John Joyce of Beckington, 21 Bath Road, Beckington, Somerset.

[aartika]

James Joyce later included Parker as a middle name. There is nothing unusual in this once a man made a name for himelf in New Zealand. He had married Jane Caydzien c 1861/2,after having arrived in New Zealand c1857.

James Joyce seems to have had a very large number of occupations and accomplishment for a man who claimed to have been born in 1834 - spent youth in Channel Islands, worked for Customs, had military experience in France, was a competent sportsman, was fluent in French, salesman selling mining equipment, fossicker for gold - successfully, carted goods for miners, drove stock for farmers, managed Tuturau Staion, became a newspaperman and thence became a long-term editor of an Invercargill newspaper, and finally becoming a Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives. He left no will that I can find.

I have communicated and shared research with his legitimate descendants and they, like me and also a fellow journalist of his, believe that his date of birth could have been as early as 1824 to include that overcrowded early life.

Many men who came to New Zealand often kept their backgrounds to themselves. On many occasions I have found this to mean that they were born to single mothers, and the pattern seemed to be that they were given both parents' surnames. The mother often included the father's name as the child's second name, so that, if he later married her, they could simply drop off her maiden name. For this reason I have been looking for Joyce women who could have had a child to a man called Parker.

Of course there are many reasons why a man would hide his background. James Joyce claimed that his father had been a writer/ newspaper writer, and that he was from Southampton. I did not think this had to mean that either man had been born there  - that could have been their last place of residence.

More to come.
Mary

From what you have written above it seems very unlikely that your James Joyce was connected to the Joyce family from Beckington, at least not closely.

The James Joyce I mentioned above (born 1807 in Beckington) is almost certainly too old and does not fit with your description.


However there is  James Joice (sic) recorded in 1841 in Jersey aged 14, born 3 Jun 1827 in Jersey, working as a carpenter's apprentice. He is not with his family in 1841.

He was baptised 16 Jun 1827 in St Brelade, parents James Joyce and Anne La Source.

Whether or not this your fellow, I don't know!! I imagine you have probably researched him already.

[Moffitt77]

James Joyce was a stockman par excellence. One of his first appearances  in our newspapers was to advertise his services as a stock drover to take stock inland. His associate was called Mills. He was highly praised as manager of Tururau station. Horse management would have been of prime importance.

One of our important historians claimed that JPJ was in Australia for a time before coming to New Zealand about 1857. I have not found his sea passage. Numerous ships sailed back and forth between our countries. It is possible that his father went to Australia as well. I shall look for this.
 
Interestingly JPJ married Jane Cadzien in 1861. She appears to have ttravelled south alone before the marriage. I have details about her family background.

Children born to the couple have names that bear some resemblance to children you mention, but in one case Fanny becomes the male Francis.

1863 Lucy Jane - died young.
1864 James Frederick Parker - not in BDM, but found in newspaper. Followed father as editor.
1866 George Oliver ( sometimes Oliver George)
1868 John Arthur Francis - died young
1869 Edith Mary (father not recorded. OnlyJane. But a member of the family.
1870 Aline Emily
1875 Maud Bertha
1875 Letitia Elizabeth ( probably 1873) died at 10 years
1876 Walter Gilmour

I have their marriages.

I have often wondered about the brothers/sisters of John Joyce of Beckington, especially James. I did not know about William, who seems to have relevance to me in relation to naming patterns. I have copied out pages and pages of names, and many of the ones you mention are in my lists but I could not connect them. Now I look forward to charting what I have.

It is interesting that you mention Cork. I traced the father of the Portsea Island James Joyce (who was born on the same day as JPJ in 1834.) to Limerick. This was exactly nine months after the marriage of his parents.  I could find no further mention of that child James (b1834). Without checking I think that James Snr was born in 1809 in Limerick. I will check that. I took numerous notes from old records a friend supplied. He was a mariner and I was able to trace his ships. He had been on HMS Challenger just before it was wrecked after a massive earthquake disturbed the ocean. He was not aboard at the time. He sailed on several other HMS ships. There is one document available about one of his voyages but so far I have not been able to source it. It was difficult to separate him from another of the same name.

