Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Mine is a complicated story that I'll sketch only the relevant bones of. If anything rings a bell for anyone I would be enormously grateful for info.
My gr-grandfather was Ernest Augustus Monck. After months of digging in censuses, BMDs and parish records, I've determined he was born Ernest Augustus Hill in Cornwall in 1852. He had a sister Ada Lennox Monck Hill. For some reason, they both changed their surname to Monck sometime in the mid-1870s.
Ada, as Ada Hill, was an actress at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1870-71. In 1875 she married Charles Henry Coke, son of Henry Simmons Coke, a solicitor and the Portreeve (like mayor) of Neath, Glamorgan, Wales. In 1881 they were living on 50 acres in Cheshire; in 1891 Charles had a new wife Clare and had changed his and the children's surname to MacCock.
In 1897, daugher Violet Louise Lennox Coke (called McCock on the death certificate) died in Rugby. In 1901, daughter Jessie Frances Ada Monro Coke (Jessie F.A.M. McCock) was living in London as a "lady help" in the household of an architect (surname Nicole, from a well-documented Swiss family). In 1901, son Henry Rosseter John Monro Coke (Rossiter M. McCock) was in the Leicester Regiment of the Imperial Yeomanry in the Boer War.
The family lived in Monckton Combe in 1891, and that year Charles's children are recorded as born in Canada, and Charles in Scotland; Charles seems to have persuaded the children they were born in Scotland (Jessie in 1901), although Henry was born in Berkshire and Jessie was born in Cheshire.
I have no idea whatsoever what possessed Charles to change his surname and tell tales about the family's birthplaces. He may have been hiding from something (I have found no record of first wife Ada's death), he may have gone bonkers for his Scottish heritage.
Monro is a Coke family name: the surname of the grandmother of Henry Simmons Coke. Henry's father's surname was originally Cock in Scotland and he became Coke when he moved to Wales in the early 1800s -- the family is thus unrelated to Sir Edward Coke or the Norfolk or Jamaica Cokes. Jessie & Frances were names of Charles Henry Coke's mother, aunt and sisters. (Lennox appears to have been a family name on Ada's side, as my gr-grandfather used it as well; ditto for Rosseter.)
Because I am mystified by (and obsessed with!) Ernest's and Ada's name change, and want to know who their actual parents were (supposedly Francis Hoare Hill of Devon and Sarah Emma Bond of Cornwall, but they separated when the children were very young and I doubt his paternity), I would dearly love to find descendants of Jessie Frances Ada Monro Coke/McCock and/or Henry Rosseter John Monro Coke/McCock, to see whether they have any knowledge of their mother Ada Lennox Monck Hill Coke.
It is possible that the children emigrated, possibly to Canada. Ernest Augustus Monck emigrated with his second wife and children, first to Australia in the mid-1880s; they then returned to England in the early 1890s and came to Canada in about 1906. There is a "Miss McCock" of Jessie's age landing, en route to Canada, on a vessel landing in Maine in July 1901. They do not appear to be in the 1911 census of Canada.
I am in contact with other Coke descendants in Wales, who know all about their family ... except for Henry Simmons Coke's descendants. While researching this family, I discovered that their ancestor, Henry's brother James Charles Coke, did indeed have a wife in Australia as they suspected (in addition to two in the UK and one in Chile -- he was involved in the copper and timber trades) and that there is a park named for him in Melbourne.
Charles Henry Coke/McCock's younger brother Percy Knight Hale Coke had two children by 1901, Lillian Hale Coke and Percival Hale Coke. Percival became a poet, and copies of his self-published books and of other publications containing his work can be found at on-line booksellers.
I would also like to find descendants of Lillian Hale Coke or Percival Hale Coke, if they had any; I do not know whether either of them married, or whom they married. They were born in Yorkshire; apparently Percy (Sr.) was the mayor of Harrogate at one time. He was also career military, and in the Boer War as well.
So to summarize, I'm searching for descendants of:
Jessie Frances Ada Monro Coke / McCock
born 1881 in Cheshire (but may have believed she was born in Canada or Scotland)
Henry Rosseter/Rossiter John Monro Coke / McCock
born 1879 in Berkshire (but may have believed he was born in Canada or Scotland)
Percival Hale Coke born 1899 in Yorkshire
Lillian Hale Coke born 1895 in Yorkshire
(or any other descendants of Percy Knight Hale Coke and his wife Sarah MacManus)
A one in a million shot, but one never knows! For anyone whose eyes haven't glazed over, thanks for reading. ;)
Kathryn
Notify Administrator about this message?
Followups:No followups yet |
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/coke/messages/88.html | ||
 |
Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|