Unable to connect

Sometimes I wind up in a genealogical puzzle where there are just enough pieces missing that the picture remains frustratingly incomplete.  Here's a helpful error message I've made; please could a genealogy software supplier see fit to make it pop up on occasion to remind me to take a break?

William Bond was the elder brother of my great-great-great-grandmother, Lydia.  Their parents were Thomas Bond and Ann Isaacs of, respectively, Rivenhall and Witham, Essex, and they had six other siblings, one of whom was Emily about whom I've blogged previously.

William was christened at Rivenhall on 16 February 1834 so presumably has died, but I simply cannot find where or when.  His occupations varied, but most of the time he said he was a shepherd.  He married Eliza Bumby on 3 December 1853 at Rivenhall and they had a family of eleven, the youngest of whom was Emilie (I guess it was to distinguish her from her sister Emily!). I'm in touch with some of William's descendants, from whom I received this photograph of William, Emilie and "Miss Griggs":

Bowers Gifford, Essex, probably 1880s. Note the stuffed owl in the window.

Emilie was born on 12 November 1877 and appears to be about six or seven in this photo (probably no more than 10).  She married firstly William George Little on 28 September 1897 at North Peckham, and secondly to Samuel Griggs in Greenwich in 1919.  I've received two stories about Emilie and Sam:

"Miss Griggs was housekeeper for William after his wife Eliza died.  Emilie married Miss Griggs' son Samuel as her second husband."

and

"After her mother died, Emilie lived with Fanny & visited her father in the holidays.  She first met Sam Griggs when she was young.  He was the nephew of her father's housekeeper.  When her first husband died of diabetes, (she said later that she'd never been in love with him) she tracked Sam down and lived with him - when they did marry Sam wore an Australian hat.  He had spent time in Australia when he was in the merchant navy.  He was a lovely but lazy man and they lived on money that Fanny had left Emilie.  Later Emilie had to go out cleaning because he wouldn't work."

Leaving aside the character of lazy Sam with his Australian hat wedding attire, I was curious about his parentage.  The family have described him alternatively as the nephew of Miss Griggs and as her son.  "Miss" suggests that she was unmarried, in which case: who was his father?  Also, I'd just like to have a name for her in the photograph.

William's wife, Eliza Bumby, died on 27 March 1883 at Grays Thurrock, Essex, so it's reasonable to assume that the housekeeper arrived if not immediately, at least in the next few years.  The thing is, in 1890, William remarried, and this wasn't in the stories I'd received from his descendants.  He married one Ellen Barnes, a housekeeper, whose residence was the same address as his own.  Am I suggesting that William was Sam's father and that his daughter married her half-brother.  Yuck.  Hardly.

The surname Barnes, Ellen's father's name of Henry on her marriage certificate, and her birthplace on the 1891 census of Norwich, Norfolk, gave me some pointers.  It did take some digging around but I believe that I've found the right Ellen Barnes baptised at Fincham, Norfolk on 9 October 1853, daughter of Henry Barnes and Kesiah Barnyard [note: I was wrong - see January 2013 update!].  An Ellen Barnes born ~1853 at Fincham appears on censuses from 1861 until 1881, but not in 1891, by which time the Ellen in my family had been Mrs Bond for a year.  Ellen died before the 1901 census and William died sometime after it.

Let's leave aside Ellen for a moment and switch the focus back to Samuel Griggs.  According to his marriage certificate, his father's name was William and he was born ~1881.  The likely suspect was the Samuel Griggs born 1881 in Canning Town, West Ham, son of William Griggs -- and Susan Barnes.  The reason I suspect it's this Samuel?  Because his sister Mary Jane had married Emilie's brother Alfred George in 1898, and if it's one trend I keep seeing in my research, it's multiple marriages linking two families. (For the record, two more of William's children, his daughters Jane Ellen and Emily Anne, also married two brothers: George and Maurice James Lott, sons of George Lott and Rebekah Seagers of Billericay.)

So now I have Samuel born to a mother with the surname Barnes, and an Ellen Barnes who married William Bond. I started researching more about Susan Barnes, Sam's mother, and found that, prior to her 1866 marriage, she had been recorded on 1851 and 1861 census as having been born at Fincham, Norfolk!  Excellent!  She was Ellen's big sister and therefore Ellen was Sam's aunt, so the family story that he was the nephew of William Bond's housekeeper was all correct.

Right?

