The Pettman family living in Ramsgate in the nineteenth century descend from a family living in the parish of St Mary, Northgate, in Canterbury in the eighteenth century. The connection of the family with this parish seems to go back a lot further, and there are references to a Thomas Petman owning land there in 1403.
The spelling Pettman occurs almost interchangeably with Petman. In spite of family stories of French Huguenot descent, it is probable that the name is Kentish, a variant of Pitman, or miner. The east Kent coalfield was worked for many centuries, and was a significant source of supply for the capital. (There was a large Huguenot Walloon community in Canterbury, and an ancestor may have married a Huguenot girl.)
One notable branch was that of Thomas Pettman (1731-1808), who married Sarah Dale. He was of Ham Manor and Eastry, Kent, and steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the eighteenth century. Several of his valuations of diocesan estates in Kent are preserved in the Cathedral Archives. He and his descendants are buried in a family vault at Eastry. There is no known connection between them and the branch described here.
Another Pettman with whom no connection has yet been shown was William Pettman, the author of a number of religious treatises published in Canterbury between 1770 and 1807 - an example is The Necessity of Divine Revelation, published in 1778.
A William Robert Ashley Pettman of Sandwich, also wrote books in the 1820's. He was born in Sandwich around 1780. His younger brother Frederick was county collector of customs.
A John Pettman was occupier and tenant of a house in St Mary Northgate in 1797, and was the only Pettman in that parish assessed for Land Tax.
A Richard Petman, bricklayer of Best's Lane, in the parish of All Saints, Canterbury, appears in the 1790 and 1796 Poll Books. He and his son, another Richard, probably worked on the Cathedral in the early 19th century, and feature in the accounts. The father was probably buried at St Dunstan's, Canterbury, on 25 February 1821, aged 64, and his son was possibly the Richard Pettman of Bridge St., buried at St Paul's, Canterbury, aged 48, on 29 January 1830.
The Pettmans in the 19th century seem to have been concentrated in East Kent. In the Poll Book for 1868, there were four Pettmans in Thanet with sufficient property to entitle them to vote.
Also intriguing is a "Miss Caroline Pettman" of High Street, Ramsgate.
When the mother of Mary Woolstonecraft Godwin (later to marry Percy Shelley and to write Frankenstein) took her family to Ramsgate, as sea-bathing had been prescribed for Mary's weak arm, They boarded at the house of a Miss Petman, who kept a ladies' school, but had their sleeping apartments at an inn or other lodging. Mary, however, was sent to stay altogether at Miss Petman's, in order to be quiet, and in particular to be out of the way of little William, "who made so boisterous a noise when going to bed at night".
This was in the second half of 1811, and in the 1820's a Caroline Pettman was one of those renting a pew in St Thomas' Church, Ramsgate.
"Miss Petman's Academy" is listed at High Street, Ramsgate, in Pigot's Directory of 1828.
Caroline Pettman was almost certainly related to the Sandwich Pettmans.
The branch described here descend from Thomas and Elizabeth Pettman, whose son, Thomas Pettman was baptized at St Mary Northgate, Canterbury, on Christmas Day 1774. (The elder Thomas was probably born in 1737, the son of Henry and Elizabeth Pettman, but this is not yet certain.)
There was also a Revd Wallace Pettman of Spurgeon's Tabernacle, who claimed relationship. If this is so, the relationship was remote. He was the son of Richard Pettman, a master baker of Whitstable, and grandson of Robert Pettman, born in Whitstable in 1784, a shipwright. In 1881, he was aged 27, and living with his 24-year-old wife, Annie, and his one-year-old son, Ernest, at 17 High Street, Herne, where he was a Baptist minister. He was probably born in the Blean registration district in the second quarter of 1853.
A further possible relative was the hymn writer, Charles Edgar Pettman (1865-1943), but this is unconfirmed. (He was born on 19 April 1866 at the Old School House, Dunkirk. In 1881 he entered the Royal Academy of Music, to study the organ under Professor Macfarren. He is listed, aged 14, at the School House, Dunkirk, near Faversham, in 1881, the oldest of four children of Charles Edgar Pettman, aged 41. His father was born in Seasalter.)
A database of miscellaneous Pettman references is under preparation.