Looking for a missing baptismal record - William Monk (b. c1799)

[M_ONeill]

Hey all,

I'm looking for some help for tracking down a mysteriously absent birth record for a William Monk born around 1799/1800, supposedly in Rock, Worcestershire.

I say supposedly, because while I have confirmation on the baptismal records of his five younger brothers (thanks to look-ups by kind local rootschatters), there seems to be nothing for him.

I have just found a reference to him in an Ancestry member tree which lists his relation to one of his brothers as 'half-brother'. There was no other evidence attached for this, and the user hasn't been online for over a year, but it does match with something I've been thinking; is he even a full relation to the other brothers?

The Monk brothers all end up moving to Wolverhampton and using the name 'Mon[c]kton' by the 1830s. William is the only sibling that I have never seen recorded as a 'Monk', only 'Mon[c]kton'. In census returns, William always lists his birthplace as 'Rock, Worcestershire', so he clearly believed it was the case, at least for himself.

All of the others are confirmed as being the children of a William Monk and an Elizabeth Handley, married in Rock in 1798. This makes the idea that William the Younger is a step-child of either of them a bit strange to me, as he's the perfect age to be their first legitimate child. I had thought that maybe they had simply baptised him at another local church, but searches have come up empty.

Does anyone have any idea how I could start untangling this particular knot?

[josey]

Maybe he was Elizabeth's child before she married William snr and they shaved a couple of years of his age on censuses to make his seem legitimate; thereafter he assumed that was his age. Have you tried looking for Handley baptisms in 1797/8?

[M_ONeill]

Heya Josey. 

I think most of these records aren't online and so therefore I'd need to get a local rootschatter to do a double check. The original look-up only mentioned there being no William Monks born after 1798, the date of the marriage. I don't think they looked for any other Handleys.

Doing a quick search returns a William Handley, child of John and Elizabeth Handley in 1787 but I think that falls outside the age range. Unless he lived to 100, as he died in 1887!

[Maiden Stone]

It would be an idea to put links to your other threads on the family so that people can see what has already been found.
What was estimated birth year of William junior on each census?

[M_ONeill]

@Maiden, yes sorry I should do that - I'm never entirely sure whether to start new posts or resurrect old ones. Posting in old threads doesn't seem to bring many replies. I'll edit the title of the main post with some links when I get back home.

William Junior's age is estimated as follows on every census:

1841 - 40 (b. 1801)
1851 - 52 (b. 1799)
1861 - 61 (b. 1800)
1871 - 71 (b. 1800)
1881 - 81 (b. 1800)

So while there's a bit of a wobble in the range, William himself at least seems to believe he was born around 1800.

[Maiden Stone]

Was there no source for date 1799/1800 and birthplace Rock for William on the Ancestry tree? Tree owner might have taken info from census.
Where did Elizabeth Handley's family live? She might have been with them when William was born and had him baptised there.
Are there any gaps in the baptism register 1790s/1800?
Just a thought. There was a tax on births around then to pay for a war. Curates were responsible for collecting the money. Some parents may have tried to avoid the tax by not taking child to church for baptism.
Other side of the coin to Josey's reply #1. Could he have been an illegitimate son of William Monk, baptised under his mother's surname and brought up by his father?

[M_ONeill]

So the Ancestry tree only had an estimated year of birth based off census returns, the same as mine.

I’ve not yet been able to pin down Elizabeth Handley’s family as I sadly have no source for her exact age. She died in childbirth in 1823 so before both official death certificates and the censuses were introduced.

Going on the working theory that she was roughly the same age as her husband, William the Elder, the closest match I can find is an Elizabeth Monk born in 1775 to John Handley and a Mary in Upper Arley, about 6 miles north of Rock. I did a quick online search for any William Monks born there around 1799-1800 but got no hits.

I also did a search in Abberley, a nearby village to Rock. There are some other Monk families, possibly related to William the elder, who bounce between Rock and Abberly when baptising their children - there’s a William Monk born in 1787 to Samuel Monk and Martha Wilks, but I don’t think this is the William I’m looking for. Probably a cousin at most.

I don’t think there are any gaps in the baptism register - doing a search for baptisms in Rock over the period 1798 - 1803 returns plenty of results.

The question of illegitimacy is a big one on my mind, especially given the whole mystery about the brothers changing their name to Monckton later in life. Was William the younger actually a Monckton and all the other brothers started using it because it was a high-class name in Staffordshire?

If William was actually baptised as a Monckton then he’s likely mistaken about being born in Rock as there are *none* baptised in Rock, at any time. An aside: when William Snr’s son Edward (2nd eldest) returned to Rock in the early 1840s, apparently to care for his ailing father, he and his family were already using ‘Monckton’. His wife gave birth to another son, also Edward, who was baptised in Rock as ‘Edward Monk’. The family were still there in 1851 where they give their name in the census as ’Monckton’, even for their youngest son.

So to complicate matters, we have later precedent for this family living publicly in Rock as ‘Monk’ while privately considering themselves ‘Monckton’.

[Yegvard]

Hi,

Have you tried the transcribed Worcestershire Baptisms at https://fhs-online.co.uk/  They are a pay-to-view service, but you can see that A William MONK was baptised in Rock in 1798.

Mike

[M_ONeill]

Thanks for that Yegvard, I had no idea that resource existed! I got the subscription and I can confirm that is indeed him!

Interestingly, he was born in May which was only three months after his parents got married. Perhaps a slightly ‘rushed’ service?

This still leaves the mystery of why they all changed their names, but at least I now know he was indeed a full brother of his siblings. 🙂

Edit: So I can finally confirm the full list of children:

William - 13th May 1798
Mary - 12th May 1800
Edward - 9th October 1802
John - 1st January 1805 (My ancestor)
Thomas - 4th November 1806
James - 16th April 1808
Francis - 2nd July 1815 (died in infancy)
Joseph - 8th April 1816
George - 7th July 1821 (this one doesn’t seem to exist on FHS but is recorded in England Births & Baptisms 1538-1975. Elizabeth was buried the day after on the 8th of July - I was slightly off with the year).