Was Jauncey Really their Name?
My father always pronounced his grandmother’s surname “Jawnsee” [‘ʤɔnsi]. But were this branch of the family really JAUNCEY or should they have been JONCEY, or JOHNSEY? And is JOHNSEY from a different origin, a variant of JAUNCEY?
My great great grandfather Alfred JAUNCEY (1813-1865) was recorded with and used this spelling from the time of his marriage in 1839, where he named his father as Robert JAUNCEY, farmer. Alfred was a policeman and plumber, and featured in trade listings and as an arresting officer in Gazette reports. I struggled to find any earlier documentation for Alfred or Robert, but after much hunting I finally found Alfred’s baptism 8 Sep 1813 in Stonham Aspal, Suffolk with the spelling JOHNCEY.
There were no further occurrences of either JAUNCEY or JOHNCEY spelling in parish records for Suffolk, and it seemed likely his father Robert had migrated for work, especially as the highest concentration of JAUNCEY was in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, with a relatively smaller concentration in Middlesex. Stonham Aspal turns out to have been Alfred’s mother’s parish. There were clues in the baptism record, as it was helpfully stated that his father Robert, servant, was “a legal settled inhabitant of Hadleigh, Suffolk,“ but his Abode was London. The record named his mother as Jane, but I failed to find a marriage in Suffolk for a Robert Johncey to a Jane with any spelling variation I could think of, including wildcards. However, the members of the Facebook group “Family History in Suffolk ….. The Suffolk Surname List” came up trumps and found a Robert JONCEY marrying a Jane SOAR in 1809 at the parish of St Andrew by the Wardrobe, London. Jane SOAR was from Stonham Aspal parish, Suffolk, where Alfred was baptized.
I next found the charming Robert JONCEY reported in Old Bailey proceedings:
“ROBERT JONCEY was indicted for bigamy. But as the first marriage could not be proved, the prisoner was ACQUITTED . Second Middlesex Jury, before Mr. Justice Bayley.” (Old Bailey Proceedings Online, www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 28 March 2021, May 1817, trial of ROBERT JONCEY t18170521-42).
The name is spelled differently again in the Newgate Prison list of Prisoners for Trial (1817): Robert JOHNSEY (The National Archives; Kew, London, England; PCOM 2: Metropolitan Police: Criminal Record Office: Habitual Criminals Registers and Miscellaneous Papers, available on Ancestry, record set UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951) and in the Prisoner Calendar:
Robert was subsequently accused at the 1819 Newington Quarter Sessions, charged with “with unlawfully running away, and leaving his said wife and one child, whereby they are now chargeable to the said Parish.” He was “Discharged by proclamation.” (Surrey Quarter Sessions 1780-1820, transcripts on FindMyPast). It is unclear which wife this was; I have not found a child for Robert and Elizabeth.
I have not found any clearly identifiable trace of slippery Robert – or either of his wives – thereafter. He has not cropped up in lists of transportees, and I have found no death or burial. Name change and/or emigration are on my list of possibilities.
There is no separate entry for JOHNCEY in the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names (Hanks et al, 2016), but JOHNSEY is noted as a variant of JAUNCEY, so I have now added this spelling; it is the second-most frequent for post-1837 birth registrations in this study.
I have included JANCEY/JANCY, JANNCEY, and JAUNCY, as variants, as there were people who went through life with these spellings, although these also occur as deviant spellings, as do versions with ‘s’ in place of ‘c.’
As a side line to my study, I am interested in the CHAUNCY name and variants, due this being one of the suggested original spellings. I am researching evidence for a connection. However, there are already numerous genealogies and profiles for various armigerous bearers of this name, and it will be outside the main scope of my One-Name Study.