JOSEPH SMITH Seal, Image by StuE, Found by Dave Haffenden
Found in the Colchester Area.
JOSEPH SMITH MARCH is the 'best guess' looking at the original seal.
This seal has now been donated to the March & District Museum by Dave Haffenden.
The following information was supplied by Richard Munns of the March & District Museum:-
Joseph Smith, or his family, owned two sites in March. The older one, on the river side, was purchased at the beginning of the 19th century from the Gray family, who had a maltings and granary there. The Smiths first used the site, called the Acre, for their business of coal, turf, timber and corn merchants, also plying barges to and from Kings Lynn twice weekly and once weekly to Cambridge. Eventually they constructed a long range of buildings on the west and south sides of the area, part of which were two-storied for milling purposes, a manager's cottage and a bricked wharf. The whole of this site, with the exception of The Acre public house, has now been demolished and part of the site is the location for the Library.
The second site that Smiths owned was in High Street, shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1902 as the 'new mill'. This was taken over at some time in the 1940s or 50s by Vitovis and was then used as an iron and steel fabrication unit. It too has been demolished and 'luxury' apartments built of the site.
The Smith family are reputed to have left the town in the 1940s. See Flour Bag photograph.