♀Martha (surname unknown)

Martha was the wife of Henry Neave and the mother of a family baptized at St Mary Magdalene, Woolwich, Kent, between 1793 and 1808. She was the third great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Esther Neave (born 1803).

The index of the Woolwich registers names Henry and his wife Martha as the parents of Mary (1793), William (1795), Sarah (1797), Marianne (1799), Esther (1803) and Henry (1808); a son Henry was buried there on 6 December 1801, and the name was given again to the boy baptized on 10 January 1808. The index spells the surname Neve, Nave, Neuve and Neave. The entry for Esther in the register records her as “of Henry & Martha”, born 18 May and baptized 12 June 1803. In 1821 Esther married James Morgan, later a London dyer.

The marriage of Henry and Martha has not been found in the London registers, and Martha’s maiden name is not known. A Henry Nave or Neve married a Martha Turner at St Mary, Newmarket, Suffolk, on 18 July 1792, which would fit a first child in 1793, but nothing in that record ties the couple to Woolwich, and it may be another pair. Nothing is known of Martha’s birth, her family or her death.