The Tale of the Gosport Mariner

Or,

How a Lovelock family disappeared

An entry in the Register of All Saints Church in Southampton, Hampshire records the marriage of William Lovelock and Sarah Dovey on 6 January 1848. The church was regularly attended by Jane Austen when she was living in the city, and the artist John Everett Millais was baptised there. The church was very badly damaged in the Second World War and was subsequently demolished.

By the time of the 1851 Census William and Sarah had taken up residence in the parish of St Mary, adjacent to All Saints. They were living at 11 Albert Terrace, with their son whose name appears to be a rendering of Samuel. William was a 27-year-old Mariner born in Gosport, whilst Sarah, 28, had been born in Bramshaw, both birthplaces being in Hampshire. Samuel’s birthplace was recorded as ‘Southton’, a common corruption of Southampton, and he was said to be 1 year old. Curiously there is no General Record Office (GRO) entry of his birth or death, nor is there a baptism or burial included in any of the online sources.

Whatever happened to Samuel it did not deter William and Sarah from adding to their family, and so the GRO records include entries for the births of Sarah Ann (1850), Susan Maria (1853), William George (1855), James Alexander (1856), Sophia Ellen (1859) and Harriet Louisa (1862). Readers can probably deduce from the title of this piece where this narrative is heading. William George and James Alexander both died in 1859, and their four sisters all in due course married.

Sarah (nee Dovey) had been widowed by 1871, although as there is no GRO death record William may have died at sea. Sarah, who was baptised at Bramshaw on 9 Oct 1822, never remarried and died in 1892. Sarah Ann was the first of the daughters to marry, and she and George South, who married in 1872, produced three daughters and four sons. Next to marry was Harriet Louisa in 1887 to Harry James Taylor. They had a son and a daughter before Harry died in 1901. Like her mother Harriet never remarried and died in 1939.

Susan Maria and Sophia Ellen were both married in 1906, the former to John Phillip Vaudin, the latter to William Charles Bates. Not surprisingly, considering the ages of the ladies concerned, neither marriage produced any offspring.

So if that is the end of this particular Lovelock branch, can we discover anything about its beginnings? According to an item on the Ancestry.co.uk Web Site when he married Sarah Dovey William named his father as James. There are no Lovelock records online for Gosport, but we do have a small amount of information from Alverstoke. This is a small settlement contiguous with Gosport, so might be what William meant as his birthplace when information was gathered for the 1851 Census.

William the son of James George Lovelock and Maria May was baptised in Alverstoke on 15 July 1832, but we must assume he died as James and Maria baptised another son William in Portsea in 1834. In any case 1832 seems too late a birth (of a William) for a marriage in 1848 to a lady (Sarah Dovey) born in 1822, and 1834 certainly was.

Thus we come to a dead end at both ends of the branch.

Quod erat demonstrandum?