Was the name Warren or Waring?

Or even Warring or Wareing or Wearing?

 

According to the register of marriages at Holy Trinity, Derby, on 1 August 1880 George Bathe married a woman called Elizabeth Warren, whose father was Joseph Warren, a dyer.

A misreading of the marriage certificate at the time of Elizabeth’s death in Queensland 40 years later meant that the local authorities recorded her father as Joseph Warren Dyer.

But this was not the only confusion over Elizabeth’s maiden name.

 

Elizabeth was just 18 years old when she got married, meaning there would have been only one census taken between the time of her birth and when she was married. That was in 1871 when she was nine years old and living with an aunt and uncle, Ann and William Keene, in John Street, Derby.

The census states she was born in Coventry, Warwickshire. Calculating back for the ages given in the census and at the time of her marriage, her year of birth would have been 1862. However, no birth of an Elizabeth Warren was registered in Coventry that year, or the any year either side.

Not only that, but none of the census records include a Joseph Warren in the region. There are, however, records of a Joseph in Coventry whose surname is variously spelt Waring, Warring, Wareing, Wearing and, on one occasion, Waren.

That this Joseph was the father of Elizabeth can be confirmed from a number of clues.

 

The Keene Family

First, the uncle and aunt with whom Elizabeth was living in 1871 – William and Ann Keene.

William Keene had been born in Coventry in about 1794. When he was 23 and living in the parish of Holy Trinity, Coventry, he married Elizabeth Sadler, also born in Coventry, but a year older. The marriage took place at Elizabeth’s parish church of St John the Baptist, Coventry, on 3 August 1817. The couple had at least seven children, three of whom are known to have died in infancy.

From the baptismal records of these children it is known that William was working as a weaver.

The first child, born in March 1820 in St John’s Bridge, part of the parish of Holy Trinity, was baptised William, after his father, in the parish church on 29 March but then buried there, when 6 weeks old, on 16 May 1820.

A little under a year later, when the second child Mary was baptised on 25 March 1821, the family were in Spon Street, in the parish of St John the Baptist. There they remained for at least 12 years.

The other children born to William and Elizabeth were all baptised at St John the Baptist:

Sarah, on 23 February 1823

A second William, baptised 3 October 1824 but buried 22 August 1826

Emma, 4 March 1827 buried 18 November 1846

Thomas, 16 November 1828

Samuel, 20 March 1831 buried 5 February 1832

It was soon after the birth of Samuel that the children’s mother died and was buried on 22 May 1831. Their father quickly got a new carer for them, and on 2 October 1831, widower William Keene married Ann Waring at St Martin, Birmingham.

Ann gave William another child, a son who was baptised William on 14 January 1833. This William survived into adulthood.

By the time of the 1841 census, William and Ann Keene, with their two youngest surviving sons, had moved to St Alkmund parish in Derby. Both William and Ann were described as silk weavers.

Sisters Mary and Sarah Keene were both silk winders and living together in a house in Full Street, in the parish of All Saints, Derby, and it was from Full Street that Sarah married fellmonger Joseph Gregson on 13 September 1841, with Mary as one witness.

In 1851, William and Ann were still in St Alkmund parish, at 42 Erasmus Street, with their son William, a 9-year-old granddaughter – Sarah Ann Gregson – and a 21-year-old visitor called James Stain. All four adults in the house were described as power loom silk weavers.

By 1861, William and Ann had moved into the parish of St Werburgh in Derby and were living at 236 Abbey Terrace. Also in the house was James Stain. Both William and James were still silk weavers, but Ann was now referred to as a seamstress.

The 1871 census shows that William and Ann were at 31 John Street, St Werburgh. With them in the house was Elizabeth Warren, Ann’s 9-year-old niece – and James Stain, the lodger. The males had left the silk weaving trade: William was now a provisions dealer and James Stain, a lamplighter. Ann continued as a dress maker.

William Keene died a year later in the spring of 1872. On 16 June 1873, Ann married the lodger, James Stain, and continued to live at 31 John Street – they were still there at the time of the 1881 census. However, the marriage took place back in Coventry, at St John the Baptist church, and both bride and groom gave their address as Spon Street. The witnesses to this marriage were Ann’s brother Joseph Waring and his wife Elizabeth. James Stain had been born in Foleshill, near Coventry, in about 1829 and so was some 16 years younger than Ann.

