The Arsenal’s Shadow and the Home Builder’s Dream

 

1887  View from Mary Magdalen Church Woolwich
(Church Hill) across the Thames towards Plumstead

This is a story of incredible resilience, showing how our HEAD family's history in England was shaped by the global demands of the British military, the steady persistence of skilled craftsmanship, and the search for opportunity across the ocean. 

The narrative spans two centuries, beginning in the quiet English countryside and concluding in the roaring industrial heart of America.

🔨 The Arsenal’s Shadow and the Home Builder’s Dream

I. The Deep Root: Wiltshire and the Steady Hand (c. 1665)

The story of the Head lineage takes root long before the roar of cannons, tracing back to the late 17th century with Christopher HEAD (b. c. 1665/70), likely in the quiet villages of Wiltshire. While records hold few details of his life with his wife, Martha, he represents the deep soil from which the family sprang—a lineage of common Englishmen who lived by the skill of their hands.

This early foundation was one of stability and craft. For generations, the Head men practiced trades, likely working with wood and earth—a tradition that would define their future, even as history tried to pull them away.

II. The Cannon’s Claim: Yellow Fever and Ninepence a Day (1795)

The trajectory of the family changed forever with John Headd (1771–1855). A man of twenty-four, he traded the quiet life for the brutal reality of the Royal Artillery. In August 1795, he enlisted, and by November, he was aboard the HMS Concord, bound for the French West Indies.

John’s campaign was less about glory and more about survival. For ninepence and a halfpenny a day, he endured the Atlantic crossing (where 11% of troops perished) and the infamous Yellow Fever Wars in San Domingo. As his company was decimated—losing 28 men, including the Captain, in one horrific month of June 1796—John, the Gunner, stood fast at St. Nicolas Mole. He survived the campaign that crippled the British Army, enduring the fevers that were "proportionally greater than the battle casualties in most theaters of war."

He returned in 1798, physically broken by the climate and labor, discharged in 1810 for rheumatism, a pensioner for his remaining years. He had done his duty for King and Country.

III. The Gardener and the Child of Signal Hill (1817)

Settling in Plumstead, Kent, John married Sophia Smith, a literate woman who managed the household on his shilling-a-day pension. They stabilized the line in the shadow of the Woolwich Arsenal—the beating heart of the British military machine.

Their son, Stephen Head (1817–1881), rejected the barracks life. Born on Plumstead Common, Stephen became a gardener to the wealthy owners of Vicarage Park, returning the family to the ancient craft of the earth.

Stephen’s marriage, however, brought the military drama back home. He married Margaret Wilkie (1826–1910), the remarkable daughter of a Master Armourer Sergeant who had been born at the remote Fort of Signal Hill, Newfoundland. Margaret, "believed to be the first English child at the Fort," brought tales of battened-down sailing ships and colonial isolation to their stable life.

Stephen would eventually take his artisan skills into the military complex, becoming a foreman at Woolwich Dockyard, but the family legacy remained rooted in craft—gardening, woodworking, and the skill that came from the hand, not the gun.

IV. The Jointer’s Farewell (1910)

The final generation in England lived directly under the looming threat of the Woolwich Arsenal—a massive industrial complex that was both a source of employment and a target. Stephen's descendants continued the artisan tradition, becoming woodworkers and skilled laborers. The family provided workers for the Arsenal for decades, culminating in an ancestor retiring from the Arsenal around 1917, just as the Great War was raging and German Zeppelins were dropping bombs on their hometown, Plumstead.

It was against this backdrop of industrial noise, looming conflict, and generational stability that Stephen William HEAD (1889–1942), the great-grandson of Gunner John Headd, made his final, dramatic choice.

Stephen William Head was a Jointer—a skilled woodworker who specialized in fitting timber. He had inherited the hands of his ancestors. But in the early 20th century, the old life felt small. The American promise of open space and industrial opportunity called him.

In 1910, Stephen William Head left Plumstead and its four generations of artisan tradition, turning his back on the military life and the shadow of the Arsenal. He emigrated to the USA, seeking the American Dream.

Landing in Detroit, Michigan, he traded the meticulous craft of the Jointer for the expansive vision of the Home Builder. He quickly settled, marrying Annie McNeil in 1913. The man whose forebears had built the ships and maintained the guns of the British Empire now used his inherited skill to literally build the new American landscape—laying foundations and raising the roofs for the burgeoning automotive city.

Stephen William Head closed the English chapter of the Head family and began the American one, transforming the stable, skilled labor of Plumstead into the dynamic entrepreneurial spirit of the American Midwest.

Story courtesy of Gemini with details from Drifting Cowboy.