When their church, the Bretagne Church in Pons, France, was burned down in April 1686 Claude Jamineau, the 9 time great grandfather of the Student, and his brother Daniel fled to England with their pastor Elias Prioleau (Huguenot Society of London vol xviii, 1911).  As Huguenots (Calvinist protestants) they had lived under religious restrictions in the Catholic dominated state for years despite the protections offered by the Edict of Nantes. When the Edict was revoked in October 1685 the upsurge in persecution, including violent attacks, finally became too much for them. Like many others they escaped to a safe, supportive country.

It's often claimed that if family historians look hard enough they will find at least one king, pauper and murderer in their family tree. May be the list should also include bigamist.

Early in my family history research, tracing ancestors along the line of my paternal grandmother, I discovered that my great grandmother (pictured) whom the family had always believe to be Mary Onions, was Mary Onions Davies. Her parents were Sarah Ann Perry and Richard Davies. So where did the Onions name come from? Ann Edge and Ralph Perry had married on 19th April 1857. He was described as 21 year old widower, she a 23 year old spinster.

Religion, identity and class, as we all know can be emotive subjects and at the turn of the twentieth century my family appears to have been particularly prone to the problems it can cause. Irish catholic and English protestant wars erupted when one or other of my fairly recent ancestors dared to fall in love with a person of the wrong persuasion.  My maternal grandmother told me of weddings boycotted, family members cast out and one - my great uncle Daniel - running away to join the church.  Some were reconciled, some not.  From the stories I heard I had always believed my great grandmother (my mother's paternal grandmother) was Irish born and bred and so was rather surprised to discover that both her parents had been born in England.

Before my maternal grandmother died she told me about the members of her family she knew and could remember. She related interesting tales of feud and reconciliation, entrenched views of status, class and religion. She rattled through her family tree, even producing a chart she had inherited from her cousin who had died a few years earlier at more than 100 years old. She recalled meeting rich relatives - there were twins involved - uncle someone who was something to do with newspapers - in Leicestershire she thought. Then there were all Wilf's siblings, his mother - her mother in law - had been an Irish catholic so there were a lot of them. She didn't know so much about her father in law, Job,  except his family hadn't approved of him marrying the Irish woman - she was catholic and he was methodist and a bit more "up market" than her.  He'd had a brother, Daniel, - Wilf's uncle Daniel - but all she knew about him was he'd died in the war, the first world war. She thought his grandmother was a performer of some sort - amateur opera maybe.

My family name is Bradbury; my Dad knew his grandfather, James Marsh Bradbury. It was relatively easy to identify his parents: James Davis Bradbury and Hannah Marsh. The interesting point was that their marriage certificate identified James's father as James Davies. Was this his real father or his step father?

James Davies married Elizabeth Bradbury in Northwood, Hanley, Staffordshire on 5th August 1855. The 1861 and 1871 censuses show the younger James, known then as Davies, living with his parents, James and Elizabeth. Ages and occupations are strong indicators that this is the family of James Davis Bradbury and their address, which remained the same through to at least 1901 (census records), is where my grandfather William Marsh Bradbury was born in 1904.

In fact it turned out that there was no mysterious Colonel Hallows. The family story, which claimed Hallows was a Colonel in India, and left his wife and family well off following his death, was inaccurate although not without foundation.

Mary Elizabeth Hallows, 2nd great-grandmother to my first husband James A Andrew Baker, was the daughter of Thomas Hallows, a stone mason originally from Bakewell in Derbyshire, and Sophie Jenour.

Sophie was born in Carnpore, India in about 1820 and it is very likely that her father was a lieutenant Thomas Jenour of 14th Buckinghamshire Regiment, 2nd battalion. Her marriage certificate shows that her father was indeed Thomas Jenour, although by the time of her marriage his occupation was scripture reader and not an army officer.

There is a pallots marriage record of Thomas Jenour's marriage to Mary Cole in  Newport, Hampshire on January 19th 1813 and also a record of him passing through Malta in 1810 either travelling to or returning from India.

Assuming that the family account of an ancestor who was an officer in the British army, serving in India is correct, then from the information gleaned from the records, this is the most likely explanation.

As for being wealthy, Thomas Jenour was probably the son of Joshua Jenour a once wealthy London newspaper publisher who reputedly spent his vast fortune and left his family improverished and records from the Isle of Man show that Thomas  himself became bankrupt there in the late 1820s. Thomas moved to Liverpool as a warehouseman before becoming a teacher/scripture reader and although I have found no record of him with his daughter Sophie she too must have been in the Liverpool area as she married Thomas Hallows in the West Derby district.

However, improverished is probably a relative term and to their neighbours in the north west of England in the late 19th century Sophie Hallows may have seemed to have more comfortable means than most. I don't know, but to me her address and employment circumstances do not suggest someone well off, but it's possible she had received a small inheritance from her grandmother Harriet (abandoned wife of Joshua Jenour) the daughter of Mr and Mrs Andrews, wealthy land owners and the subjects of the painting by Constable.