This page has been established to facilitate sharing of information with people researching the surname BEAN primarily in the East Sussex region. The focus has been mapping out the descendants of the early BEAN families originating from the East Blatchington/Seaford areas.
In the 1500s in East Sussex, the Bean family was farming at East Blatchington, near Seaford. John Bean (c1500-1567) was a husbandman of East Blatchington and his grandson John Bean (c1555-1642) a yeoman of East Blatchington and also a jurat of Seaford, meaning that he was a member of the town governing council. The family maintained a strong connection to East Blatchington until just before 1700 when Henry Bean, a tenant farmer who had married Mary Savage in 1684, leased two farms at Litlington: Upper Clapham (Clapham Manor) and Lower Clapham, with the family moving to Clapham House. The family bought up much of the land around Litlington and came to dominate the village, becoming quite wealthy.
This is the author's family tree, although not directly connected to the Beans that lived at Litlington. His connection is to Thomas Bean (1616-1679) at East Blatchington who married Mary Taylor in 1652 at Seaford.
There are many respected families connected to the Bean family. Surnames such as Chambers, Swaine, Davis, Keating, Savage, Martin, Towner, Sturte, Playsted, Price, Parsons and Young are frequently found in the Bean wills as they married into the family are various times.
The Beans at Wivelsfield were generations of cordwainers (shoemakers). Their origins were around Petworth, West Sussex
The origins of Thomas Bean, the victualler who died in 1752 at Rye, are unclear. He may have been the Thomas baptised at Eastbourne St Mary on 1 Jan 1688, son of John and Mary Bean, but that is purely speculative. Adding to the confusion is another Thomas Bean, a butcher of Rye, who married Ann Kennett, spinster of Rye, on 23 Jul 1716 and who died shortley after leaving a nuncupative will proved on 20 Apr 1717. This person has not been able to be placed in the tree below.
Given their occupations as victuallers and innkeepers, it is also very possible that they arrived in Rye from afar, possibly from Kent, to take advantage of a perceived business opportunity. Rye was a town which saw many people passing through, especially mariners and soldiers. The story of Ann Ogle (nee Waun), second wife of Thomas Bean (c1690-1752) illustrates this. Her first marriage was to a soldier in London in 1710 and it appears that they spent most of their life in Rye.
It would appear that the Bean name died out in this line with the death of John Bean in 1777 at Rye.