Down a Sidetrack: Frederick John Cockrem

Well, I said that finding Frederick Cockrem Jr's service records had given me an urge to write about him, and the urge is still with me, so here goes.

Frederick Jr had a very short life and no descendants, and I wonder how many of his relatives alive today even know he ever existed.  I want to bring him to their attention, not because he did anything remarkable, but because he's one of a huge number of young men who heard the call to fight 'for King and country' in the First World War, and lost their lives in that futile conflict.

Frederick was born in March 1900, to Frederick Cockrem and Rhoda Rhodes in Charters Towers, Queensland, Australia.  Whether his parents were ever married or not, I haven't been able to discover, but either way, his mother was out of the picture, probably deceased*, sometime before 1905, when his father married Louisa Lee. So Frederick was raised by a step-mother, along with a bunch of other children, from her first marriage, his father's first marriage, and their marriage together.

He lived most of his short life in Cairns, attended the Hambledon State School, and later worked as a carpenter.  From about the age of 13, he was a cadet in the Cairns 'Citizen Forces' (later to be known as the Army Reserve), so when the war began, he was probably very keen to go and 'do his bit'.  But of course he was far too young, only 14 at the start of the war.  Over the next three years, he may have thought the war would be over before he got his chance, so on the 5th of May 1917, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and lied about his age.  At that time he would have been just over 17, but he stated his age as 18 years, 5 months.  Of course it's possible that he didn't know his real birthdate.

Frederick John Cockrem's Attestation Paper

When he enlisted, he was described as 5 feet 8 inches tall, 127 pounds, with a fair complexion, brown eyes and brown hair.  His medical examiners found him medically and dentally fit, and five months later he was on a troop ship, HMAT Euripides, heading from Sydney to England.  During the voyage, which took nearly two months, he spent 5 days in the ship's hospital with tonsilittis.

Troops line up for medical inspection
aboard the Euripides

The ship arrived at Devonport in England on the 26th of December 1917, and along with the rest of the 13th Training Battallion, Fred marched to the bleak and muddy garrison camp at Codford on Salisbury Plain, over 120 miles away.  Just a few days later, he was hospitalised again, this time with mumps.  The day after being discharged from hospital, he was back again, with measles.  Two months later he was discharged to a Training Depot, and about 10 days later, he was in hospital again, with bronchitis.

Codford Camp

On the 16th of April 1918, he was sent to France to join his unit at Calais.  Then on the 21st, as a member of the 10th Reinforcements, 52nd Infantry Battalion, he was sent 'to the field', and would finally get into the fighting.  Three days later, he was dead - one of the many Australian casualties at Villers-Bretonneux.

Nearly a year later, in March 1919, Fred's half-brother George wrote to the Administrative Headquarters of the AIF, asking why Fred's belongings had not been sent home to his father.  He received a prompt reply, stating that Fred's personal effects had been bound for Australia on the SS Barunga in June 1918, which was lost at sea, with all its cargo, as a result of enemy action.  Later information was received that Fred's effects consisted only of cards and photos.

 

Victory Medal

British War Medal

Although Fred's army career was very short and full of illness, and his active service in the field lasted only a few days, he was honoured, as were all Australian casualties of WW1, with a Memorial Scroll and Plaque, a Victory Medal and a British War Medal, all of which were sent to his father in the 1920s.  His name is engraved, along with 10,981 others, on the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France.  And the sad memory of his life lives on with me, and I hope, with others in our family.

The Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, and close up showing Frederick's name.

* The only evidence I have about Fred's mother is her name on the index of his birth record, and a note on his enlistment application saying 'mother died' with no suggestion of when that happened.

Where were the rellies? Part 3 - the Australian contingent

Finally getting back to George's siblings after major distractions.

I've grouped Alfred, Herman and Frederick Cockram together because they all emigrated to Australia in 1882, seven years after George had gone to Canada.  They sailed together from Plymouth on the Roma and arrived at Cooktown, far north Queensland, in June 1882, aged 25, 20 and 17 respectively.  All three of them settled in the same general area of northern Queensland, from Cairns to Townsville and Charters Towers, and all three changed the spelling of their name, to Cockrem.  Then again, they might never have been sure of the spelling - it was recorded as both Cockram and Cockrem, plus other variations, earlier in the family's history.  But for these three, the change seems to have begun on the ship - they were recorded as Cochren on the passenger list.  As far as I know though, that particular version of the name never showed up again.

