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The 1891 Census reference to Henry W Jessing is a 'mis-transcribed' reference to my grandfather, Henry W Gearing, who - with his mother (Louisa Adelaide, nee Tyler) - was living with the Tyler family following the death of William John Gearing in 1889. As far as I have yet been able to discover, Henry W 'disappears' from the 1901 Census to reappear as a lodger in Barrow-in-Furness in 1911, where he married Melvine Roberts in 1912. Louisa Adelaide married Charles Harrison in London in 1900.
Thanks for the other leads, which I will follow-up in due course.
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Afraid I've not been able to find anything for you, but these are suggestions.
If you're really lucky, you may be able to find a Will for Henry Gearing - naming his grandchildren.
The best I've found (on Ancestry, and it's not a very good find) is for Henry William Geering died 1898 of Greenwich Road, Blackheath. Naming his widow, Ellen.
Only backrupt William Gearing I can see (London Gazette) is in 1868 - a cork manufacturer from Bethnal Green. Perhaps you can find another (but how would you know if it was your Gt.grandfather or not)?
Incoming Passenger Lists on Ancestry start at 1878, which is a bit too late to be helpful. Maybe you can find earlier ones somewhere else.
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That looks right Chris.
I was looking for my close up map but I have buried it.
I am still having difficulty. coming up with results.
I have looked at some of the the London Gearings and many of the street names are on my tree.
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This is the baptism of Louisa
The address is in Greenwich but hard to make out.
5 Cl........ Place
Avenue Road
London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 about Louisa Adelaide Tyler
Name: Louisa Adelaide Tyler
Record Type: Baptism
Baptism Date: 8 Oct 1865
Father's Name: Henry Tyler
Mother's Name: Eliza Tyler
Parish or Poor Law Union: Camberwell St George
Borough: Southwark
Register Type: Parish Registers
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London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 about Henry William Gearing
Name: Henry William Gearing
Record Type: Baptism
Baptism Date: 21 Jul 1887
Father's Name: William John Gearing
Mother's Name: Louisa Gearing
Parish or Poor Law Union: Lorrimore Square St Paul
Borough: Southwark
Register Type: Parish Registers
looks like 78 Manor Place
father is an engineer.
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I am still having difficulty working this one otut.
I have fount this on Ancestry but there are flaws. There has been a submitted correction to Gearing.
1891 England Census about Henry W Jessing
Name: Henry W Jessing
[Henry W Gearing]
Age: 4
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1887
Relation: Granddaughter ???????????
Where born: Walworth, London, England
Civil parish: Newington
Ecclesiastical parish: Newington St Mary
Town: London City
County/Island: London
Country: England
Registration district: St Saviour Southwark
Sub-registration district: St Mary Newington
ED, institution, or vessel: 2
Neighbors: View others on page
Piece: 364
Folio: 39
Page Number: 27
Household Members:
Name Age
Henry J Tyler 52
Eliza Tyler 51
Lawson Jessing 25<<<< ?loisa
Frederick C Tyler 22
Ada E Tyler 26
Albert P Tyler 10
Edwin Tyler 11
Henry W Jessing 4
No Gearing father present.
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Background
I am seeking advice and/or assistance with tracing details of the birth and ancestors of my maternal great grandfather (my mother’s father’s father), William John Gearing (WJG).
I currently accept the accuracy of the following details of his life in south London in the 1880s:
• Married Louisa Adelaide Tyler (LAT, 1865-1937) in the parish of Kensington (registration district of Lambeth), Surrey on 22 September 1886 –
o marriage certificate records WJG, a bachelor working in engineering, as being 33 (born 1852-3) and LAT, a spinster, as 21, living at what could have been 1 Trigon Place (indecipherable) – there is a Trigon Road in nearby Kennington; LAT’s father, Henry John Tyler, a hatter, was one of the two witnesses to the wedding, the other appearing to be LAT’s sister, Ada Eliza Tyler; WJG’s father is recorded as being an engineer named Henry George Gearing, though there is no evidence that he, or any other member of WJG’s family, attended the ceremony.
• WJ and LA became parents of a son, Henry William (subsequently to become my mother’s father), on 22 March 1887 –
o HWG was born in the family home at 78 Manor Place, Walworth (Southwark), with his birth registered on 25 March 1887 in the St Mary, Newington sub-district of St Saviour, Surrey. The names of both parents recorded on the birth certificate match those on the wedding certificate of September 1886, although WJG was now recorded as being an accountant.
• WJG died from ‘malignant disease of the lungs’ (lung cancer) in St Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth on 26 July 1889 –
o the death certificate records WJG as being a 40 year old (born in 1848-9) clerk, living at 18 Smith Street, Camberwell.
I can provide additional details of the lives of both Henry William Gearing and Louisa Adelaide Gearing (from 1900 to 1916 married to Charles Harrison, and subsequently ‘Granny Harrison’ to my mother’s generation).
