Hi Smudwisk,
Many thanks for your helpful contributions they are very much appreciated.
Regarding your comment " Unless you've already found all the Harris entries for bapt/marriage/burials for Coggeshall, I'd suggest doing this and then have a look at any Harris bridegrooms who married around 1805."
I have already done so and turned up three possibles which I'll copy and paste plus the relevant thoughts I had from my research notes:-
1) 26 Dec 1780 George Harris & Ann Richold.
2) 12 Sep 1795 Robert Harris & Sarah Snellock, Robert noted as being “of Little Coxal”.
3) 24 Dec 1806 Samuel Harris & Amelia Windall, Samuel noted as being “of Little Coggeshall”.
Note Coggeshall was sometimes called Coxal by local people.
Of the three marriages I favour Robert and Sarah as parents of Joseph because of the date but George and Ann cannot be ignored. Nor can Samuel and Amelia be dismissed as parents of Joseph but 1806 being close to the date when Joseph thinks he was born I would have expected the marriage of Samuel and Amelia to be by licence, however often the year of birth in a census is not accurate so a licence might not have been needed.
Also note that it is possible that George’s marriage to Ann Richold may have been his second marriage, although in the marriage entry for George and Ann it did not state George was a widow, the statement may have been inadvertently omitted. A George Harris married Bridget Rose by banns 26 Dec 1771 at Coggeshall.
What I will now do is to check the PRs for Coggeshall and Coggeshall congregationalfrom 1780 to somewhere in the 1800s and compare the names of any Harris children found with the names Joseph and Lucy used for their children. Joseph and Lucy did name a child Sarah but Sarah being quite a common name it cannot be considered proof on its own.
18/1/2014 I have now searched Coggeshall C of E and Congregational registers and the baptism of Joseph Harris c 1806/7/9 is not in those registers.
Since composing the above notes I have of late leaned more towards Samuel and Amelia.
Please fell free to apply critique to any of the above.
I have two Harris families:-
1) Joseph Harris (c1806) and his wife Lucy Turner.
2) Joseph Harris (1831) and his wife Eliza Dalton.
As far as I know neither of those two families named a son George, Robert or Samuel, rotten blighters.
By the way Rachel I didn't put those three marriages on this topic because having found them and written them up way back and last saw the notes in January this year they had slipped my memory. It was Smudwisk's comments about checking for Harris marriages that brought them to mind, sorry about that.