicken. Cussy wrote Les Classiques de la table.
6	1767	1767: Great Britain - John Wilkinson, ironmaster, produces railways for mines; Manchester and Liverpool joined by canal 1767: Great Britain - Joseph Priestley invents carbonated water - soda water.
7	1768	1768: Great Britain - Grafton ministry. The Middlesex Election Crisis occurs. 1768: Great Britain - General election, reformer Wilkes elected as member for Middlesex amid scenes of jubilation; Royal Academy (painting) founded
8	1769	1769: Great Britain - James Watt patented a new type of steam engine with a separate condensing chamber and an air pump to bring steam into the chamber and equipped it with a simple 'governor' for safety: if the engine started to go too fast, the power would be automatically cut back. He coined the term horsepower and later loaned his name to the unit of power, or work done per unit of time 1769: Great Britain - Captain James Cook's first voyage to explore the Pacific begins 1769: Great Britain - Richard Arkwright develops the water-powered spinning frame
9	1770	1770: Great Britain - Lord North begins service as Prime Minister. The Falkland Island Crisis occurs. Edmund Burke publishes his Thoughts on the Present Discontents 1770: Australia - James Cook documents the location of Australia 1770: Great Britain - Gum pencil eraser invented 1770: Great Britain - Early skeleton suits begin to appear - the first specialized children's clothing. The earliest were still worn with knee breeches, but by the 1780s they were warn with long trousers.
10	1771	1771: Great Britain - The Encyclopedia Britannica is first published 1771: Great Britain - Richard Arkwright builds the first spinning mill
11	1772	1772: Great Britain - Lord Mansfield makes slavery illegal 1772: Great Britain - James Burgh publishes Political Disquisitions, advocates universal male suffrage
12	1773	1773: British North America - Colonists protest at the East India Company's monopoly over tea exports to the colonies, at the so-called Boston Tea Party 1773: Coalbrookedale, England - The world's first Cast Iron bridge is constructed over the River Severn 1773: Great Britain - Benjamin Delessert was born. French industrialist who developed the first successful process to extract sugar from sugar beets.
13	1774	1774: Great Britain - Franz Anton Mesmer began the psychotherapeutic practice of hypnotism, which he called 'animal magnetism' and conceived it to be an actual fluid. Apparently he had some success with psychosomatic illnesses. Part of his technique seems to have been used earlier by exorcists. 1774: Great Britain - Parliament passes the Coercive Acts in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party 1774: Great Britain - Joseph Priestley isolates oxygen 1774: Great Britain - Georges-Louis Le Sage patents the electric telegraph.
14	1775	1775: British North America - American War of Independence begins when colonists fight British troops at Lexington. 1775: Great Britain - Alexander Cummings invents the flush toilet. 1775: Great Britain - Jacques Perrier invents a steamship.
15	1776	1776: England - Common Sense published by Tom Paine 1776: Great Britain - Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, advanced the idea that businesses survive through successful trading in pursuit of their self-interest, and that the resulting equilibrium was not by design. 1776: Great Britain - Wilkes introduces bill for universal male suffrage 1776: Great Britain - David Bushnell invents a submarine. 1776: Great Britain - Edward Gibbon authors Decline and Fall of Roman Empire in period to 1788 4 Jul 1776: USA - The American Congress passes their Declaration of Independence from Britain.
16	1777	1777: Great Britain - Samuel Crompton in England invents the spinning mule capable of spinning cloth in great quantity.
17	1778	1778: Great Britain - James Cook explores Hawaiian Islands. He fails to locate Northwest Passage from Alaskan side and is killed in Hawaii the following year 1778: Europe - Naval war with France, Spain and Holland ally with France during period to 1783
18	1779	1779: Great Britain - The rise of Wyvill's Christopher Wyvill's radical Yorkshire Association Movement
19	1780	1780: Great Britain - The Gordon Riots develop from a procession to petition parliament against the Catholic Relief Act (1778) 1780: Southampton, England - Gervinus invents the circular saw. 1780: Great Britain - Country banks rise in number from less than 300 to over 700 in period to 1815 1780: Great Britain - The Bowler Hat appears in England.