The most interesting thing about this excerpt from the passenger list is that it shows that the 'Cochren' brothers travelled for free.  I had previously found information that they had 'assisted passage', but this is the first indication that it was free.  How did they qualify for that much 'assistance'?  Here's what I discovered about that:

Free passages were granted by the [Queensland] Government to particular categories of immigrants, and their families, which were from time to time particularly required in Queensland. These categories altered over the years as conditions in Queensland changed but included at various time female domestic servants and married couples without children. Applicants were required to pay the sum of £1 and a similar amount for each member of the family counted as a statute adult. To be eligible, they had to be unable to pay their own passage, they could not have resided previously in any Australian colony, and they must intend to reside permanently in Queensland.  
Queensland State Archives Page 4 of 4 Dec 2014

I wonder if George had that much help when he went to Canada... but that's another story.

The trouble with Queensland is there are no existing census or 'muster' records for the period I'm interested in.  Australia didn't start a national census until 1911, and while the collated data from this and later censuses are available, no names are included.  Fortunately, Queensland seemed to produce a new electoral roll nearly every year, so at least I can glean some information from those.

Alfred Cockrem (1857-1940):

Although the eldest of this threesome, Alfred might have been the least adventurous.  Like his older brother George, he seems to be missing from the 1871 census, when he was 13 or 14.  At that age, he should have been still at home, or more likely working on a nearby farm.  But perhaps he was off somehwere with his 'missing' siblings, George and Mary Ann.  At any rate, in 1881, at the age of 23, Alfred was still single, back at home with his parents, and working as a general labourer.  The only other sibling at home at that time was Clara, age 17.

But the following year, Alfred and his brothers went to Australia.  What enticed them to go, I don't know, but I'd happily guess that Australia looked like a very attractive, warm, and wild place to young English men looking for a better life.

In 1885, when he was about 28 years old, Alfred married Maria Gibbs - but only three months later, Maria died, at only 22 years old.  By 1903, Alfred had settled about 10 kms south of Cairns in  northern Queensland.  According to the Australian Electoral Roll for that year, he was farming a property called Devon Farm, at Hambledon.  Having found him in this area, where he stayed for the rest of his life, I thought he was probably growing sugar cane, and this was backed up when I found his obituary, which states that he supplied cane to WH Swallow, the owner of Hambledon Plantation, 'in the very early days', which must have been before 1897 when the plantation was sold.

Later I found the 1919 Queensland Directory, which lists Alfred as a farmer, as opposed to a fruit grower or sugar planter. And then I found the 1904 Brand Register for Queensland, which includes one for him.  Does having a registered brand mean that he was dealing in cattle, or just that he owned some stock and was protecting them from rustling.  I don't know.

In 1908 Alfred married again, this time to Rhoda Elizabeth Willis (nee Coles), from England.  She was around 52 years old at the time, and Alfred was 51.  Later that year, and up until 1925, both of them appeared on the Electoral Roll, still farming at Hambledon.  Rhoda died in 1927, of strychnine poisoning. This sounds like suicide, but I've found no further information on that.  Alfred, who continued farming into old age, died in 1940, aged 82.

Rhoda Cockrem's death.  Cairns Post, 16 Feb 1927, p4.

Alfred Cockrem's obituary. Cairns Post, 9 Oct 1940, p4.

I mentioned at the beginning of this little bio that Alfred might have been the least adventurous of the three brothers.  I say that because he was at his parents' home when he was 23, and once settled in Queensland, he didn't move for the rest of his life.  But of course, he did have enough wanderlust to leave England in the first place  But I suspect it was brothers who convinced him to go.

Herman Cockrem (1862-1902):

Herman had a much shorter life than his older brother.  He was married in 1885, the same year as Alfred, to Louisa Lee.  He was 23 years old, and Louisa was 20.  She was also a British migrant, having been born in Surrey, and emigrated with her parents at the age of 18.

Unfortunately, between his marriage in Cooktown, Queensland and his death only 17 years later, little information has come into my grasp.  All I've discovered is that he and Louisa had six children, and their places of birth give me only a rough idea of where the family lived.  The first four children were born somewhere in Queensland, between 1886 and 1892, and two more children were born in Murwillumbah, NSW in 1894 and 1896.

Sometime before 1898, Herman apparently moved the family back to Queensland, as his youngest daughter Eliza died there that year, at only two years old.  His eldest daughter Clara also died young, at four years old, but the four children in between - Ada, George, William and Daisy - all lived well into adulthood.