Not quite.  Susan Barnes was the daughter of Edward & Jane Barnes, not Henry & Kesiah.  The Fincham parish register shows that Henry, or, to give him his full baptismal name: Christmas Henry Barnes (can you guess when he was born?), was the son of Clark & Ann Barnes, and I can't establish who Edward's parents were as he doesn't appear to have been baptised at Fincham, nor is he the same household with Clark, Ann and Henry in 1841.  Edward's marriage record would have given his father's name if he married after 1837, but he didn't: he married Jane Caps on 12 November 1836 at Wereham.  The 1831 census of Fincham, which recorded only the numbers of male and female residents, said that there were 154 families comprising 756 individuals, so Edward Barnes and Henry Barnes were not growing up in a large city where many unrelated families shared the same surname.  On the other hand, Barnes is hardly an uncommon name and there might well have been two unrelated Barnes households in Fincham.

So...I believe that the young lady in the photo is Ellen Barnes, housekeeper to and later the wife of William Bond.  I also believe that Emilie Bond in the photo married Samuel Griggs, the son of William Griggs and Susan Barnes, and that Ellen and Susan were likely cousins to some degree.  I believe that Emilie first met Samuel through her brother's marriage to his sister, but that there is also some possibility that he was related to her stepmother, however distantly.

I'm not actually going to spend much more time researching this, as it's an interesting avenue, but it's about the grandparents of the second husband of the niece of my great-great-great-grandmother, so just a little bit distant from my own ancestry.  I hope this is useful to William's descendants and stimulates some further thoughts and research.

Details of William Bond & Eliza Bumby:

William Bond, chr. 16 February 1834, Rivenhall, Essex, England, son of Thomas & Ann (née Isaacs) Bond.  Died ?between 1901 and 1911.  Married firstly to Eliza Bumby; secondly to Ellen Barnes.

Eliza Bumby, b. 30 March 1837 at Great Wigborough, Essex and chr. 10 September 1837 at Layer Marney, Essex, daughter of Jonathan Bumby & Thirza Clark.  Died 27 March 1883 at Grays Thurrock, Essex.

Children:

• Jane Ellen, chr. 4 February 1854 at Rivenhall.  Married 1873 to George Lott, son of George Lott & Rebekah Seagers.  Two known children, Henry and ?Maude.  No records after 1881; possibly emigrated?
• Elizabeth Sophia, chr. 5 April 1857 at Rivenhall.  Married 22 April 1878 to Jonathan Clark Jr (possibly a cousin on her maternal grandmother's line).  Widowed young.  Four known children.  Lived with her brother-in-law Harry Cox for many years and one of her daughters married his son.  Died 1936.
• Eliza Ellen, b. 1861 at Great Totham, Essex.  Married Harry Cox in 1879, one son (Harry Jr, who married his first cousin Ethel Edith M. Clark, daughter of Elizabeth Sophia Bond and Jonathan Clark).  Separated in the early 1880s at which time Eliza became the housekeeper to one William Smith with whom she had five further children: Grace May, John William, Arthur, Alfred George and Thomas Leonard (all but Grace used the surname Cox; Grace was registered as Grace May Cox Smith).  Died 1917.  Her estranged husband and son from her first marriage lived with her sister Elizabeth.
• Emily Anne, b. 1862 at Rainham, Essex.  Married 1881 to Maurice James Lott, son of George Lott & Rebekah Seagers.  Two known sons.  Died 1929.
• Fanny, born 9 December 1863 at Rainham.  Married 1883 to Charles Feltham.  No children.  Died 1929.
• William, b. 1866 at Runwell, Essex.  Married to Ellen (surname unknown).  A widower by 1911.  No known children.  Death unknown.
• Thurza Faith, b. 1866 at Runwell (twin to William).  Married 18 March 1888 to Ephraim Dyster and died 1893.  No known children.
• Alfred George, b. 1870 at Billericay, Essex.  Married 1898 to Mary Jane Griggs, daughter of William Griggs & Susan Barnes.  Seven children.  Died 1947.
• Thomas, b. 1872 at Billericay.  No records after 1881, possibly died young.
• Henry James, b. 8 January 1875 at Great Burstead, Essex.  No records after 1891.
• Emilie, b. 12 November 1877 at Bowers Giffored, Essex.  Married firstly William George Little, son of Charles Little & Mary Ann Louisa Stone.  Eight children.  He died 1917.  She married secondly Samuel Griggs, son of William Griggs & Susan Barnes.  Died 1967.

See an update from January 2013