Who?

I went to the other end of Leyton High street on Wednesday to find a bike shop - I'd got a puncture in Stratford and needed to buy a pump as I'd left mine round S's flat.

I noticed a plaque on number 544 on the high road. The names on the plaque were:

sir Fisher Tench c1700

Thomas oliver 1750 - 1803

It wasn't the exisiting building they lived in, but one that predated the current terraced house on this site.

I'm not absloutely sure about the spelling - so that means i have to go back and check. Could find nothing on Fisher Tench - except lots of site about tench fishing came up :-).

Thomas Oliver though - one name came up on Wikipedia, and this may well be the one:

Thomas Oliver (Lieutenant Governor)

Thomas Oliver (January 5, 1733 - November 29, 1815) was the last Royal Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts.

"He was graduated from Harvard in 1753, and resided at 33 Elmwood Avenue, Cambridge. He took little part in public affairs until, upon the death of Andrew Oliver, he was appointed by the King at the suggestion of Thomas Hutchinson, who believed him to be a brother of Oliver.

A mob of five thousand angry citizens forced him to resign on September 2, 1774. He fled to Boston, remaining there for a year. When the British troops sailed to Halifax in March of 1776, Oliver went with them, going on to England. He was proscribed under the Massachusetts Banishment Act in 1778, and his estate confiscated."

Unfortunately the dates don;t quite match up - he'd have been too young to have lived there in 1850. First off - I'd better check the dates and spelling.