If you like a challenge... this one's for you!

[Lindad]

I've already posted a couple of pleas for help about this many months ago, however we are still beating our heads against a brickwall.|banghead|

Joseph JEALOUS, according to the 1881 census, was born in 1852 in Charlton, Kent, although later censuses say that he was born in Woolwich. All say that he was a bricklayer.

In 1877 he married Sarah RYDER in Shoreditch. On his marriage certificate his age is given as 25 and his address is in Hoxton. He is recorded as a bricklayer. His father's name is also shown as Joseph JEALOUS, and he too is a bricklayer.

Our problem is that we can find no trace of this family prior to Joseph's marriage. I've trawled all the birth records on 1837 Online for 1851, 1852 and 1853 and his birth was not registered. Neither he or his father appear on the 1851, 1861 or 1871 census. Usually if I look long, hard and creatively enough I can find a match... but with this family, nothing! We've tried every conceivable spelling, both exact and soundex.

The marriage certificate does not say that his father is deceased. Although Joseph junior's address is given as Hoxton, we have no idea whether this is where his father was also living at the time.

We have been looking for this for so long now, and have run out of ideas of where to look next. We are anxious to find Joseph's birth so that, at the very least, we can find out the name of his mother.

Please can anyone give us any suggestions? Either the family had a fear of the authorities and avoided registrars and enumerators at all costs - or we're missing something!

[geoffpowers]

I would try and run a few permutations of the surname. What with enumerators, registrars, parish priests, who wrote what they thought they heard, poor pronunciation/articulation, mistranscriptions, etc almost anything is possible. I have had a couple of 'problem' surnames and made a certain amount of headway by this method, though it's very much 'trial and error'.

I just tried a couple of variations of the surname on IGI Family Search and pulled up a very wide range of spelling variations from the first half of the 19C.

Is there any possibility that the family were immigrants into Britain from the continent?

GP

[Lindad]

We don't know where the family came from, although there seem to be quite a few Jealous' from the Cambridgeshire / Lincolnshire areas. If we could get back a generation or two, I suspect this is where they were from.

As I said above, we've already tried searching every conceivable connotation of the name: Jealous, Jelous, Jellis, Jelus, Jeles, Gellous, Gealous, Gelus etc both exact and soundex. I've also tried searching just for 'Joseph born 1852 +/- 5 years' in Kent and Middlesex. I've tried all the above spellings in Kent, Middlesex, Essex...

I guess it's possible that the name of Joseph's father on his marriage certificate is wrong but, without his birth certificate, we've nothing else to go on...

[Mythology]

"Either the family had a fear of the authorities and avoided registrars and enumerators at all costs ..."

On the pessimistic side, if that was the case then one possibility is that they also avoided paying the rent by skipping over to the other side of the river and reappearing under the new name of Jealous to avoid detection.

"We had to move away
'Cos the rent we couldn't pay.
The moving van came round just after dark.
There was me and my old man,
Shoving things inside the van,
Which we'd often done before, let me remark."

Now - why do you think the van didn't come round in daylight?
It isn't just a music hall song, this sort of thing happened, and a change of name often accompanied the move. I managed to trace one lot for a friend some years ago thanks to them using the father's middle name as their new surname, but not all of them were that silly.

On a more positive note, many parents did not register their children's births in those days, but you haven't mentioned baptism records so I assume you haven't looked for these yet. Where there isn't one, there is often the other - if this lot were mine, I'd make the LMA my first stop and have a good bash at the parish registers. Woolwich and Charlton *do* get a bit blurred - St Thomas in Maryon Road is "Charlton" according to the LMA catalogue and everything else that I've come across, but I have an 1859 marriage there, and the register at that time says it's Woolwich, so I'd scout around the lot.

"The marriage certificate does not say that his father is deceased."
But it doesn't say that he's alive either.
By coincidence, that 1859 Charlton/Woolwich marriage that I referred to is the second of four marriages (1856, 1859, 1864, 1866) of one Robert Owen Fitch. On the first three of his father is "Joseph Fitch, Schoolmaster", and on the fourth one he's decided that "Joseph Fitch, Preceptor" sound posher.
Exactly when the said Joseph Fitch died I do not know, but his wife was a widow in 1846 when her father made his will. A number of my 3x great-grandfather's children who married after his death also simply give their father as "Surveyor", no mention that he's been measuring up the Pearly Gates for some years, so I would not make assumptions based on the absence of the word "deceased".