20	1781	1781: Great Britain - Frederick William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus by its movement, although at the time he supposed it to be a comet 1781: Great Britain - Matthew Boulton and James Watt produce an improved steam engine with rotary motion achieving significant impact - it means that manufacturers are no longer restricted to site with natural power (i.e., water, wood for charcoal) 17 Oct 1781: USA - The Americans obtain a great victory of British troops at the Siege of Yorktown
21	1782	1782: Ireland - Ireland obtains short-lived parliament 22 Mar 1782: Great Britain - Lord North's government collapses
22	1783	1783: Great Britain - Joseph Michel and Jacques 1783: Great Britain - Fox-North coalition established 1783: Great Britain - Britain recognises American independence at the Treaty of Paris. 1783: Ireland - Act of Renunciation gives Ireland rights in legislation and judication 1783: Great Britain - William Pitt the Younger becomes Prime Minister, simplifies taxes and customs duties, tries to pacify Ireland, abolish slave-trading and laws preventing Catholics holding office; returns Florida and Minorca to Spain and Senegal to France 1783: Great Britain - Englishman Henry Cort invents the Rolling Mill for steel production. 1783: Great Britain - S 1783: Great Britain - Benjamin Hanks patents the self-winding clock. 2 Apr 1783: Great Britain - William Bentinck, Duke of Portland Prime minister (Whig)
23	1784	1784: Great Britain - First edition of The Times newspaper 1784: Great Britain - Introduction of mail coach 1784: Great Britain - Andrew Meikle invents the threshing machine. 1784: Great Britain - Joseph Bramah invents the safety lock. 1784: USA - Benjamin Franklin develops bifocal eyeglasses.
24	1785	1785: Great Britain - William Pitt's motion for Parliamentary Reform is defeated 1785: Great Britain - Charles-Augustin de Coulomb invents the torsion balance. 1785: Great Britain - Blanchard invents a working parachute. 1785: Great Britain - Edmund Cartwright invents the power loom. 1785: France - Claude Berthollet invents chemical bleaching. 1785: Scotland - Glasgow triples in size, has 54 cotton mills in full work during period to 1818 1785: USA - Oliver Evans of Newport, Delaware invented the automatic flour-milling machinery that revolutionized the industry.
25	1786	1786: Great Britain - The Eden commercial treaty with France is drawn up 1786: Pennsylvania, USA - John Fitch invents a steamboat.
26	1787	1787: Windsor, Great Britain - In Windsor Great Park, King George III alights from carriage and addresses oak tree as King of Prussia, but eventually recovers from this attack of dementia; first colonies in Australia, first iron boat launched
27	1788	1788: Great Britain - Time to travel from London to Manchester reduced from 4.5 days to 28 hours 22 Jan 1788: Great Britain - Birth of Lord Byron (died 1824)
28	1789	1789: France - French Revolution, Louis XVI, many aristocrats and others executed, France declares war on European monarchies 1789: France - The guillotine is invented. 1789: Great Britain - The French Revolution sounded the death knoll toward elaborate and affected dress and hairdos. The powdered wig and towering women's hair styles passed from fashion. Simpler, more practical clothes emerged. Boys wore the skeleton suit, often with a comfortable open collar, and by the end of the century with plebian long trousers. 1789: USA - Thomas Jefferson brought a pasta making machine back with him when he returned to America after serving as ambassador to France. 1789: Switzerland - Dr. Pierre Ordinaire creates an absinthe elixir 30 Apr 1789: USA - George Washington first president of the United States 1789-1797.
29	1790	1790: Great Britain - Edmund Burke publishes his Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790: Great Britain - Lower-class radicalism increases, Habeas Corpus Act temporarily suspended 1790: USA - The United States issued its first patent to William Pollard of Philadelphia for a machine that roves and spins cotton. 1790: USA - Samuel Slater opens the first U.S. cotton mill in Rhode Island. Thomas Saint in England invents the first cloth-stitching machine. 1790: Great Britain - Marie, Vicomte de Botherel, born. He installed kitchens on buses in Paris suburbs in 1839, the first restaurant cars. 1790: Great Britain - Marie Harel is said to have developed Camembert cheese in Normandy.
