George Mears
1820 January: Born in Middlesex, son of Thomas Mears and his wife Matilda.
1833 Baptised, son of Thomas and Matilda, of Roadside, Bellfounder[1]
1841 Thomas Mears, founder, 60, living in St Mary Whitechapel, London, with Matilda 55, Charles 25, and George Mears, founder, 21[2]
1841 Admitted into the Company of Founders[3]
1851 Appointed one of the local commissioners of the 1851 Great Exhibition[4]
1854 Patent to George Mears, of the Bell Foundry, Whitechapel-road, in the county of Middlesex, for the invention of "improvements in machinery, or apparatus for obtaining sounds."[5]
1858 After the cracking of the first Great Bell for the Parliament in London (Big Ben), it was recast by George Mears at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry using the reclaimed bell metal. The second bell was cast on 10 April 1858.
John Mears, brother of George, was manager of the foundry[6]
1860 The highlights of the law-suit between Mears and Denison about the disaster of the Big Ben bell can be seen at The Engineer 1860/01/06, page 11.
1873 A George Mears (b.1820) died at Portsea Island[7]