Family Trees

Tuesday 2 September 2008

William Ellery of Liverpool

A few nights ago I decided to have yet another go at identifying my ancestor, William Ellery. This time the catalyst was the Civil Service Evidence of Age List available on subscription at Find My Past. William Ellery, born at Bodmin, was a customs officer at Liverpool. The List provided one crucial piece of data - William Ellery was born on the 3rd May 1837, just before the modern system of collecting bmd registrations was begun.

The next part of the chase should be preceded by "with some certainty" as it involves piecing together clues from the census returns, transcriptions of parish registers and other published genealogies. The story is becoming clearer but at one point, at least, there must have been more marriages and widowings than I have found.

"With some certainity", the story seems to go like this: The Family Search site does not list William Ellery's birth or christening, so the earliest clues have to come from the 1841 and 1851 census returns published online by Ancestry. In 1841 William and his older brother Nicholas are living with their widowed mother Elizabeth, a shoebinder, at Downing Street, Bodmin; in 1851 all three are living with Elizabeth's unmarried brother, William Bray, a boot and shoemaker of Bodmin. By 1861 both brothers have left Cornwall - William is in Liverpool and Nicholas is in Uppingham, but Elizabeth has two young grandchildren living with her. The Family Search website yielded the information. When William Ellery was only 19 he married the 30 year old Mary Jane Bligh, daughter of Richard Bligh, a retired printer, of Fore Street, Bodmin. At the time, William was a musician, a bugler in the Royal Cornwall Rangers. Two children were born in quick succession, then Mary Jane died. All this happened between the 1851 and 1861 census returns.

There is less certainty about the rest of the story. We know that William Ellery removed to Liverpool and started a new family with Grace Warburton. (No marriage certificate yet, but it is not unusual for the GRO record to be missing). His sons were brought up in Bodmin. I have to assume, knowing what little I heard about William Ellery, that he wanted or needed a better future, that he could not take the babies with him to Liverpool when they were well looked after in Bodmin, and that hopefully he earned enough to do his best for them.

As to William's parents? According to his marriage certificate, William was the son of Nicholas Ellery, a hatter, who was trading in Bodmin in 1830, and of Elizabeth. On the census returns, William Bray states that Elizabeth is his sister and suitable records for the birth and christening of both William and Elizabeth are on the Family Search site. However, a Nicholas Ellery married Elizabeth Ellery, widow of his brother Richard, but this seems to relate back to an Elizabeth Brewer, not Elizabeth Bray, and some of the dates don't match, so this is for another day....