30	1791	1791: Great Britain - The Celerifere, an early version of the bicycle, was built by Comte Mede de Sivrac. It was basically a scooter with a high seat 1791: Great Britain - James Boswell publishes his Life of Johnson and Thomas Paine, his Rights of Man 1791: Great Britain - John Barber invents the gas turbine.
31	1792	1792: Italy - Volta discovered he could arrange metals in a series in such a way that chemical energy is converted into electrical energy; that is, two dissimilar metals are submerged in an electrolyte and connected by an circuit and thereby exchange electrons. By 1800, he had invented the so-called voltaic cell, a pile of such metals 'consisting of pairs of silver and zinc disks separated by pieces of moist cardboard' 1792: Great Britain - Coal gas is used for lighting for the first time. Mary Wollstonecraft publishes her Vindication of the Rights of Women 1792: Great Britain - Cartwright invents steam-powered weaving loom 1792: Great Britain - The first ambulance.
32	1793	1793: Great Britain - Economic depression 1793: Great Britain - Speculative 'Canal Bubble' bursts 1793: Great Britain - Board of Agriculture formed to popularise new methods and machinery 1793: Great Britain - Britain becomes foremost world trader during period to 1815 1793: Great Britain - Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin which efficiently separates cotton fibers from the seeds, allowing one person to do a job once done by 50 people. This profoundly changes the economics of raising cotton, revitalizing slavery in the American South. 1 Feb 1793: Great Britain - France declares war on Britain
33	1794	1794: Great Britain - Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather, proposed that 'warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament...possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvements by generation to its posterity.' 1794: Great Britain - Metric system introduced in France 1794: Great Britain - More lower-class radicalism, Habeas Corpus suspended again, instigators charged with treason, in Scotland found guilty and transported 1794: Great Britain - Welshman Philip Vaughan invents ball bearings. 1794: Great Britain - Total of 40,000 British troops die in West Indies in war with France over two year period 1 Jun 1794: Great Britain - Howe defeats French fleet at Ushant
34	1795	1795: Great Britain - The 'Speenhamland' system of outdoor relief is adopted, making wages up to equal the cost of subsistence 1795: Ireland - Near-civil war between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, erupts in 1798, takes nearly a year to suppress 1795: Great Britain - New Treason and Sedition Act passed 1795: Great Britain - Francois Appert invents the preserving jar for food.
35	1796	1796: Great Britain - Edward Jenner investigated the folk tale that milk maids were immune to small pox, the virus variola major, and in a brief series of experiments confirmed that exposure to cow pox, the virus vaccinia, rendered immunity 1796: Italy - General Napoleon Bonaparte appears on scene, attacks Austrian armies 1796: Ceylon - British conquer Ceylon
36	1797	1797: Europe - All Europe makes peace with France save Britain, sea battle off Cape St. Vincent (off Spanish coast), Jervis and Nelson (then Captain) utterly defeat big French and Spanish fleet 1797: Great Britain - Royal Navy sailors at Spithead and the Nore mutiny over deplorable conditions 1797: USA - John Adams president of the USA 1797-1801. 1797: Great Britain - A British inventor, Henry Maudslay invents the first metal or precision lathe. 1797: Great Britain - Wittemore patents a carding machine. 1797: Great Britain - John Hetherington in London develops the top hat. 1797: Great Britain - Major Dubied purchased the formula for an 'absinthe elixir' and together with his son, Henri-Louis Pernod sets up an absinthe factory in Switzerland.
37	1798	1798: Great Britain - Thomas Robert Malthus, in his Essay on the Principle of Population, contended that population increses by a geometric ratio whereas the means of subsistence increase by an arithmetic ratio. 1798: Great Britain - Introduction of An income tax of ten percent on incomes over 1798: Egypt - Battle of the Nile, Napoleon's Mediterranean fleet smashed 1798: Ireland - Catholic uprising 1798: Great Britain - Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads 1798: Great Britain - Franco-American Naval War: United States vs France 1798-1800. 1798: Great Britain - Aloys Senefelder invents lithography. 1798: Great Britain - The first soft drink id invented.
