WH Warner - Beginnings | dearmanmollett

William Henry Warner Beginnings

Mollett

?St. Pancras 1814?-1833

Musings on unknown parents

portrait-of-young-boy-probably-olivier-b

It's all very frustrating but for now all we have to go on is the first record of William - his marriage in 1833 to Ann Martin in Old Street St. Pancras. As his 1851 census record shows - he was born in St. Pancras, so for now I am assuming that this is where he lived for most of his life. Or maybe he had reason not to say where he was born, and just decided to go with St. Pancras since this was where he married. Who knows.

As I was setting out on writing up William's life I came to the realisation that if I was going to write about his early years then first I would need to research his parents. Most of the lives on this website fall into at least two sections - before and after marriage. For they all married (or at least had children) or else they would not be in the story of the Dearman/Mollett lines. And in order to write a 'Before Marriage' section one needs to know about the ancestor's parents. Otherwise - as in some cases - because of the inevitable dead end - there is no 'Before Marriage' story, other than perhaps a place of baptism. Then we just have a very short 'A Life' story.

With William Henry Warner I have gone from nothing about his parents, to near certainty I had found them, and back to not quite, but almost nothing. So the heading for this page is currently 'Beginnings' because although I do not really know about his childhood, there are a few tantalising possibilities that I would like to put out there. Alas there are just too many Warners in the area and no linking record between William and his parents, to be certain.

What I do know (if we are to believe the two census records I have), is that William was born around 1814 in St. Pancras in London's north east. Armed with this information I now have really too many potential sets of parents, none of whom is totally convincing because the William births in their families are either too early or too late, not quite in the same area or not having the middle name Henry, and our William Henry virtually always included Henry in official records associated with his family. Then there are a few other Warner families in the right area having children at the right time, but so far no William. All very tantalising!

Thus I really do not know what kind of childhood William had. One of my 'also rans' as parents was a wealthy family, so he could have been brought up in everything from the Workhouse (is this what happened to foundlings?), through ordinary poverty, to modest means to real comfort. Some of these people were Quakers too (or followers anyway), so this too would have made a difference.

My front runners were John Temple Warner, a watchmaker and his wife Sarah Polley - right area, the only one with the right names but alas the wrong age, for this William Henry was very definitely born in 1818 which would have made him a mere 15 years of age when he married. Since the marriage record seemed pretty straightforward I therefore had to reluctantly conclude that these are the wrong parents, although I am finding it very hard to dismiss them completely. Then there are Charles and Mary (a soldier), born slightly too early and in Holborn not St. Pancras, Joseph and Esther - wrong birthdate (too early by three years) and wrong district - St. Marylebone, and William and Sarah, right date wrong area (Whitechapel) and no Henry. Then there is the foundling in Holborn, but he too is a bit too old, and also there is obviously a relative of some kind living with the Warners in 1840 so perhaps unlikely that he was a foundling. There is also the tantalising couple of John Warner and his wife Sarah Diamond, who only seem to have one child - a girl. They are tantalising because of Sarah's surname - in 1841 William and his wife are living in a house headed by one Elizabeth Diamond. There are also lots of other couples having children at the right time and place, but no Williams (or of completely the wrong age) in their families. I'll keep looking but for the moment this is still a dead end.