In 1900, Herman bought a town lot of about 1/4 acre - described in the deed as 1 rood, 8.6 perches - in Cannan Street, South Townsville.  He's listed there on the 1901 Electoral Roll, and his occupation is given as 'striker'.  This is the only document I've found that lists his occupation, and unfortunately I'm not sure what a 'striker' was - he could have been a blacksmith's assistant, or someone who worked on a gang laying railway track.

Herman died in October 1902, when he was only 40 years old. The Queensland Government Gazette of February 1903 states that Herman died intestate and describes him as 'Herman Cockrem (otherwise known as Herman Cockram) late of South Townsville'. This is the only Australian document I've found that uses the Cockram spelling.

Queensland Government Gazette. 11 volumes. Brisbane: Government Printer, 1903.

 
Herman's wife Louisa lived on for another 32 years, and we'll meet her again very soon...


Frederick Cockrem (1865-1940):

Frederick was only 17 when he and his brothers arrived in Australia, and his life was the most complex.  In 1886, when he was 21, he married Mary Walsh, another British migrant about five years older than himself.  Over the next four years they had three children; William, George who died in infancy, and Cecelia.  But less than a year after Cecelia was born, Mary died.  Frederick, at only 25 years old, was a widower with two very young children, and I don't know how he looked after them.

State Library of Qld: Appointments of Queensland Railway Employees June 1890-June 1901

Just a few months before Mary died, Frederick had gone to work for the Bowen Railway as a labourer in the Maintenance department, at 8 shillings a day.  In 1892, his pay was still the same, but his job title had changed to 'lengthsman', which meant he was responsible for the maintenance of a particular length of railway line.  I'm not sure where he was living at that time, but I suspect it was Townsville.  The first definite location I've found for him was in August 1898 when he lived in Charters Towers.  In 1901 he was still there, and on the Electoral Roll his occupation is 'labourer'.

Somewhere in that period of widowerhood, he met a woman called Rhoda Rhodes, and in early 1900, Rhoda had a child called Frederick John Cockrem.  I've found no evidence that Frederick Sr and Rhoda ever married.  But Frederick Jr enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in World War 1, and his enlistment papers tell me that his mother had died sometime before 1917.  I got seriously sidetracked by those enlistment papers and service records - over 30 pages of them - and developed a strong urge to write a bio of Frederick Jr.... but let's get back to his father.

In 1903, still living in Charters Towers, trouble struck Frederick.  I don't know what the cause was, but he declared insolvency that year.  I've found the initial record, but not the follow up that will hopefully give me a lot more information about that.

Perhaps the insolvency had to do with losing his job and having to support seven children, for besides his own three, I think he started supporting his brother Herman's four surviving children around that time.  I'm guessing about that, due to the fact that Frederick and Louisa Lee, Herman's widow, had a child, Thomas Victor, together in November 1903.  About two years after that, they got married.  And in 1907 they had another child, Alfred Henry.  At that time they were living in Cairns.

So to summarize Frederick's household as of 1907, it probably consisted of himself and his wife Louisa plus nine children, ranging in age from infancy to 19 years.

Over the next several years, Frederick and Louisa lived at a few different addresses, most of which were in the same area of Cairns.  But by 1919, they may have split up.  That year, they show up at different addresses in Cairns, and by 1928, Frederick had moved to Babinda, about 60kms south of Cairns, where he was still working for the railway, as a 'fettler' - maintaining railway track.  Louisa seems to have been living with their son Thomas in Cairns.  By 1931, Frederick was in Atherton, a little way west, and Louisa had disappeared from the Electoral Roll.  She died in 1934, and judging by a news item about her funeral, she was well-loved.

By 1936, Frederick was back in Cairns, now retired, at the age of 71, and living at the 'Pensioner's Reserve' in Martyn St.  I believe he stayed there until his death in 1940.  Frederick's obituary is very brief - it states that he lived in and around Cairns for 35 years and had been employed by the railway and by the Cairns City Council.  He was survived by four sons and a daughter.

********


Well that went on for longer than I expected it to!  I've become quite attached to all these Cockrems in the course of researching their lives.  While I doubt whether Alfred, Herman, Frederick or any of George's other siblings had anything to do with his name change, I suspect that some, if not all of them knew the reason for it.  George kept in touch with some of his siblings (unfortunately I don't know which ones) when he was in Canada, and surely he must have told them he had a new name, in order for them to be able to write to him.  And no doubt he would have explained why.

