This One-Name Study was started in 2021, although I have been toiling to find the origins of my branch of the family bearing this surname for over 20 years. It is small in scope, the estimated occurrence of the surname in the 1881 England & Wales being approximately 207 including main variants (data from FamilySearch).
The featured photo shows my paternal great grandmother Eliza Cook JAUNCEY (born 1851 in Forest Hill, Lewisham, Kent, England) in a wheelchair aged 86 in 1837. Her father Alfred JAUNCEY (1813-1865) gave Stonham Aspal, Suffolk, as his place of birth in the two censuses in which he appeared, which I discovered was his mother’s parish. There were no other families with this name or variants in that county, and he appears to have been the only child born to his parents.
Alfred’s father Robert JAUNCEY or JONCEY or JONSEY (c.1787-?) seems to have vanished from the records after being first prosecuted for bigamy in 1817 then appearing in the Surrey Quarter sessions in 1819 accused of deserting his wife and child. I have found no evidence of him being transported or emigrating.
The elusiveness of my 3rd great grandfather and spelling variations of his name led to my collecting unrelated families in the hunt for naming patterns and migration, and geographical patterns to the spelling variations. This has not been a well-organised pursuit until now, so it is my hope that joining the Guild and starting a profile will enforce some discipline!
It is my intention to make the study international, although so far I have concentrated on England, especially focussed on clusters around Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
Where a particular individual, branch or name cluster has been written about in published studies, I shall not copy those details, but shall include references and links.
This website is spread over a number of pages which are accessed via the menu items above. Genealogies will be kept in a database which is in a separate application accessible from the Genealogy menu item .
Eliza Cook Jauncey (1851-1938)