Sarah Ann Green (1829-1902) and Jonathan Jary (1831-1890).
My 3rd great-grand aunt and uncle.
Sarah was baptised on 5 June 1829 at St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, and grew up with her siblings and parents William Green and Willoughby Staff in the town.
The 1851 census recorded her living with relative and mariner’s wife Elizabeth Saunders and her children at 18 Napoleon Place in Yarmouth. By then she was working as one of the town’s many beatsters, a job that involved mending fishing nets.
Sarah married Jonathan Jary at St Nicholas’s in Great Yarmouth on 13 July 1852. He had been baptised on 19 June 1831 at St Peter & St Paul Church in Runham, Norfolk, the son of husbandman John Jary and his wife Susan. A few years before the marriage he was working as a seaman out of Great Yarmouth, and his merchant navy record showed that he was 5ft 6ins tall, with dark brown hair and brown eyes.
I can’t trace the couple in the 1861 or 1871 censuses but we know that they had children in Great Yarmouth but also several others baptised at St Peter’s Church in Brighton, Sussex. The latter baptism records described Jonathan as a fish curer of 7 Nelson Row, Brighton.
Sarah cropped up in the 1881 census at Lowestoft near the town of her birth, living with her son Frederick and described as a fisherman’s wife. Jonathan wasn’t listed, suggesting he was away on census night, and the other children were also missing.
In 1887 the parents featured in several newspaper reports, the result of a domestic assault. The Eastern Daily Press of 29 August 1887 reported from the Great Yarmouth Police Court that fish merchant Jary had been summoned for threatening his wife Sarah Ann. The prosecution claimed that he’d come home wanting his tea but when she told him there wasn’t any, he became abusive and threatened to hit her with a chair. It was not the first time such an incident had taken place, the court heard, but Jonathan claimed that he’d only raised the chair in anger when he realised that his son and daughter-in-law were still living at his home and had not left as he’d demanded. He said he had no intention of hitting his wife. The case was adjourned for two weeks in the hope that some arrangement could be come to but, as the Eastern Evening News of 10 September 1887 reported, Sarah Ann continued to be afraid about going home. The bench ordered Jonathan – this time described as a fish curer – to be bound over for six months in the sum of £10 to keep the peace as well as to pay the costs. Whether Sarah Ann returned to the family home is unknown.
Jonathan died on 29 October 1890 and was buried at Great Yarmouth Cemetery on 1 November. The 1891 census showed Sarah Ann living with her auctioneer son Robert and his family at 2 Alma Road, Great Yarmouth, but 10 years later she was lodging with the Nye family at 44 Leatherdale Street in Mile End, in the east end of London. What prompted the move is unclear but she may have been living with or near relatives. Her death was registered in Mile End in 1902.
- Robert Jary (1855-1924) was born in Great Yarmouth but much of his early life is a mystery as the family is missing from some census returns. He married Martha Johns Llewellyn Trahair of Newlyn in Cornwall in 1877. In 1891 he was listed as an auctioneer of furniture and was living with his wife, children and mother in Great Yarmouth. He later became a fish merchant and moved from Norfolk to the West Derby suburb of Liverpool in Lancashire. He was staying at a hotel in Euston Square, St Pancras, London, on the night of the 1921 census but died back in Liverpool three years later. Martha was buried in Liverpool in 1925.
- Eliza Susannah Jary (1866-1937). Born in Great Yarmouth and a dressmaker in her spinster years, Eliza married merchant seaman William Thomas Utting of Poplar, London, in Great Yarmouth in 1898. They raised a family there but by 1911 were living at Mile End Old Town in London. William went on to work as a fish porter and the 1921 census showed him employed by his brother-in-law Frederick at Billingsgate Fish Market in London. Eliza’s death was registered in Stepney in 1937. William was living in Hackney in 1939, and his death was registered in Ilford, Essex, in 1943.
- Frederick George Jary (1868-1941 and pictured here with his wife) was born when his parents were in Brighton, Sussex. He married labourer’s daughter Harriet Maria Colby in Great Yarmouth in 1890 and had a number of children. The family moved ultimately to Ilford, Essex, and Frederick was a fish merchant and employer at Billingsgate Fish Market in the City of London. They were living in Clacton in Essex at the time of the 1939 Register and at Chadwell Heath in Essex when Frederick died in Ilford Hospital in 1941. Harriet’s death was registered in Ilford in 1959.
- William Jary and John Jary were two sons baptised at the same time as Frederick and Eliza in Brighton in 1869. However, no birth dates were given, no civil registration records have yet been found and I’ve yet to find any other trace of them.
Sources. Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk, Norfolk Family History Society and Sussex Family History Group. Jary merchant navy records at National Archives BT113 series. British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).