Clezy, Clezie connections

[clazey]

There is another Clazey researcher, Rick Heiser, also descended from a child of James Clazey and Helen Ker who also made his way to Canada via New York.

sharon

[heiserca]

George Claise / Claisye and Agnes Middlemist had a son, James, baptized at Coldstream on 14 December 1760. 

However, years ago a researcher in Edinburgh, Dr. Moira Simmons, looked into some old records for me.  She found, in the parochial registers of Mordington:

"1766 October 26th  Baptized to George Claise and his spouse at Edrington (illegible), named James."

My belief is that James born in 1760 died; another son was born in 1766 and given the same name.  Am I right?  So easy to confuse a 6 and 0 when looking at old handwriting!  Opinions please...



 

[heiserca]

Mistakes can spread so easily!  Some online trees show that John Clezy (who emigrated to Australia in 1849) was born at Woolwich, Kent. That makes no sense and is likely an error. His parents were John Claise & Margaret Palen, from Hutton, Berwickshire. Unlikely that they ever were in Kent, which is far from Scotland, east of London. Almost certainly, John Clezy was born at WOOLER, Northumberland, and not WOOLWICH, Kent.  Who has the original record to prove this?

[T. Michael Sommers]

Mistakes can spread so easily!  Some online trees show that John Clezy (who emigrated to Australia in 1849) was born at Woolwich, Kent. That makes no sense and is likely an error. His parents were John Claise & Margaret Palen, from Hutton, Berwickshire. Unlikely that they ever were in Kent, which is far from Scotland, east of London. Almost certainly, John Clezy was born at WOOLER, Northumberland, and not WOOLWICH, Kent.  Who has the original record to prove this?

Do you have any documents to support your idea of Wooler vice Woolwich?  I agree that Woolwich seems odd, but it is not impossible; people did move around.  The last record I have found of his parents is their marriage in 1777.  Who knows where they were when John was born?

[heiserca]

Woolwich is not strictly impossible but seems unlikely.  Is there any evidence at all that John Clezy was born in Woolwich?  Is there evidence of any famiy connection to Kent?  Wooler is in the Cheviot foothills, near Ford and Etal, where we know that Clazie/Clazey families lived, at least as early as 1819 and perhaps earlier; 15 miles from Berwick upon Tweed, 20 mi from Duns.  Evidence would be a good thing.  Until that evidence turns up, Wooler seems a far more likely birthplace for John Clezy than does Woolwich.

[LowrieT]

I agree as well that is unlikely to be Woolwich.   

[heiserca]

Paul Fergie, in England, deserves a medal for tracking this down!  The idea that John Clezy was born at Woolwich originates here:

“Correspondence from Margaret Clezy nee Steele who married James Clezy, the younger son of John Clezy (1790) in a letter to Peter Steele Clezy’s grandmother (Elsy Clezy).  Margaret reports that her father-in-law had been born in Woolwich and that his father had served in the Royal Artillery.”

The woman who wrote the letter would be Margaret Macdonald Steele, b. 7 Oct 1846 at Nairne, South Australia.  She had likely never been in England.  John Clezy himself died in 1864, when Margaret Macdonald Steele was only 18 years old.  How much contact did they have at Nairne?  Did she get the information from John himself, or second- or third-hand?  Might she have confused Woolwich with Wooler, or some other place?  Is she a reliable authority on this point?

Her letter said that John Clezy’s father (John Claise, who m. Margaret Palen) was in the Royal Artillery.  Do we have any evidence of that?  Are there records that could confirm whether he was in the Royal Artillery, and whether he was ever posted at Woolwich?
 

[T. Michael Sommers]

I had forgotten about this, but some time ago Sharon Spry sent me a PDF file on the Steele's that included John Clezy.  The title on the first page is John and Elizabeth (nee Steele) Disher, while in the footer of each page it says "Descendants of William Steele".  It is dated 16 Jan 2007 and is 265 pages long.  No author is named, but I believe it is from Peter Clezy of Australia.  It appears to be the output from a genealogy program.

Regarding John Clezy it says, "John was born in Woolwich, Kent in 1790. In a successful application to the Edinburgh Academy in 1823 that he told the academy that his primary education was at Woolwich." [sic] This appears in a quotation from "'The Old Partnership', by Peter Steele Clezy, 2002".

I am willing to accept this as evidence of John's birth in Woolwich.  It does not seem to be the kind of thing one would fabricate, nor does it seem to be the kind of thing that would be mistakenly passed on.

[heiserca]

Hurray!  Thank you!  I agree, we now have something substantial.  Over 200 years after the fact, that is as close as we are likely to find to any "evidence".  I accept it too.