This is the story of four generations of Richard Cardins.

GENERATION 1 is the family of "Old" Richard and his wife Ann[e] of Lewes, Sussex, England.

GENERATION 2 is that of Richard "Lewes" and his wife Sarah Cantrell who continued Richard and Ann's merchant family legacy but were forced to give up in Lewes and move to London around 1764.  Six of their nine children were born and baptized in Lewes and three in London.

Three of Richard and Sarah's children outlived their parents (four, actually, Sarah died three years after her mother), including Richard "India/St. Kitts", the progenator of GENERATION 3.  This Richard was born in Lewes; probably sent from London to Jamaica as an apprentice to learn the sugar/rum making trade; requested by the Honourable East India Company to establish a rum distillery near Calcutta, India, where he met and married his wife, Ann Chiles; switched from sugar grower/rum maker to coal and timber merchant in Kent, England and, finally, was sent as attorney and manager of the Earl of Romney's estates in the Caribbean colony of St. Kitts, where he died and is buried.

This Richard and Ann's first four children were born in Calcutta (or, in Richard Edward's case, on board ship on the journey home in 1804-05), the next three daughters were born in London, the next five children were born in Maidstone, Kent, and the final two, in St. Kitts.  Youngest daughter, Maria, died as a infant and Richard asked, in his 1832 will, to be buried next to her there in St. Kitts.

GENERATION 4 is headed by Richard and Ann's son (Ann's father was Edward Chiles), Richard Edward Cardin.  He and his next older brother, John, married two sisters, Margaret and Agnes Bunn.  Margaret and Agnes' parents, Margaret Somerville and Alfred Bunn, hold their own category in this family tree, the "Bunn Subset" (quotes will be replaced with link in future).

Of the fourteen children born to Richard and Ann, only four lines are known to still be extant, two of them, descendants of Richard Edward and John's children and thus, Bunn grandchildren also.  The line not represented below is the Arabella Benson Cardin and Edward Hardtman one (see Generation 3); no contact has yet been made with descendants of this line.  It is also possible that the Boutflowers (see Generation 2) have continued but that line was difficult to trace past the beginning of the twentieth century, no contact has been made with any of those possible descendants either.

To explore this site, click on any generation tree above to go to a further explanation of that generation's individuals and family life.  In addition, at the bottom of each generation's page will be an opportunity to move on to the or in the sequence.

For the purposes of this site, the progenitor of Generation 1 is called "Richard I" (1702-1752).  Likewise, Generation 2's head is deemed "Richard II" (1731-1781) and Generation 3's, "Richard III" (1762-1834).   The fourth generation discussed on these pages is the first to have middle names attached to its children, so it has "Richard Edward"; who, while discussing St. Kitts, will sometimes be referred to as "Richard, Jr."

CAVEAT:  Dates on the generation trees are subject to change or may be inexact due to being baptism versus birth dates or educated guesses; see text for explanations.