So I live in hope that at least one of his siblings happened to pass that information on to at least one of their children, who passed it on... etc.  If the reason for the name change was interesting enough, it could have become a bit of a legend amongst the Cockram/Cockrem descendants, of whom there are many, and I hope to make contact with some of them one day.  To that end, I'm currently compiling a list of all the names I know of in the descendancy, in Australia and in England, and I plan to send out a signal to them, one way or another...  If you are one of them, please contact me!

Where were the rellies? Part 2

Right, it's time to have a look at George's parents and numerous siblings to see what they got up to that might have had something to do with George changing his name and/or leaving the country.

George's parents, William Henry Cockram (1820-1899) and Prudence Yeo (1822-1908):
William was born in Stoke Rivers, northern Devon, the eldest of seven children of William Cockram Sr and his wife Thomazin Hoyle.  He worked as an agricultural labourer from at least the age of twenty, and probably earlier, staying in Stoke Rivers until after he married Prudence Yeo in 1843.  They raised their children in Bickington and later moved a short distance to Fremington.  On various censuses, William's occupation is given as agricultural labourer, labourer, and later, a lighterman in Fremington.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Prudence was an illegitimate child of Elizabeth Yeo, and that she had a daughter about a year before she married William - other than that, I know nothing about her. The only potentially 'controversial' thing I've found about William is that he may have been accused of stealing a chicken in when he was an 'old man' in 1891.  But I strongly suspect that was another William Cockram.  So if William or Prudence did do anything that somehow upset George, I still don't know what it was.

George's siblings in a nutshell

Elizabeth Yeo Cockram (1842-1893):  Elizabeth married John Ellis in 1861when her brother George was only ten years old. In about 1869, the Ellis family moved to Swansea, Wales, where John was an agricultural labourer.  John died in 1881 and Elizabeth remarried.  She and her new husband, James Taylor returned to Fremington, living next door to her parents.  Elizabeth died in 1893.

Thomas Cockram (1845-1907):  I've always imagined that George's choice of his new name, Thomas, came from this brother.  If George was fond enough of Thomas to adopt his name, it's highly unlikely that Thomas did anything that sent George running.  But he may have encouraged George to find new horizons overseas, and inspired him to use a new name.  Thomas didn't do anything so adventurous himself though.  As a young man he worked as a carter and boarded with other families in Fremington. In 1871 he was working as a railway porter and boarding in the outskirts of London with James and Eleanor Knowles and their daughter Elizabeth, who he married in 1874. She died only four years later, and for some time, Thomas' sister Mary Ann lived with him and his two children in Kingston on Thames.  When he was 40 years old, Thomas married Frances Deakin.  He spent his whole adult life working for the railway as a porter, and died at the age of 62.

Mary Ann Cockram (1847- aft 1911):  Mary Ann never married, as far as I can tell, and worked as a servant of one type or another from the age of 14 up until my last sighting of her at age 44.  Most of her life was spent in Devon, but as mentioned above, she spent some time as Thomas' housekeeper in London when he was widowed.  In 1891 she was back in Devon, working as a housemaid, along with her sister Lucy, for the Macaulay sisters in Littleham.  And then she drops off the radar.  I'm intrigued that like her brother George, Mary Ann appears to be missing from the 1871 census.  Some day, will I find the two of them together somewhere? (updated info in a newer post)

John Cockram (1849-1932): There were a lot of John Cockrams in Devon in the 1800s and I'm not sure I'm on the trail of the right one - but I do know that John was working and living on a farm by the age of 12.  If I've got the right John after that (and I think I do), at some point he went to Wales, and I have to wonder if this had anything to do with his sister Elizabeth going there - he may well have gone at the same time.  He married twice and worked as a beer bottler in a brewery in Glamorgan, then ran the Bridge Inn public house. After his second marriage in 1894, he and his wife Minnie Hawkridge returned to Devon, where they ran a pub on The Strand in Barnstaple. By 1911, they had moved to Islington in London, where John was a 'beer retailer' - does that mean he ran a pub?  He died at 84 years old, back in Devon in 1932. (updated info in a newer post)

William Cockram (1853-1910):   William is the only Cockram who I'm certain was in the military.  He joined the Navy in 1869 at the age of 15, and served for at least 5 years.  In 1871 he was aboard the Caledonia in Naples, Italy on census night.  (If only I had found George there too....).  Perhaps William's tales of adventures at sea gave George the travel bug - who knows? After 1873, William is very hard to find amongst other William Cockrams.  I think he died in 1910 in Devon, but am not sure.