Southern parts of Ireland interest me also because my DNA test suggested a strong connection to Cork.

That test also returns a huge number of names of people having connections with the surnames of the Beckington wives. See how desperate I have become!  I figure that their descendants will have their mitochondrial DNA along with Joyce genes and that I could have those elements of DNA too.

Is Smith a relevant name to the Beckington Joyces? Or Roberts?

I think that you are right in that family members followed each other around the world. There are several clusters of Joyce families here who do seem to have a lot in common.  I forgot to mention that JPJ sold safety fuses for mining purposes as one of his jobs. They were Brunton fuses, and oddly enough Brunton himself brought his family to New Zealand and ultimately settled them a few miles from JPJ. More importantly he appears in newspapers as supporting JPJ when he was campaigning for his seat in the House of Representatives. From memory Brunton was located in the U.K. close to the Joyces we discuss.

Michael Joyce, known as Captain Joyce and not too far from JPJ, had a son who also moved into politics like JP - John Joyce of Lyttelton, a lawyer, I think.

Joyces figured in coastal shipping. Yet others, including a James Joyce, were part of the rediscovery of the Auckland Islands south of New Zealand. Real adventuresrs all.

Recently I have been looking at a Matthew Lee Joyce who was in New Zealand and the only Joyce fathering children here in the 1850s. He came into money and set up a butchery in the centre of Christchurch. It would appear that his marriage became awkward. He drowned in the Hokitika River when on business there. The Lee/Leigh  part of his name is significant because I have found an 1851 Census document where Margaret Smith, nee Leigh, widow, had two boarders, James Joyce and James Moffoot (alternative spelling differentiating him from James Moffat living next door). A child in that house, born 1848, came to New Zealand and married in the same small settlement as JPJ. Her descendants show a DNA connection to us.

I am spreading this document too wide, so I will stop now. I want to look for Alexander, Time-Ball keeper. The building was severely damaged in the huge Christchurch earthquake, a shame because we have so few old buildings. I have already noted that he possibly had some extreme political views. Nothing surprising for us. JPJ was fairly outspoken and ruffled a few feathers.

I will stop now. My iPad is getting old and creating some odd words. My apologies if I have not found and corrected them all.

Sincerely,
Mary

PS. Please feel free to correct any glaring errors or false suppositions. - M

[Moffitt77]

There are a lot of indications that the Jersey Joyces are also connected by DNA. The James Joyce you mention also appears in this thread. He died at sea in 1845, on board a Jersey Ship, Ulysses. His father was James Joyce, born 1800, and James Snr was described as having been from Newcastle. From memory, this James Joyce was also a mariner, and his second wife, née Elizabeth Le  Brun, also came to New Zealand with her unmarried daughter and her married daughter Harriet, aboard the Rhea Sylvia.  They were with Harriet's husband Stephen Lawrence and other family. Stephen and Harriet had a further nine children in New Zealand. One of their daughters is described in a newspaper article about her wedding as the granddaughter of Jersey's Captain James Joyce.

Another of that family also featured in coastal shipping here - Captain Daniel Joyce, a brother of James above?

There are possible Joyce connections everywhere. Families on the Isle of Mann appear to link, as well as those of White Mill, Dorset.

Australian Joyces are deserving of research as well.

No one appears to be mentioning James Joyce , the writer. His eldest sister spent most of her life in New Zealand and was a music teacher where I learnt music as a child. Once I got past his fame I began to look at his Ancestry,and there were many surprises there too. Some of his cousins  and ancestors figure hugely in my research. Proof is, of course, hard to find.

Goodnight from New Zealand at 11.51 pm.

[Moffitt77]

I have just checked to confirm that Mary Ann, the wife of Alexander Joyce, died in 1866. Alexander Joyce then married Emily Hayes In 1867. A child called Alexander James appears to have been born to them in 1868. The child lived for only 4 months. Their second child, Alaric, was born in 1880.

Interestingly I have a fourth cousin DNA connection to a Hayes. It will be interesting to follow this lead. Thank you once again for all of the information above.