Re. James Dulforce who married Ann Body in 1812
at St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
I believe we have now made a major find in the history of this family. I say we because I do all my research with my sister Veronica. It is she who corresponds with Terry Dullforce who originally supplied us with the marriage and death certificates of James Dullforce. Terry’s father died some eighteen months ago and it was when he was going through his fathers effects that he found the two certificates.
Terry was ill for some time and was unable to pursue these matters any further. He now seems to have made a good recovery and was again in contact with my sister. He explained that he has been making further examinations of his fathers effects and he found a baptismal / birth certificate for a Samuel Delforce born in 1788 and it reads;
ST. DUNSTANS STEPNEY MIDDLESEX
1788 August 17 Samuel son of William Delforce of MEOT Butcher and Mary
Extract from the register of Christenings this twelth day of May 1795
By me. John Merry.
I believe that after three years of searching, this certificate has led us to the birth of James Dullforce. I will now do my best to explain.
The only document where there was an age recorded for James was his death certificate. It stated that James was seventy years of age when he died in 1855. This gives him a birth date of 1785. Ages recorded on marriage and death certificates during the late 18th and 19th. centuries are notoriously unreliable. (Also on census returns). I will not bore you with them but, I have many examples of this. The one I will quote is James daughter, my maternal great grandmother, Eleanor Belle. She was born in 1827 and died in 1898. Her age on the certificate is 66 years. If, like me, you are prepared to accept that James was not born in 1785, I can show his birth in 1790 and I will try to offer some evidence that it is our James..
When we first examined the marriage certificate for James and Ann dated 1812, we used a very simple method (not scientific I am afraid) to work out their ages. We took 21 from the year of marriage and James was therefore born in 1791 . We reckon the bride is usually a year or two younger, so Ann would have been born about 1793. We know full well that this is not cast iron but the system has worked well for us many times.
The copy of Samuel’s birth / baptismal certificate had been in the possession of James’ son Nathaniel, the direct relation to Terry Dullforce. It must be reasonable to accept that Nathaniel had this original document because he was related to Samuel. He was in fact Samuel’s nephew. The original document now held by Terry Dullforce is over 200 years old.
One other person I would like to mention is Richard Dullforce, born in 1794 and married to Elizabeth John(s) in 1813. I have been in contact with a Stuart Maskell in Australia who is related to Richard. In my research of James I found many references to Richards’ family. There were many little things that seemed to link the two families and I said to Stuart, when we find James, we will find Richard also, and we have.
Now for the real evidence. The book, ‘THE FRENCH CONNECTION’ Vol. 1. by Patrick Delaforce is a history of the Delaforce family. Ken has put it on the Internet and, on this link, you will see:-
William Delforce and his wife Mary Perry. They had four sons. Samuel b. 17-8-1788 - James b. 25-4-1790 - Richard b. 1794 & Thomas b. 3-7-1796.
I am totally convinced that this James born on 25-4-1790 is the James Dulforce who married Ann Body. The very fact that James’ son Nathaniel had that certificate belonging to Samuel must connect James to our family. Samuel was Nathaniel’s uncle and Richard is the younger brother of James.
You may rightly question the spelling of the name Delforce in the baptismal register and Dulforce when next we see it in the marriage certificate. As I mentioned in my original letter to John, my sister corresponded with Patrick Delaforce some time ago and he was convinced that the various Dullforces’ were misspellings of the Delaforce name by various church clerics etc. That is why his first book was Vol.1. He did intend to write a second book to include all the other names derived from Delaforce. Sadly he never did.
I have checked the entries in St. Dunstan’s baptismal register and Samuel, James and Thomas were all recorded as DELFORCE. (I did not find Richard on that visit) When James married he was DULFORCE. When he died he was DULLFORCE. All his children were Christened DULLFORCE. When Richard married he was also Dullforce.
I hope all this makes sense to you. I am a very nervous computer user and having looked at Ken’s web site, I am so impressed with all I see but, it makes me feel totally inadequate with my presentation!
Let me know if there is anything you want me to clarify in all of this. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you disagree with my conclusions (e-mail me on this link). I do not want to pretend I have found James.
One last thought. I have never been able to find James on the 1841 or 1851 census’. It may help to confirm his date of birth. On the other hand it may not !
|