Richard Cockram (1855-?):  Richard may well have died before he reached manhood.  In 1871, at the age of 16, he was working as a ploughboy at a farm in Yelland, Devon.  And that's the last I've found of him.

Alfred (1857-1940), Herman (1862-1902) and Frederick Cockram (1865-1940):  These three brothers emigrated to Australia. I'll discuss them in a separate post. 

Lucy Cockram (1860-aft 1911):  In 1871 Lucy was only eleven years old, and not likely to have had much influence on her missing brother George.  She spent much of her life in various service jobs in households around Devon.  By 1901, after her father had died, she was living with her mother in Fremington, and five years later, at the age of 46, she married Henry Turner.  In 1911 they were living in the neighbouring county of Somerset, where they were the stewards of a golf club.  And then they both disappeared...

Clara Cockram (1864-1950):  Clara was thirteen years younger than George, but I suspect he was fond of her, as he named his first child after her.  Like her sisters, she worked as a housemaid when she was a young girl.  In 1894 she married Henry Moran in London, and lived there, in Islington for the rest of her life.  She and Henry, who was a commercial traveller selling scientific instruments, had four children.  Henry died in 1927, and Clara lived on for another 23 years.  When she died in 1950, she left an estate of 1200 pounds to her children.

These are very quick sketches of George's siblings' lives.  For a few of them, I have no more information, and for those who I do know more about, there's nothing to indicate that any of them ever got into any kind of trouble or did anything outrageous.  But of course I can't discount the possibility.  In any case, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I think it's unlikely that George was estranged from any of them, as so many of their names were passed on to his children.

Where were the rellies? Part 1

Besides good old Uncle George, I wonder if anyone else in George's or Louisa's family had some influence on their decision to emigrate.  What were all those siblings etc doing in the early 1870s?

First, a look at Louisa's family.  Before I begin, I need to clarify that her mother's maiden name was spelled in a variety of ways in different documents - Tremain, Tremaine, Tremayne, Tramain etc. I usually stick with Tremayne, but when I'm referring to specific records, I use the spelling in the record.

Louisa's mother, Jane Tremayne: I've previously mentioned Louisa's mother, who may or may not have married Louisa's father.   As a young girl, she might have got into a spot of bother.  I found a record from 1847 of a 12 year old Jane Tremain who was charged with larceny, along with three boys, age 15 to 17.  The boys were all acquitted, but Jane was sentenced to 2 weeks in jail.  I'm not positive about Jane's birthdate, but she would have been  around the right age, probably closer to 14, but she might have lied about her age to try to get let off the charge.  By the 1870s, Jane was calling herself a widow, working as a laundress and living in a lodging house with Louisa.  They may have continued living together after Louisa got married and George went to Canada on his own.

Louisa's sister, Jane Tremayne or Murphy: Young Jane is a mystery, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, she apparently ended up in Canada too.  I don't know when she emigrated, but if she went before George and Louisa did, she might well have encouraged them, and her mother, to emigrate.  Louisa's mother followed George and Louisa to Canada in 1877, apparently travelling alone.  Young Jane might have gone before, or after.  Until I discover for sure what young Jane's married name was, I won't know any more about her.

Louisa's maternal grandparents, Grace Dunn and Nathaniel Tremayne: Louisa's grandmother Grace, lived her whole life in Mevagissey, Cornwall. She and her husband Nathaniel had five children of whom Jane, Louisa's mother, was the youngest.  Nathaniel, an agricultural labourer, died in 1857, after which Grace went to work as a fishmonger, and later a domestic servant - in 1871, at the age of 75, she was still working.  She died in 1873.

Excerpt from 1871 UK Census for Grace and Sarah Tremaine, living in River St, Mevagissey and both working as domestics

Louisa's aunt, Sarah Tremayne:  Sarah, Nathaniel and Grace's eldest child, never married.  She worked as a domestic servant and lived with her mother until Grace died.  On the 1881 census, when Sarah was 57, she was marked as an 'imbecile', although she was still working, and living on her own.  Prior censuses had given no hint that there was anything wrong with her.  Like her mother, Sarah lived her whole life in Mevagissey, and died there in 1890.

Louisa's aunt, Harriet Tremayne: Harriet, born in 1826, also spent her entire life in Mevagissey, living in the same street where she was born.  She married William Whitford, a coal porter and later a fisherman, in 1856, and they had four children.  She died in 1888.