The Stains were still in Derby in 1891, at 32 Nun Street, with a new lodger, a 20-year-old general labourer called Henry Wright and Ann died at the beginning of 1894, aged 87. It is not known what happened to James Stain.

 

The Waring Family

Ann Waring, who became Ann Keene, and then Ann Stain, was born in Leicestershire in about 1813, by Elizabeth, the wife of William Waring. Ann had at least three brothers, William, James and Joseph, all born in Coventry between 1818 and 1825. Their father, William Waring, was described as a gardener when the children got married but had been listed as a labourer at the time of their baptisms.

The marriage certificates of the 1840s provide the next set of clues.

Ann Keene acted as a witness to at least three marriages in Coventry in the 1840s, each also involving members of the Waring family:

On 9 December 1844 James Waring married Eliza Muddeman, and the two witnesses were Joseph Waring and Ann Keene.

On 25 May 1845 Ann Keene’s stepdaughter, Mary Keene, married John Rollason and again the witnesses were Joseph, who signed his name Warring, and Ann Keene.

On 15 June 1846 Joseph himself was married to Elizabeth Oughton. He again signed his name Joseph Warring. The witnesses on this occasion were James Waring, who signed his name with one R, and Ann Keene.

Joseph and Elizabeth had seven children born between 1851 and 1868. One died in infancy but of the others, three called themselves Warren in later life.

The first four children were all baptised together on 26 December 1860 with the surname Waring, although the birth registrations varied: the eldest, Joseph, appears in the register as Warring in 1851, John as Wareing in 1854, Sarah Ann as Warren in 1856 and Eliza as Waring when she was born in 1859 and as Wearing when she was buried in 1862.

There are no records of the last three children ever being baptised, but the birth registrations were all with the name Waring.

Their mother Elizabeth died in the spring of 1878 and her death was registered with the name Waring.

Meanwhile, as the eldest boys got married, they were using the name Warren and not Waring. Joseph junior, for example, married Harriet Dowswell on 15 June 1873 at St John the Baptist, Coventry, and gave his name, and that of his father, as Warren. He continue to use that name until his death on 16 October 1917 and gave it to all his six children.

When his younger brother John married Elizabeth Samuels on 19 November 1877 at St Thomas, Coventry, the family name was given as Warren: for the groom, the father and for the two witnesses – Joseph junior and a sister, Sarah Ann, although she only made her mark and the name was written by the vicar.

When Sarah Ann herself got married, on 5 October 1879, to Thomas Olorenshaw, both her name and that of her father were given as Waring, although her brother Joseph signed his name Warren as one of the witnesses.

And when another sister, Emily, was married to Frederick Williams on 2 August 1884, she again was called Waring, as was her father.

While her sisters may have used Waring as their maiden names when they were married, Elizabeth, like her older brothers, used the name Warren when she married George Bathe on 1 August 1880 at Holy Trinity, Derby.

The final conclusive clue comes from the marriage on Christmas Day 1881, again at Holy Trinity, Derby, when their father, the widower Joseph Waring, married Elizabeth Marks. The register shows that the two witnesses to the marriage were George Bathe and Elizabeth Bathe.

Joseph retained the name Waring until his death at the end of 1901 – and gave it to the five daughters he had by Elizabeth Marks.

 

The Oughton Family

Elizabeth Oughton who married Joseph Waring was the eldest child of William Oughton and Mary Hollingshead.

William Oughton was baptised at St John the Baptist, Coventry, on 7 February 1803, the youngest child of Francis and Elizabeth. So far it has not proved possible to trace this couple back further beyond the fact that they were married on 16 February 1791 – the register has been damaged so badly that all that is known of Elizabeth’s surname is that it began with a B.

William married Mary Hollingshead at Holy Trinity, Coventry, on 31 August 1822 when he was 19 and Mary just 18. It would appear that she had been baptised on 21 November 1804 at Great Dalby in Leicestershire, the daughter of William and Ann Hollingshead. Again, it has not been possible to trace this family back further.

William was a watchmaker but he died when he was just 32. He was buried at St Michael, Coventry, on 6 August 1835.

William and Mary had had five children in all, with the youngest, Sarah, having been born the year before William’s death. Mary was to remarry, a ribbon weaver called Thomas Dowell, on 27 April 1837, and had three more children by him before she died eleven years later. She was buried at St John the Baptist on 12 March 1848.