38	1799	1799: Great Britain - Trade Unions are suppressed. Napoleon is appointed First Consul in France 1799: France - Napoleon is appointed First Consul in France 1799: Great Britain - Three-year commercial boom in Britain begins 1799: France - Napoleon becomes President of France; amendments to Treason and Sedition Act 1799: Great Britain - Alessandro Volta invents the battery. 1799: Great Britain - Louis Robert invents the Fourdrinier Machine for sheet paper making. 1799: Great Britain - Deaths among women 1 in 913, children 1 in 115. For the first time London birth rate passes death rate, continues until introduction of water closet deposits effluence in Thames (source of potable water) and typhoid returns 1799: Great Britain - Eliza Acton Born. She wrote the first cookbook for the housewife, rather than for the professional chef. 1799: France - Joseph-Louis Proust, a French chemist, extracted sugar from grapes, and proved it identical to sugar extracted from honey.
39	1800	1800: UK - Act of Union with Ireland unites Parliaments of England and Ireland 1800: UK - Battle of Copenhagen, Napoleon's Danish fleet decimated 1800: Ireland - After Catholic rebellion in Ireland Pitt proposes one Parliament for both countries, but King George refuses, Pitt resigns; Sir Joseph Banks introduces voltaic battery 1800: UK - Sir Joseph Banks introduces voltaic battery 1800: UK - Robert Owen buys mills at New Lanark, turns into successful humane model 1800: France - Frenchman J.M. Jacquard invents the Jacquard Loom. 1800: UK - Over 20 miles of railway tracks laid 1800: UK - Over a ten year period, 30 acres of new docks are built in London, which becomes the greatest port in the world 1800: UK - Over the coming century, approx. 1 million people emigrate from Britain. 50,000 are prisoners transported to Maryland or Botany Bay 1800: USA - William Young in Philadelphia offers shoes made for the left and the right foot.
40	1801	1801: UK - The first British Census is undertaken 1801: UK - Population of England and Wales now 10 million, Great Britain estimated at 11 million, biggest increases in North and West Midlands, London now 1 million plus, Manchester 137,201, Glasgow and Edinburgh 100,000 plus, England has 8 towns larger than 50,000, 6 of them in the North; Lord Dundas travels on Scottish canal in small steamboat - beginning of steamboat travel 1801: UK - Tripolitan War 1801-1805. Barbary Wars: also fought in 1815. United States vs Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli 1801-1805. 1801: USA - Thomas Jefferson president of the USA 1801-1809.
41	1802	1802: UK - Peace with France is established. Peel introduces the first factory legislation 1802: UK - Ineffective Treaty of Amiens signed with French
42	1803	1803: UK - Beginning of the Napoleonic Wars. Britain declares war on France. Parliament passes the General Enclosure Act, simplifying the process of enclosing common land 1803: UK - Parliament passes the General Enclosure Act, simplifying the process of enclosing common land 1803: UK - Threat of French invasion causes flood of volunteers, army of half a million fielded during period to 1805
43	1804	1804: France - Napoleon crowned Emperor of France 1804: UK - John Dalton establishes atomic theory 1804: UK - Richard Trevithick, an English mining engineer, developed the first steam-powered locomotive. 1804: UK - Freidrich Winzer (Winsor) was the first person to patent gas lighting.
44	1805	1805: UK - Ludolf Christian Treviranus said that spermatozoa were analogous to pollen 21 Oct 1805: UK - Battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson trounces French and Spanish fleets for Britain, is mortally wounded; John Wilkinson expires, buried in iron coffin
45	1806	1806: Africa - Cape Colony passes under British control 1806: UK - Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolated the first amino acid, asparagine' from asparagus. 1806: UK - Sir Humphry Davy discovers sodium, magnesium, potassium, many other metals, and chlorine 23 Jan 1806: UK - Death of Pitt the Younger
46	1807	1807: UK - Trading in slaves made illegal in England by work of Wilberforce 1807: UK - William Bentinck, Duke of Portland Prime Minister to 1809 (Whig) 1807: USA - Robert Fulton ushered in the era of self-propelled ships with his construction of a commercially viable paddle-wheel steamboat
47	1808	1808: Peninsular War to drive the French out of Spain (until 1814) 1808: Portugal - Battle of Vimeiro is a British victory; British casualties less than 40,000 dead

Our Family History

The Genealogy of Robert and Christina Barritt

Margreth GIESIN