Genealogy Chat

Hi Annie, pretty cool to find your post as i'm on exactly the same seach as you (Mark Marks was my gggg grandfather)! I can give you a bit of extra info (but not a lot as i think youve found pretty much the same set of documents i found). I think you could be right about the jewish thing - my mum was always given the understanding that her granddad had some jewish heritage although she was never completely sure. Having done a lot of searching on ancestry.co.uk i'm pretty confident that the 1813 baptism is him (too much of a coincidence for me that it was just 3 weeks before his wedding, also by a process of elimination as i cant find any other Mark Marks that it could relate to, for example it wouldnt fit for the guy who worked as hatter on St Giles High St). This would also fit with him being jewish as it was quite common for jews to convert to christianity back then and it seems very unusual that he would have waited until the age of 21 to get baptised otherwise (im also sure he wouldn't have been able to get married in a christian church if he hadnt converted). Very hard to know for sure though of course.

Interestingly the age given on the military record, which confused you, is actually corrected on the back of the document where it confirms that it had written his age in wrong originally by 5 years (changing his age at discharge from 20 to 25 which fits with his probable birth date of 1792).

Did you find anything at all about his wife Elizabeth Waltham? I know she was born in about 1789 in Southwark from the information in the census but i cant find a single possible birth record other than that.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Alex

If he or his family were jewish then eventually you do not want to be looking for baptisms in Church of England churches, but for any Jewish records, surely?

Hi Alex

Have sent you a PM

Annie

Hi Patchem

I have tried the Jewishgen database, but nothing came up. Its still just a rumour within the family

Regards Annie

I have not got a subscription to the Jewish database, so do not know how well it works.

Have you tried to find any information about his possible parents, or any siblings living in the same area - or are there too many Marks to make that feasible?

I have come across late baptisms before, and it did not involve being Jewish or any other nonconforming religion.

The ages have ranged anywhere from about age 10 when the child would have been starting work and the employer required confirmation that he/she had been baptised, to just before marriage when the minister or someone required confirmation.

The following reasons seem to be involved ......

the person did not know whether they had been baptised, so got baptised again "just in case"

the person had not been baptised when a child ........ maybe the parents didn't believe in it, lived in a place where there was no minister or easy access to a church, or maybe they just plain forgot when doing a bulk baptism of several children