Background
Author: Nev. Ramsden
The Martin family of Whitehaven
The early family history of the Martin family can be found in the Martin Papers in the British Library
see (Additional Manuscripts 41474-5) and also see - http://www.turtlebunbury.com/family/bunburyfamily_related/bunbury_family_related_martin.html
Samuel Martin of Lowther St., Whitehaven is described by Professor E. Hughes as the doyen of the merchants of that port. A man of great wealth, he owned estates in Virginia valued at over £30,000, and his 110 slaves were worth £6,600. He also had estates in the West Indies and Ireland. He was ruined by the American War of independence, his Virginian estates confiscated by the General Assembly and he was declared bankrupt.
taken from Cumberland Families & Heraldry - Huddleston
The Martin Family of Merchants were living in Whitehaven for only one, but very profitable, generation.
Samuel Martin [1729-1800] was the son of an Irish merchant, John Martin ** of Dublin, who died in 1760, leaving his estates in Virginia to his younger sons Samuel and Lewis Burwell, to be divided between them, as life tenants, the estates being entailed to their male heirs. Lewis died in 1702?? leaving one son, John Ponsonby, a minor; Samuel had two sons, George who became a Solicitor at Lincoln's Inn, London and another Peter who married Miss Mardenburg of Tortola, British Virgin islands.
Samuel appears to have left Virginia in 1751 and settled at Whitehaven. He never returned to the colony although he maintained an extensive trade with it. We know a great deal about Martin as a result of the American 'War of Independence. In 1779 the Virginian General Assembly sequestered the estates of certain loyalists, and the Martin estates were among them. He lost a great deal of money on goods that had been sent to the colonies.
taken from:-The Westward Movement - Daniel Hay [1910-1980]
** Colonel John Martin, JP, he was Burgess for Caroline County in Virginia from 1730-34 and again from 1738-40. He owned an estate of 2,700 acres in Virginia which was, one presumes, a tobacco farm and married Martha youngest daughter of Colonel Lewis Burwell . She died 27 May 1738, aged 35, and was buried at Clifton in Caroline County and he lived later in Bristol and Dublin and died 26 Jun 1760 in Dublin.
Somerset House was built in 1750 by Samuel Martin, a tobacco merchant. In 1779 he went bankrupt due to the debts racked up while trading with the colonies. Somerset House was sold to the Littledale family, but less than 10 years later it was hit by subsidence. The ground caved in, water broke through the mine-workings, and flooded the area. Two men, one woman and five pit horses drowned.
Samuel Martin [1729-1800] had two sons, George & Peter:-
George Martin the son of Samuel Martin, a Virginia landowner and wealthy Whitehaven merchant, and grandson to John Martin who had emigrated from Dublin in Ireland, to Virginia in 1730. George was a barrister-at-law of London and Dublin, born December 1756 and admitted to Lincoln’s Inn on 23 Apr 1776, he spent a great deal of time administering the families Virginia estates.
Peter, born Jan 1759, married a woman from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, and may have gone to the Cape and was still living without issue in 1799.
Samuel Martin along with his fellow merchants Peter How, John Younger, Robert Walker, Thomas Hartley and Timothy Nicholson were all part of the Town and Harbour Trustees Board, the body that was responsible for the running of the town of Whitehaven.