Life
He was the eldest child of John Ames, a master in the merchant service and sixth son of Captain Joseph Ames, R.N. Joseph Ames was born at Yarmouth on 23 January 1689 and was educated at a small grammar school in Wapping. He lost his father at age 12 and three years later was apprenticed to a plane maker in King Street or Queen Street, near the Guildhall, City of London. He then moved to Wapping near the Hermitage, where his father had previously settled, and established a successful business there. In 1712 his mother died and was buried in Wapping church near her husband. Two years later Ames married Mary, daughter of William Wrayford, a merchant in Bow Lane. She died in 1734 after bearing six children, of whom only a daughter survived her.
Ames was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1736 and was appointed secretary five years later; he held the position until his death, the Rev. William Norris being associated with him in 1754. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743, but his only contribution to the Society's Philosophical Transactions was a letter relating to a case of plica polonica in 1747.
After dining with his old friend Sir Peter Thompson, Ames was seized with an attack that brought about his death that evening, 7 October 1759, in the seventy-first year of his life. He was buried in the churchyard of St George-in-the-East.
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