[Mark]

I did find a hopeful looking run in the 1871, 1861 and 1851 ... but as they contradict the 1881 (where Joseph John Gillem appears married to a Mary Jane) it looks like another set to be cast aside

1871 Census
RG 10 / 644 ED 16 folio 127 page 15 schedule 47
Albert Cottages, Rotherhithe, Surrey
Mrs Gilleece, Head, Wid, -, 44, Laundress, Worcestershire
Joseph Gilleece, Son, Un, 18, -, ??ur, Surrey Rotherhithe
Matilda Gilleece, Dau, -, -, 17, Domestic Servant, Surrey Rotherhithe
H Stummers, son in law, Mar, 27, -, Bricklayer & ???, Surrey Southwark
Elizabeth Stummers, Dau, Mar, -, 24, -, Surrey Walworth
Henry Shepherd, Lodger, Unm, 19, -, Ironmongers Assistant, Surrey Bermondsey

1861 Census
RG 9 / 391 ED 15 folio 11 page 27 schedule 152
R R Auh 533, Rotherhithe, Surrey
Joseph John Gillem, Head, Mar, 36, -, Carter, Surrey Byfleet
Jane Gillem, Wife, Mar, -, 36, Laundress, Worcestershire Evenlode
Sarah Gillem, Dau, Un, -, 13, -, Surrey Walworth
Josh John Gillem, Son, -, 8, -, Scholar, Kent Deptford
Matilda Gillem, Dau, -, -, 7, Scholar, Kent Deptford
Thomas Willm Gillem, Son, -, 4, -, -Scholar, Surrey Rotherhithe
Charles Edwin? Jams?, Son, -, 1m, -, -, Surrey Rotherhithe

1851 Census
HO 107 / 1584 ED 2t folio 699 page 8 schedule 29
14 Robinsons Terrace, Deptford, Kent
Joseph J Gillem, Head, Mar, 26, -, Carter, Surrey Byfleet
Jane Gillem, Wife, Mar, -, 26, -, Worcestershire Evenlode
Sarah E Gillem, Dau, -, -, 3, -, Surrey Walworth
Hannah Gillem, Dau, -, -, 5m, -, Kent Deptford

Mark

[susan-w]

There is a Charles Jealous born about 1850 in Greenwich Kent (not Charlton, though) in the 1881 census (RG11/0712 folio 106 p 13). Maybe he’s a brother??? Maybe not!

In 1851, I think Charles is indexed as Charles Fellis in ancestry.co.uk. Living with father John (rather than Joseph), who was born 1809 in St George Middlesex. (HO 107/1586 folio 444 page 28). I’ve just shut the page, but I think it said labourer rather than bricklayer. Of course, Joseph jnr wouldn’t have been born by then.

This is all a tenuous link, though. I had a very quick look, but couldn’t find the family in 1861.

Sorry for this stream of consciousness :) But I’m just off to bed, and would have forgotten by the morning...

Good luck, though. I'm sure you'll find him in the end.

[Peter Goodey]

I know this sounds a bit desperate but how about trawling the parish registers for Charlton-Woolwich and thereabouts?

[Lindad]

Many thanks everyone. To be honest, before posting this thread, I hadn't realised that it was worth trawling the parish registers for births that don't appear to have been registered post 1837. It looks as though this may have to be our next step...

Maybe this will also help me find a couple of other great grandparents who never seem to be recorded where they should! Looks like trips to Charlton/Woolwich, Deptford and Walthamstow will be forthcoming...

[Mythology]

"... if this lot were mine, I'd make the LMA my first stop and have a good bash at the parish registers."

The LMA - not Charlton or Woolwich.
Use their London Generations database to check churches individually, as south of the river isn't really my patch so there *could* be an extra church or two that I haven't come across who still have their registers from that far back, but the registers of the two main churches, St Luke Charlton and St Mary Magdalene Woolwich, plus the St Thomas which I referred to (listed by them as Charlton but says Woolwich in the register) are certainly at the LMA.
(Edit - same for Deptford, must be going blind, didn't notice that you'd also mentioned that!)

I don't know what you want at Walthamstow, but if it's parish registers again, then depending on the date you'll probably need Essex Record Office at Chelmsford - similarly, check the parish list on their site.

[Mythology]

Afterthought re Walthamstow.

Depending on when and where it is, you *may* also need Waltham Forest Archives. I don't know what they have there, the few Walthamstow bits that I've needed have been at Chelmsford, but I do remember some bits in the *printed* ERO lists being marked as held at Waltham Forest Archives.

Unfortunately their web site is distinctly unhelpful - just says that their holdings include "Records of parishes in Waltham Forest Deanery" and that visiting is by appointment only.

(Edit)
And from a quick flip through the ERO online list, it looks as though I was lucky - most of what they have for the various Walthamstow churches is BTs and other transcripts for some years, not registers - Waltham Forest Archives certainly looks like the place to try first rather than Chelmsford.