I wonder where James Bailey Joyce fits in all of this? He was the eldest son, and was born 1802. He is listed in the same Gazette as the company I have listed, but he appeared as a separate listing to the group between 1868 and 1874. As we know he died in 1873. He was from Beckington throughout?
I may have mentioned that JPJ could have been a child of one of the Joyce Girls. It was the practice to place the father's name as a middle name so that the girl's name could simply be dropped if the couple married later.
Even so, James Bailey Joyce is my prime contender for closest relationship to James Parker Joyce, because it was so important that his death notice should appear in the New Zealand paper. Is it possible that he too could have married a Parkhouse woman? It could easily be a bit different because of bad spelling???
I think that you have found over half of the ten children of John and Mary Joyce. I wonder where they are all buried? Or went to school. There are so many places to look.
I feel sure that I have already posted some of this but I have probably put it in the wrong place. Sorry again.
JPJ came to NZ about 1850 , very young if he was born 1834, and more likely if he was born 1824. It seems surprising if the newspaper obituary was wrong, because he was an editor of the Southland Times for a very long time. There is an old book containing details about him, but it went missing many years ago, to the displeasure of the editor of the day. So many things were accomplished before he came to NZ that we have always been puzzled. He had experience selling safety fuses in France, he spent time in the Channel Islands, was a tax inspector, and many other things that you saw in the obituary. In NZ he was a seller of the fuses, a stock-drover with Michael Joyce, a gold miner who struck it rich, a hotel owner, a manager of Tuturau Station, editor of two papers, and finally a Member of Parliament, to mention some of his achievements.
I am not sure if the Michael Joyce above is a relative. It seems likely that he was the Captain Michael Joyce who had a ship built and resided at Port Chalmers, Dunedin. They were similarly successful, except that it was Michael's son who became an MP. Perhaps it was their huge recorded gold strike which set them up for life. I have much to prove here, but there are many anecdotal scraps of information adding up to a convincing total. I will check the names of the other members of the gold mining group. They could also have been from the Beckington area?