Having been busy in America for a while, putting together the family of Eli Hart (b. Newick 1827-9) who migrated to the US around 1857, I've returned to trying to trace his wife and mother of his two daughters, Mary. The first daughter, Emily, was born in England c.1855-7, according to the 2 US records I have of her age.
Eli was in Newick in 1841 (app. bricklayer to his father) but doesn't feature in the 1851 census. (There is a US migration card dated 1850 which
could mean that he made an earlier trip, but this is not known.) What we do know is that he, Mary (born c.1831-2) and 2 daughters (2nd born in the US) feature in the 1860 US census and other records suggest that his actual migration date was 1856-7.
Looking at the Emily Harts who were born in the 1855-1857 period, the only one which looks close-ish to Newick is this one:
HART, EMILY JANE WATTS
GRO Reference: 1855 J Quarter in BRIGHTHELMSTON Volume 02B Page 186
However, searching for a suitable Mary Watts doesn't really lead anywhere (the nearest seems to be an older Mary Watts, 1841 Census Uckfield).
Now, coincidence or not, there's an Eli Hart with father Thomas, both bricklayers (all true of the Eli who went to the US), who marries a Jane Court Stanway in Southwark on 20 Feb 1853. I can see the record on Ancestry, which is signed by the groom but the witnesses are both her family - her brother Samuel and his wife Anne. Then Jane Court Hart appears in the 1971 Census with her brother and sister-in-law in Cripplegate, with Jane shown as widowed. I cannot see any children of that marriage, nor a death certificiate for an Eli Hart during the period 1853-1871. So that is a mystery.
It's possible that Emily was not born in Sussex, but there are a lot of Emily Harts born in that period and I'm not really willing to fork out for all of their birth certificates! I even tried looking for possible matches with Mary + MMNs in the London area (that seeming most likely, after Sussex), but got no further than ruling out two of them that way...
When I get to the LDS FHC to access their Newick PR records, it's possible that I find a marriage there. However I would have expected to find the civil records on FamilySearch as well?
Does anyone has any ideas about any other avenues of investigation, or sources that I can't find, to confirm any of these relationships?
It's always possible that I missed something, of course.