Louisa's uncle, William Tremayne: William is a little more interesting, but also harder to pin down.  He was born around 1828 and lived in Mevagissey until at least 1851.  He may have joined the Royal Marines - the 1861 census lists a Private William Tremain, born in Mevagissey at about the right time, married, serving aboard the HMS Conqueror.  This ship was wrecked later that year, in the Caribbean, with everyone on board being saved.  I haven't yet located a wife for William, and don't know if this is the right person or not.  The age given in this census record is a little off, but that's not unusual in censuses.  As far as I can discover, there were no other William Tremaynes born in Mevagissey within the same time frame.  There is no Royal Marines Service Record for William Tremayne, even though the census is evidence that he did serve - but I've just discovered that the records don't include anyone who had left the Marines before 1884 (see my previous post Was it all about Louisa? ).

HMS Conqueror.  William may have served on her, travelled to the Caribbean, and been rescued when the ship sank.

Louisa's uncle, John Tremayne: John was born in about 1830.  He married Ruth Glanville in 1865, had a few children and was a labourer, living in or near Mevagissey all his life - and may or may not have got up to a bit of chook rustling. In 1869 a William and a John Tremain were charged with stealing chickens from two different people in the parish of St Ewe, which is about 3 miles from Mevagissey. They were tried at the Quarter Sessions in Bodmin, and both were acquitted. Their ages were 40 and 38, and they were both labourers.  They may or may not be the right William and John Tremayne - I like to think they are. However, I very much doubt that Louisa would have needed to leave the country because her uncles were would-be poultry thieves.

A transcript of William and John's poulty-stealing charge.  See the handwritten note below John's name - although the typed record says they were acquitted, the handwriting seems to say: 'Summarily convicted Apr 69 Stealing ?Brocoli? at St Ewe. 1. C? Mo(nth) Hard Lab(our)'

 I haven't looked into Louisa's Tremayne cousins yet - they're on my 'to do' list.  And there's no point in speculating about what Louisa's mysterious father and other Murphy relatives were up to in the early 1870s.  He had died before 1871 (if Louisa's mother's census information for that year can be believed - which I don't) and I have no idea who the rest of them were.

But what about George's family?  He had eleven siblings, and by the 1870s, most of them had left home - where were they and what were they doing?  That's for the next post...

Was it all about Louisa?

Just because I can't find any record of wrongdoing by George Cockram aka Thomas Smith, that doesn't mean he didn't do any!  I may sound like I WANT to find out he was a cad and a bounder, but really, I don't - this is my great-grandfather I'm talking about, and although I never met him, I've grown quite fond of him while I've been trying to piece his life together.  No, I don't wish for devillment, I just wish for answers.

Thankfully, I'm not alone in this quest.  My cousin Donna has been asking questions about George for much longer than I have, and she has one or two interesting theories about him.

First, she thinks perhaps George really was in the Royal Marines - he could have joined when he was 15 years old in 1866, and he would have had to sign on for five years, so he would have been discharged in 1871, perhaps just at the time the census was being taken.  If he was at a loose end accommodation-wise just then, it's possible that he could have slipped through the net, and that's why we can't find him in that census. And perhaps it was his time in the Royal Marines that gave George the wanderlust that eventually took him to Canada.

UPDATE:  I've just discovered that IF George was in the Marines, the reason I can't find any records for him is that the Royal Marines' Service Records available at the UK National Archives were originally created in 1884 but include records created retrospectively for anyone who had joined earlier and was still serving in 1884.  George was long gone by then - so there is a real possibility that he was in the Royal Marines.

Whether he was ever in the Marines or not, his 1875 marriage record tells us that at some point George took up residence in Notte St in Plymouth, which is the same street where Louisa and her mother lived in 1871, and may even have been the same lodging house.  Perhaps that's where he and Louisa met.  Maybe George worked in Plymouth's main industry, shipbuilding, or he may have been a labourer on the docks, loading and unloading ships' cargo.  Living and working in a seaport, it seems likely to me that he might have met men who had been to Canada, and who spurred his desire to go.

George and Louisa's marriage certificate, showing George living in Notte St and Louisa in Lambhay Hill.  Note the name of one of the witnesses - Jane Atwell (at least I think it says Atwell) - this might be Louisa's sister, who as I mentioned earlier, disappeared off the radar.  So far I haven't found a Jane Tremayne/Murphy who married someone called Atwell, but I'm still looking - if she has living descendants, one of them might hold the key to the Cockram/Smith mysteries.

