♀Esther Neave

Esther Neave (born about 1803) was the wife of James Morgan, a London dyer, and appears in the later records under her married name, Esther Morgan. She was the great-great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Emily Eliza Morgan (1838–1895), her daughter Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919), and her son Frederic Arthur Curtis (1903–1990).

Woolwich and marriage

A baptism at St Mary Magdalene, Woolwich, on 12 June 1803 records Esther, born 18 May, daughter of Henry and Martha Neave; Martha’s maiden name is not known. The 1851 census gives her birthplace as Woolwich, Kent, and her age as 48. On 5 June 1821 James Morgan, bachelor, and Esther Neaves, spinster, both of the parish, were married by banns^W at St Luke, Old Street, Middlesex; the register of that date gives no ages, trades or fathers. The identification of the couple married in 1821 with the later dyer’s family rests on the matching names, her Woolwich birth about 1803 as given in the 1851 census, and the dyer’s trade; no single record names both the Neave family and the Morgan household.

Children

James and Esther Morgan had at least seven children, baptized between 1824 and 1842: Esther, Mary Ann, James and Elizabeth at St James, Piccadilly, Westminster, where the register gives the family’s abode as Bury Street; and Emily Eliza, Henry and Martha Elizabeth, at St John the Evangelist, Lambeth, and Christ Church, Southwark, where the abode is York Street. Every entry gives the father’s trade as dyer, and the family moved from Bury Street, St James’s, to York Street on the Surrey side of the Thames between 1832 and 1838. No record found states that change of address; the Bury Street family is tied to the York Street one by the names, the trade and the children of the 1841 census, Mary aged 14 and James aged 13, who match the baptisms of Mary Ann in 1827 and James in 1829. Henry was born on 22 July 1840 and baptized on 30 August 1840, so the age of 17 given for him in the 1851 census index is an error. The daughters Esther and Elizabeth are not in the 1841 household, and the records found do not say why.

Lambeth and Holborn

When her daughter Emily Eliza, born 23 March 1838, was baptized on 25 December 1838 at St John the Evangelist, Lambeth^W, the register named the parents as James and Esther Morgan of York Street, James a dyer; the clerk struck through the mother’s first name and wrote “Esther” in its place. The 1841 census, taken in the neighboring parish of Christchurch^W, Surrey, listed her as Hester, aged 38, with James, a dyer, and four children: Mary, James, Emily and Henry, a baby of ten months. By 1851 she and James were living at 34 High Holborn, in the parish of St Andrew Holborn, Middlesex, with Henry, indexed as aged 17 though his baptism makes him ten, and Emily, aged 15, both born at Christchurch. Her later life and death have not been traced.

Notes

The link between this couple and Emily Phipps, who died in Chicago in 1895, rests on the baptism, whose names, street and trade match the two census households. It is probable rather than proven: the 1851 census makes Emily about two years older than her baptism does.