I have been unable to find convincing details of the birth and ancestry of WJG. Gearing was a surprisingly common surname in Victorian London/south east England, with several variations of the spelling (eg Geering/Gehring) – even within the same family unit – and a small group of forenames being repeated, including William, Henry, George and John.
I have found records for a handful of ‘potential suspects’, William John or John William Gearing born between about 1845 and 1855. However, in every case I have found evidence from existing family trees, census records, and/or records of marriages/deaths that lead me to doubt that any of these individuals are the WJG I am seeking.
A Theory
I have added a couple of unsubstantiated family stories about WJG to the criteria used in my search. He is said to have spent time in:
1) a Ceylonese tea plantation (ie there may have been a connection to the Indian sub-continent in the mid-nineteenth century); and
2) a London debtors prison (many, but not all, of these were being closed by the time WJG was old enough to be sent to any of them, which could mean he spent time in any London prison, perhaps for a fraud-related offence or something similar, which has some ‘fit’ with his status as an ‘accountant/clerk’; furthermore, it could mean that he may have been disposed to masking his identity by, for example, varying the spelling of, or otherwise changing, his name and/or varying his age/date of birth at a time when no great reliance can be placed on the accuracy of records of such details; the up to 16 year age difference between WJG and his bride may also have encouraged WJG to ‘vague up’ his age for the marriage record. I emphasize the speculative nature of all of this: I have no evidence that WJG did spend any time in any prison or was ever prosecuted for any offence).
This led me to explore a theory that WJG might have had some connection to the Indian sub-continent. To cut a long story short, this has identified one individual that might be the same WJG that was married, became a father and died in London in the 1880s. Since it also would reveal a previously unknown (to my family) arm of the Gearing family that appears to have been an integral part of the British Raj up to partition and independence in the late 1940s, I also am aware of the need for compelling evidence to forestall wishful thinking about any connection to this WJG.
The relevant family details are:
Father: Henry William Gearing, born in Greenwich, Kent in 1822, appears to have gone to India by the early 1840s as an engineer with what became the P&O shipping line – note the mixed connections to the brief details of WJG’s father recorded on the latter’s 1886 marriage certificate – the forenames are similar but not identical (and are the forenames of my grandfather), whilst the ‘engineer’ connection is striking, but potentially meaningless;
Mother: Eliza Jane Oliphant, born in England in 1822 or 1823, married to HWG in Calcutta on 4 November 1844, and died at Fort William (Calcutta) on 19 January 1852.
Children:
- Henry George (note the replication of the name given for WJG’s father on the latter’s 1886 marriage certificate), born at Fort William (Calcutta) on 11 August 1845, and died at Madras in 1916; he married Mary Ann Grinnol (born 1856) in Kidderpore, Bengal on 13 February 1872 and the couple appear to have had at least 7 children, at least three of whom (all married daughters) survived long enough to die in England between 1948 and 1972 (the last of these deaths was the second youngest daughter, Hope Gladys 21/8/1890-1972, who married Christopher Hughes Masterman 1889-1982 in Madras in 1921 – he was subsequently knighted for his work as a colonial administrator for the Madras government and appears to have been the first (acting?) British Deputy Commissioner for South India for a short period leading up to partition in 1947).
- Esther Amelia, born 23 July 1846, Kidderpore; died 2 June 1847, Fort William;
- Charles Murray Oliphant, born 1 September 1847 and baptised at Kidderpore on 30 November 1847; I have found a record for the death of a five year old (ie born in 1847) Charles William Gearing at Fort William (Calcutta) on 4 December 1852 (the apparent difference in birth and death names may owe something to the death following that of the child’s mother and – perhaps – the absence of his father?);
- William John (is this my great grandfather?), born Kidderpore 28 April 1849, baptised Agra 17 May 1850 – no records of marriage/death yet found;
- James, born, baptised and died at Kidderpore on 26 September 1851.
The evidence is that EJ had given birth to five children by September 1851, only two of whom remained alive by Christmas 1852, by which time she also was dead. The wave of bereavements in 1851-2 (following the one in 1847) may be attributable to typhoid or some other disease – I don’t yet know. But did the family tragedy send HWG’s life into disarray? I’ve found no records of him in India after the early 1850s (I may not have been looking in the right place), and there are some records of at least one HWG of about the right age living as a boarder in Greenwich, Kent (where HWG had been born in 1822) in the 1861 Census.
Such a theory may raise more questions than it answers: for example, if HWG did return to England with son William John, why did he leave an about seven year old Henry George in India, and what happened to William John after he returned to England: were the young boys ‘farmed out’ to other families, and – if so – where is the evidence in post-1851 Census records or the like?
Conclusion
Where might I look for additional evidence to test this theory – or for other evidence to formulate other theories if there is evidence for the rejection of this one?
Andy Turner
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