James Easton

James Easton (1797-1871) of Easton and Amos

1797 Born son of Josiah Easton in Bradford, Somerset

1827 He went into partnership with William Leahy of the Grove, Southwark, and in the same year he married the only daughter of the late Mr. Benjamin Shaw

1829 Partnership with William Leahy dissolved

1830 Birth of second son James

1832 Birth of third son Edward

1837 Entered partnership with Charles Edwards Amos as Easton and Amos

1841 Civil engineer, living in Southwark, with Sarah Easton 40, Sarah Easton 6, John Easton 4, Ellen Easton 2, Louisa Easton 3 Mo

1843 Partnership between James Easton, Charles Edwards Amos, and James Beswick, carrying on the business of Plumbers, at the Grove, Great Guilford-street, Southwark, dissolved

1851 Civil engineer, living in Southwark with Sarah Easton 51, Sarah W Easton 16, John Easton 14, Louisa Easton 10 Helen M Easton 5

1857 His daughter Sarah Winsmore married John Garrett, the second son of Richard Garrett of Northwick Terrace, Maida Vale and of Sizewell House, near Saxmundham. Married at St. George's, Bloomsbury.

1861 James Easton, an engineer, 64, was living in London with Sarah Easton 61, Louisa Easton 20, Helen Mary Easton 15, and his daughter Sarah Winsmore Garrett 26 with her daughters Margaret E Garrett 1 and Edith E Garrett 4 mo

1866 Retired from Easton and Amos.

1871 Living in Bloomsbury, a retired civil engineer, with Sarah Easton 71 and Helen Mary Easton 25

1871 Died in London - Obituary

1871 'THE LATE MR. JAMES EASTON
We regret to announce the death of Mr. James Easton, the founder and for nearly 40 years the senior partner of the well known firm of engineers which still bears his name. He was born in 1796 at Bradford, near Taunton, and was the son of Josiah Easton, a well-known and much-respected land agent and surveyor. From a very early age he practised surveying and civil engineering in conjunction with his father. He came up to London in 1822 to introduce the hydraulic ram, the patent of which had purchased from the celebrated Montgolfier. In 1825 he was engaged, in conjunction with the late Mr. N. G. Rennie, in a survey of the then projected London and Northern Railway, to which George Stephenson was consulting engineer, and made the Parliamentary plans for the section from London to Peterborough through Cambridge. The scheme, which was most influentially supported by the leading monetary and mercantile men of the day, was carried to Parliament in 1826, but the money panic of that year put a stop to this as well many other projected railway undertakings. Mr. Easton then turned his attention to mechanical engineering, and in 1827 established himself at The Grove, Southwark, where the business is still carried on by the present well-known firm. Among a vast number of works he carried out during his long career may be briefly mentioned the perfecting and extensive introduction of the hydraulic ram, the supplying with water of above 30 towns, the Government waterworks at Trafalgar-square, which supply the Palaces and public offices as well as the Houses of Parliament; the improvement of the navigation of tho Dartford and Crayford Creeks, and the drainage of tho whole of the marshes from London to Dartford on the right bank of the Thames. In 1866 Mr. Easton retired from the firm he had founded, but his active nature and love of his profession made him continue to take a great interest in many of the undertakings he had been instrumental in inaugurating, and up to the day of his death he retained the post of engineer in charge of the Government waterworks and ornamental waters in the parks, to which he had been appointed the Chief Commissioner of her Majesty’s Works. In Mr. Easton the country has lost one of the pioneers of engineering — one of that band of men who had to devise and inaugurate works with little or no experience to guide them, and prepare the way for the more brilliant but not more solid achievements of modern engineers.'

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