Second, Donna wonders if George and Louisa were running from Louisa's father, Michael Murphy, or someone else in his family.  We know virtually nothing about them, unfortunately, so this is mere speculation, as is another idea - that Louisa's first child, Clara, was not George's - her real father was someone nasty that Louisa had been entangled with, and she wanted to get away from him, and make sure he couldn't find her or the baby.  Either of these ideas could explain why George changed his name - it wasn't him who needed to 'hide', but Louisa!  Of course she had already changed her name when she married, but a second change would hide her from people who knew her married name.

I like the way Donna thinks.  If anything is ever going to lead us to the truth of the matter, it will be ideas like these, I'm sure.

Whatever it was that led them to leave England and change their names, Donna thinks that George and Louisa didn't leave home without some regret, or at least a need to keep some kind of link with their former lives.  This thought comes from the fact that so many of their children's names can be traced back to specific people in their families.  Consider this - of their eleven children, at least seven  had first and/or middle names that came from close family members. 

George and Louisa's children:

Some of the untraced names here may have come from the Murphy family, but we have no idea who they were.  My grandfather's name, Ryley, is the most intriguing of them.  Surely there's an Irish connection there...  Should I be searching for a Ryley Murphy who had a son or a brother called Michael?  Oh god, there's another thing to put on my 'to do' list.

Anyway, to get back to the point, these names do suggest that George and Louisa both had fond feelings for people they had left behind, or at the very least, that they certainly weren't estranged from them.  It's somehow reassuring to believe that George was close to the Cockrams, despite the distance.  And Louisa was literally close to her mother, who also emigrated to Canada, about a year after George and Louisa did.  As for her missing sister Jane, Donna has been told that she went to Canada too, and lived somewhere in Ontario.  Her mother lived sometimes with George and Louisa, and sometimes with Jane's family.  I do wish Jane would pop her head up and wave at me....

What about Uncle George? Part 2

My husband may be thrilled to believe that my youthful great-grandfather 'got some girl up the duff and scarpered to Canada', but I'm not at all convinced that he did.  Or that his Uncle George did either.

I've had no success linking Elizabeth Grant to either of my Georges - although I probably found the right Elizabeth Grant, in several census records.  She was born in 1837, which almost certainly leaves young George out of the picture, as he was 13 years younger than her.  Apparently she lost her parents at an early age and was brought up in Barnstaple by her grandparents, left the area quite soon after her baby was born, spent most of her life as a lady's maid, and eventually got married when she was over 50.  Interesting, but absolutely no evidence that either of my Georges ever knew her.  And then again, she might not be the right Elizabeth Grant!  It's all too hard...

As for the solicitor who represented George Cockram in this case, I definitely found him.  His name was John Arnoll Thorne, the son of Henry King Thorne and Susan Arnoll.  Uncle George's grandmother Thomasin Thorne had a brother called Thomas, who might have been John Arnoll Thorne's great-grandfather, but I can't find any evidence that makes that connection.  If John Thorne was related to my Georges, the nearest relationship he could have would be second cousin once removed to Uncle George, and third cousin to young George.  This is going to have to go on the backburner for awhile, as it's doing my head in, wandering down a lot of Thorne dead ends.  I need to go to England to look at records that aren't available online, and that's not likely to happen.

A word about the case relating to stealing salmon in Chulmleigh - I've dismissed this as a likelihood, as there were a couple of other George Cockrams living in Chulmleigh around that time, and the salmon stealer was far more likely to to be one of them than one of mine.

So let's move on to the other newspaper articles I found, all of which I think relate to Uncle George.  The first is from the North Devon Journal, Sept 10 1868, page 4:

 

A parliamentary election was coming up, and in Barnstaple, a committee was formed to work for the election of Thomas Cave and W Herbert Evans.  Among the approximately 250 names listed as members of the committe, is George Cockram of Boutport Street.  I'm reasonably confident that this is Uncle George, as I know he lived in Boutport Street in 1871 when the census was taken, and he was the only Cockram in the street.

Extract from 1871 UK Census, showing George Cockram, coach maker, and his wife Ann in Boutport Street, Barnstaple, with a lodger by the name of Caroline Beer.  Is it just a coincidence that 20 years later John Thorne's father had a servant called Emily Beer?  Probably.

If it is indeed Uncle George on the committee, this tells me a thing or two about him.  On the same page of the newspaper are 'campaign' articles by the two candidates.  They were members of the new Liberal Party, which favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many of them were Nonconformists) and an extension of the electoral franchise.  So I assume that Uncle George held with these views.  I also assume that he wasn't any kind of a rogue, or he wouldn't be on the committee - not too likely that he was charged with being the father of an illegitimate child just a few months earlier.

