Mayflower Mystery

[Woody42]

Dear All. I’m new to this game, so please bear with me.

I’ve been handed a family tree that’s said to take us back to the Mayflower and am now in the process of seeing if it stacks up. What we have stems from Francis Eaton, a proven passenger on the Mayflower. He is said to have had a daughter named Jonet but there is no record for her, although I’ve found records such as births, marriages and deaths were not kept at Plymouth until after 1627. All we seem to know about the first seven years of life there comes from William Bradford’s recollections of events written 30 years later.

Jonet can only have been born around 1623 to Eaton’s second wife who has only recently been identified as Dorothy. Dorothy can only have died at childbirth and Jonet taken in by another family. I’ve found a death record for the one and only woman it seems in the New World named Jonet and of the right age.

Jonet married James James and they had a son, Morgan, who married Elizabeth Prytherch and they had a son, Daniel, who married Susanna Maris. They had a daughter, Lydia, who married Thomas Smedley and they had a son, Thomas, who married Abigail Yarnell and they had a daughter, Mary. All that appears to add up until gets to Mary.
 
Mary Smedley is said to have had a son, John, by Thomas Cox, seven years before they married and when they would both have been no more than teenagers. John is not recorded as their child. He wound up in London in the early 1830s and had a son also called John born 1835, who married Rebecca Jones. Their son, Emanuel, married Mary Ann Fort. One of their children was Edith Ellen who was my grandmother.

If anyone has any information relating to this or has any views as to how I can prove Jonet’s existence and how John wound up in London I’d be very grateful.

Thank you     

[jorose]

Many family trees contain some mistakes or pure flights of fancy - the only thing you can do is work back generation by generation and see if you can confirm each link with actual records.

Leave Jonet's existence for now. Whether she existed or not does not matter if you cannot prove that John Cox, father of a boy born in London in 1835, in fact came there from somewhere in the US.

John Cox (Jr) married Rebecca Jones in 1858 in Shoreditch.
Presumably this is them in 1861 with Emanuel, saying John was b. Bishopsgate.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2ML-9434

This may be his baptism in Bishopsgate, ten years after birth:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NLNN-6SZ
It gives his parents as John and Ann

This was part of a "job lot" christening, at which the following children were all christened to the same parents:
Mary Ann, b. 1835
Louisa, b. 1841
Eliza, b. 1843
Elizabeth, b. 1844
Emily, b 1845

It also appears that there were later children christened: William in 1848 and Harriet in 1849.

I can't find them in 1851 - maybe someone else can? That should tell you father John Cox's birthyear and place.

[Wendy2305]

Hi and welcome to Roots chat Firstly I would be very sceptical of John arriving from America and being born to parents as you say barely teenagers It sounds like somebody has struggled to find Johns parents and somehow connected him to Mary Smedley it is possible but I would try and prove that first before trying to prove earlier events

Have you found John in any of the census which will give his age and place of birth or his marriage may hold other clues

The free sites that are available for records of this time are these are all transcriptions of the original records but are a starting point in searching your family history
https://www.familysearch.org/ 
https://www.freereg.org.uk/
https://www.freecen.org.uk/

[Woody42]

Thank you both for such speedy and helpful responses. 

[iluleah]

Hi and welcome to rootschat

Nice you have been given a tree, however then like now there are thousands of trees that are in existence making all sorts of claims but if they have not been researched from real records and have no proof attached to them, then all they are is a tree of unrelated names.

All we seem to know about the first seven years of life there comes from William Bradford’s recollections of events written 30 years later.

Someones opinions, what they thought they knew or heard is not proof of reality of facts.

My advice would be to stop chasing names on given tree to prove or not if they existed from 400 yrs ago, but to start with yourself and the living people around you and the real records you all have and start your own fully researched and proved tree working backwards and proving each and every person as you go from real records. Not only will this give you experience of how to research properly, you will then know that each person on your tree is proved and should be there.
I was told when I began to find each and every real record any individual generated during their lifetime this way it is easy to cross reference and prove, the amount of real records changes as you go back with less records available  however many records are scanned images now and online so research is so much easier and quicker, but unless it is a scanned image it is not a real record it is just a clue to use where to look for a real record

I have seen many trees online that claim to be part of my family tree and I know 100% they are completely wrong and ONE wrong person in a tree means EVERYTHING before them is wrong, I know they have 'looked for a name, place and date' that fitted their tree and they assumed there must only be one person using the name, lived in that place and was 'about' that age which is untrue just like now lots of people use the same name who are completely unrelated.
The person they have died aged 7yrs old, yet they have him marrying and producing 9 children...so they have the wrong person.

When you eventually get back to British ancestry ( if you do) then research the records system used not only in that country but for that era you are looking and the National Archives in the country is where you start that research. Eg no point in looking for a 'birth date' pre 1837 in England/Wales as there were no registration of birth until then, you would need to look for church baptism records and occasionally you will find a birth date also written however that depends on the vicar or rather the parish clerk and what they wrote. Also GENUKI is also well worth having in your list of websites it is a simply written, easy search to look at to find out about any place you don't know but find you are researching in

In so far as Plymouth
 

although I’ve found records such as births, marriages and deaths were not kept at Plymouth until after 1627.

pre 1837 you will find no births/deaths as they are civil records what you could find is baptisms/burials which are parish records ( church) and in many churches ( and there is more than one church) they go back further than that as you can see https://plymhearts.org/archives/collections/church-and-other-places-of-worship-register-indexes/

[LizzieL]

John Cox married Rebecca Jones on 25 Dec 1858 at St Leonard Hackney. His father was John, hers was Alfred Lewis Jones. John was 23, confirming birth year of about 1835

[mckha489]

Witness Emanuel - something like PROOFF   
if their son was named Emanuel perhaps this witness is significant.

edit I think the surname is WOOFF

[Wendy2305]

Witness Emanuel - something like PROOFF   
if their son was named Emanuel perhaps this witness is significant.

According to some family trees on Ancestry the son Emanuel had the middle name of Woolf could that be what it is

[LizzieL]

Gro index has registration for an Emanuel Woolf Cox mmn Jones Whitechapel district Q4 1859