The Story So Far

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The blog so far has taken the story of Troy Town up to the death of Jacob Cazeneuve Troy in 1798. (The family, or whoever recorded an event in a parish register, used various spellings of the name. In this post, I have used throughout the version they settled on finally.)

The aim of this post is to recap the story up to 1798 in chronological order.

In 1685, Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which since 1598 had a guaranteed a degree of freedom of worship and freedom from oppression to French Protestants or Huguenots.  

Following the Revocation, and the consequent persecution, many Huguenots took refuge in England. Some, who were silkweavers, settled in Canterbury or Spitalfields, east of the City of London. Others were engaged in business or finance. 

Jean, or John, Cazeneuve came to England from the island of Oléron on the west coast of France sometime before 1696. John married Ester or Esther Brodu or Brodeur. They had children baptised in Westminster and Stepney in the late 1690s.

John was naturalised in 1700. By 1702, he and Esther were in Chatham, where their son Jacob was baptised in 1703. 

By the time of his death in 1740, John Cazeneuve had established himself in Chatham as a businessman and man of property. It is likely he was involved in the development of Brompton, in response to the expansion of Chatham Dockyard. He also had income from investments. 

John Cazeneuve's son Jacob,1703-1766, and grandson John, 1726-1791, were also well to do business men. 


Chatham and the Dockyard, 1798

Jacob Cazeneuve's daughter Mary and son in law Thomas Troy died young, when their son Jacob Cazeneuve Troy was still a boy. He inherited the distillery business and had other business interests such as banking and insurance. In 1786, he began the development of what would become known as Troy Town in Rochester, with the building of Pleasant Row facing the Maidstone Road. By the time of his death in 1798 Union Street and King Street had been built or were in progress and the building of Cazeneuve Street had begun. 



Rochester, with the area that would become Troy Town outlined 

The story of the early development of Troy Town and the individuals associated with it illustrates that people and places do not exist in isolation. They are influenced by events in the wider world. This is perhaps especially true of the Medway Towns, with their naval and military connections, and traffic constantly passing up and down the Dover road, but it would also apply to a rural inland parish.

If Louis XIV of France had not revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, initiating a new era of persecution of Protestants, John Cazeneuve would probably never have come to England and settled in Chatham.

If Britain had not been at war with France so frequently during the eighteenth century, Chatham Dockyard would not have expanded, leading to the growth of the Medway Towns and business opportunities for the Cazeneuve family.  

If the Seven Years War had not been fought, Thomas Troy might not have died prematurely, leaving his young children to be brought up by the Cazeneuve family. 

If war had not broken out between Britain and France in 1793, with the consequent financial uncertainty, the Rochester, Chatham and Strood Bank might have prospered and some bankruptcies among the early Troy Town developers might have been avoided.

The story so far does not claim to be an exhaustive account of the Cazeneuves in the eighteenth century; no doubt more could and will be discovered with further research. Study of Chatham parish records would show whether any of the Cazeneuves held office as churchwarden, overseer of the poor or highway surveyor. It could reveal further properties in Chatham owned or occupied by them. 

But for now, this blog will move away from the Cazeneuve family to look at other aspects of the early development of Troy Town and then to look at Troy Town in the nineteenth century.




Next: Researching Troy Town

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The author has lived all her life in Kent, apart from a few years elsewhere as a student. She has a lifelong interest in local history, especially the history of Kent, and has been researching family history for decades. This blog brings together those interests in an ongoing study of the history of a small area of a smallish English city. The author also writes historical mystery fiction, which can be found on Amazon Kindle: see links at the foot of each blog post.

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