The next article doesn't really tell me much, but I'll add it anyway.  This is from the North Devon Journal, Oct 7 1869, page 5:

Here, George Cockram was on a jury.  At that time only male property owners between the ages of 21 and 70 could sit on juries, which doesn't tell me much except that it couldn't have been young George, and if it was Uncle George, he owned his house.  I'm interested to see that there was also a Thomas Geen on this jury - he was very likely Uncle George's brother-in-law. And the name Beer shows up here again too, but doesn't shed any light on anything. By the way, this case, about a stolen pair of boots, was written up in great detail, including the fact that the judge complained about the length of time the case occupied.  The female defendant, Eliza Hill, was acquitted on the grounds that she was acting under the influence of her husband Francis. He was sentenced to six months hard labour, and his brother William to seven years.  All for a pair of boots.

Just one more thing, which I found in the Manitoba Free Press, Jan 1, 1907, page 14, in an article about upcoming civic elections in Ontario.

Uncle George and his wife lived in the town of St Thomas, Ontario, where he worked as a railway car inspector from at least 1891 to 1911.  And here is his name amongst the list of men running for aldermen in that town.  It seems that he didn't win, as his name doesn't seem to show up after the elections, but the fact that he was in the running suggests that he was a respected person in the town.


So to sum up the results of my newspaper search, as inconclusive as they are, it seems that neither George nor his Uncle George ever got up to any serious mischief  - or at least they never got caught getting up to anything.

As for my question about whether Uncle George influenced and/or helped young George to go to Canada, I haven't found a shred of evidence one way or the other.  As far as I can tell, they never lived nearer than about 200 miles from each other in Canada.

So for now I'll leave Uncle George inspecting railway cars in Ontario, and get back to concentrating on young George aka Thomas Smith.

What about Uncle George? Part 1

I recently realized that George wasn't the first person in his family to emigrate to Canada - he had an uncle, also called George Cockram, who did the same in 1873, two years before George.  This revelation led me to consider two theories:

1) Did Uncle George find life in Ontario, Canada so much to his liking that he encouraged, and perhaps helped his nephew to join him there?
2) Or was Uncle George the black sheep of the family?  When young George went to Ontario, did he change his name so as not to be mistaken for his nefarious uncle?

These both seemed like good leads to follow up, so in the last couple of days I've been looking for any evidence that would back up either theory. Uncle George was born in 1838, and lived in Devon until 1873, when he left England.  Nephew George left in 1875, so I was looking at Devon newspapers between 1845 and 1875, to cover both Georges.

Of course I went down the most interesting path first, and looked for one of them as a bank robber, molester of women, sheep rustler or anything else along those lines.  I only found two articles of interest, but with not enough information in them to assure me that they are about either of my George Cockrams.

The earliest article is in the 'Chulmleigh, County Magistrates Petty Sessions' column of the North Devon Journal, January 20th, 1859, page 5:

 

Uncle George would have been nearly 21 years old at this time.  I don't know whether or not he lived in Chulmleigh, as he's missing from the 1851 census, and in 1861, he and his widowed mother were visitors at a friend's house in Barnstaple on census night. But Chulmleigh is only a few miles south of Stoke Rivers, where he was born, and Barnstaple, where he lived later, so it's certainly possible.  But I have a strong feeling that this is another George Cockram altogether.  And by the way, the name Cockram is a very common one in Devon, and the number of George Cockrams born there in the 19th century is annoyingly large.


The next, and rather more juicy article is in the 'Barnstaple, Divisional Petty Sessions' column of the Western Times, February 14th, 1868, page 7:

By this time, Uncle George was nearly 30, and young George was nearly 17, so either of them (or neither of them) could have been the culprit.  Uncle George married Ann Geen in Barnstaple in 1862, and they were living there in 1871, where he worked as a coach-maker.  As we know, young George's whereabouts between 1861 and 1875 are unknown, but his parents' home in Bickington was within the range of the Barnstaple courts.  Not really a lot to go on, though.


Other names in the article might provide a clue or two.  I'll try to locate a likely Elizabeth Grant - her age and residence could tell me something useful, but it may be very difficult to find her.  The defendant's solicitor's name, JA Thorne, is of interest because Uncle George's grandmother, and young George's great-grandmother, was Thomasin Thorne.  I'm now trying to discover whether or not JA Thorne was related to my Georges. 

To be continued...