The Martins

Following is what I know about the Martin family. This document will be updated as further information becomes available.

Thomas Martin, my g-g-g-grandfather, was a St Pancras based builder who lived and had his workshop at Osnaburgh St., Regent’s Park, London. Previously, he had lived at George St., Portman Square. In 1802 he married Agnes Jenkins in the Parish Church of St Marylebone (he was a widower). He was a contractor for the building of Kings College, London. He died on 16 February 1834. The assets of the business were sold after Thomas’s death under an Order in Chancery.

Thomas and Agnes were Roman Catholic, as were their children and their families, with the exception of Edward. He either converted to Church of England after his marriage, or agreed that his children should be brought up Church of England. This seems to have caused a family rift, with Edward and his family having little or no contact with his family of origin.

The Martin and Jenkins families attended the Roman Catholic church of St James, Spanish Place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Some details have been obtained from the registers of that church, as follows:

On 20 October 1793 Thomas Martin married Ann Young in St James. (The following day, he married her again, in the church of St Martin in the Fields! The probable reason is that Catholic marriages were not legal till 1837, and Thomas would have regarded the Catholic marriage as the true marriage, the Church of England one as simply fulfilling the formalities to ensure that his marriage was legal and any children legitimate!) They had one known child, Mary, born abt 1794. The date of Ann's death is not known.

The children of Thomas and Agnes Martin were George (b 12 June 1803, bap 14 June 1803, godparents John and Millicent Tasker), Thomas, Edward, my g-g-grandfather (b 6 May 1806, bap 9 May 1806, godparents Joseph Thomas and Ann Martin), Eliza Agnes (b 1 April 1809, bap 3 April 1809, godparents Henry and Elizabeth Corner), and Charles Frederick (b 11 February 1812, bap 13 February 1812, godparents Neville Fether and Mary Martin). Charles seems to have died young, but the date of his death is unknown.

A cousin, Eliza Jenkins, daughter of George Jenkins and Elizabeth (nee Gurney) was b 26 February 1810 and bap 6 April 1810. Godparents were Thomas and Agnes Martin.

George Martin married Ann Mower on 21 November 1825. Witnesses were Thomas and Mary Martin. There seem to have been no children of this marriage.

Edward Martin was born in Marylebone, and married Mary Lockwood in the Parish Church of St Marylebone in 1838. (Mary Lockwood was born in Sculcoates, Hull, Yorkshire in 1813.) At the 1851 census, Edward and Mary were living at 2 North Place, Regent’s Park, where Edward was a stone and coal merchant. In 1854, Edward withdrew from his business partnership with Messrs Wood and Robarts, and assigned his estate and effects to trustees (one of whom was his brother Thomas) for the benefit of his creditors. In other words, he became insolvent. No further trace has been found of him on censuses, and no death record has been found.

Edward and Mary had three children:

• Mary Martin, born in 1841, who became a nun in the Anglican Order of All Hallows.
  
  
• Caroline Martin, born in 1843, my g-grandmother. Caroline married the Rev. Edmund Huband-Smith at St Anne’s, Soho on 19 September 1867. They left for Australia on the “Landsborough” on 20 October 1867, arriving in Sydney on 1 February 1868.
  
  The Huband-Smiths served the Church of England in Australia at Dungog and Jerrys Plains in New South Wales - they were at Jerry's Plains for thirty years. They retired to Toowoomba in Queensland in 1904, where their youngest daughter, Beatrice Katharine, met and married Allan Ewen Cameron in 1910. Allan and Beatrice were my grandparents.
  
  
• William Lockwood Martin, born 1846, studied at St Edmund Hall Oxford and became an Anglican priest. He served in the parishes of Ilkeston in Derbyshire, Anfield in Liverpool, St Andrew’s Wells St in London, and Bettisfield and Berriew in Wales. He married Mary Edith Olivant or Ollevant in 1884 in Clifton, Gloucestershire. They had one known child - a son, Christopher Lockwood Martin, born December 1885 in Bettisfield, died March 1886. William retired to Downshire Hill, Hampstead in 1912, and later moved to Oxford, where he died in 1935 and is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery. The informant of death was his sister-in-law, Catherine Amelia Wormald. His wife Mary died in Oxford in 1943.