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Hello again

Many thanks for this reference. I will see if I can discover the street address of this residential development.

Appreciate your help and your interest in this.

Sharon

Hi Sophie

The information I have about Gipsy Smith's ancestry - largely due to the work of the late Romany genealogy expert Terence Lee - is that his mother was Polly/Mary Welsh/Welch (born c1833, died 1865) and his father Cornelius Smith (1831-1922).

Polly/Mary had a sister called Lucy Welch/Welsh. Lucy was the partner of Rodney Shaw (born about 1835) and one their daughters was called Matilda. Could she be your Matilda Shaw? I don't have any further biographical information for her but her family had roots in Cambridgeshire/Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire.

Sharon

Just wondered if you have been able to digest all the Draper material in the past four weeks and if you have any questions or comments?

Any information you have relating to these families would be very welcome. Thank you.

Sharon

Hi Poppy Rose

And, the last instalment, in answer to your question <<In the 1851 census, on FamilySearch, unmarried Hannah Draper has a niece Kelly Draper, aged 4, and a nephew Elias Draper, aged 9, staying with her. Does anyone know who their parents were?>>

I believe the niece's name is Relly rather than Kelly, perhaps short for Mirelli or Marella which is a forename found in the Draper family. Relly can be found as an adult as the partner of one Francis Kemp. In online census indexes, her name is spelt as Rahilly in 1881, Reily in 1891 and Ratty in 1901. She has a daughter called Fambridge with her in 1881, aged one, who in later censuses becomes 'Fanny' and 'Amy'. As 'Ralley Kemp', she dies in 1903 in Epping Forest Registration District aged 55.

There is one theory that Relly and Elias were the children of a Mirelli Draper, the daughter of Edward Draper and Frances Brinkley, who was baptised on 27 October 1822 at King's Walden, Herts. Mirelli married Edward Shaw at Holy Trinity, Cambridge, on 10 May 1846. No baptisms have so far been traced for any children of the couple - but it would make sense for a mother called Mirelli to name a daughter after herself, albeit in the shortened form of 'Relly'.

Edward, the father of the 1822 Mirelli, could be the same man who fathered the Draper children Goliah/Elias, Caroline, Randolph and Diverus and Hezekiah Carey that I listed in my first response, their mother being Mary/Mary Ann. Perhaps Mary died after the birth of Diverus and Edward then had Mirelli by a new partner?

Sorry to say, I have no record of the identity of the Elias Draper born c1842 or what happened to him after the 1851 census.

All good wishes
Sharon