Isaac George KEAM = Isaac GEORGE

Research Note for the St. Blazey Families Project
by Wesley Johnston, 7 Aug 2012

Please note that Ancestry's text formatting is a nightmare. This note looks very different in edit mode than the way it appears publicly, and I have very little control over it, due to the poor formatting of Ancestry.

Isaac was baptized "Isaac George a Base Child of Elizabeth Keam" 5 Jul 1795 at St Austell. So it is not clear if he was given the surname George or a middle name George. In his early years, he went by Isaac Keam, and his first two children were baptized Keam, although the second was given the middle name of George. But his last two children were baptized George. So it seems likely that Isaac's father's surname was George and that he adopted that surname sometime between the baptisms of his children in 1820 and 1822 and used George as his surname for the rest of his life. He appears as Isaac George in the 1841 census.

Who Was Isaac's Mother?
Clearly his mother was Elizabeth Keam, but who were her parents, and what became of her? Thus far, I have not been able to determine her parents. The best candidate appears to be the base child baptized 9 Sep 1761 at Luxulyan, daughter of Elizabeth Keam. This would make her 34 years old at the time Isaac was born. In the Cornwall Family History Society Research Database, there is no other baptism of an Elizabeth Keam anywhere in Cornwall after this 1761 baptism until 1793, which is clearly not the mother of a child born in 1795. The next earliest baptism of an Elizabeth Keam before that was in 1753. So the 1761 Elizabeth really does seem to be the only one who could have been Isaac's mother.

The question then becomes who were the parents of her mother Elizabeth Keam? She would have been born about 1730 to 1740.  There really are only two candidate baptisms:
(1) 11 Feb 1733 at Luxulyan to Humphry and Elizabeth (nee Davy) and
(2) 27 Oct 1733 at Luxulyan to Richard and Mary (probably the Mary Smith married 22 Nov 1713 at St Mewan?).
There was also an Elizabeth baptized 26 Sep 1730 at Luxulyan to Humphry and Elizabeth, but she almost certainly had died before their 1733 Elizabeth was born. After the 1733 children, there were none in Cornwall until 1752, and before the 1730 child there were none at all. So one of these two 1733 Elizabeth's must have been the right one. The second of these, explicitly identifed as the daughter of Richard. died unwed in 1761 (buried 10 Sep 1761 at St Austell - https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-22656-47028-26), the day after Isaac's apparent mother was baptized, so that there is a strong possibility that this was Isaac's grandmother. There was another Elizabeth Keam buried on the same page, on 7 Oct 1761, who died of Small Pox. No parents are given for her, so that Keam may have been her married name. So there is still uncertainty.

And what became of Elizabeth? Did she have any other children? Did she marry? It appears that she did have one more base child: Jacob, baptized at St Austell 1 Dec 1799, which would have been when she was 38.

There were two Elizabeth Keam marriages in the years after 1799, both of which were at St Austell.
(1) 20 Jun 1801 to James PENVER - she a Spinster - witnesses James JONES and John JULYAN [https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-11110-174307-15]
(2) 21 Jun 1812 to John JULYAN - she a Spinster - witnesses Matthew ROBERTS and John JULYAN [https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-11110-176727-7]
This is of course quite confusing, since both Elizabeth's were spinsters, if the records were correct. But also the fact that the name John JULYAN appears three times in the two records adds to the mystery. And it is further compouneded by the 3 Apr 1843 St Austell marriage of Isaac's daughter Jane George with John JULYAN as a witness to that marriage as well [https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-266-12120-32416-9]. Hpwever, taking a look at many other marriages, it is clear that John JULYAN appears as a witness on a great many marriages, so that he was something of a professional witness in the early 1800's -- and possibly his descendant did the same in the 1840's. But the groom in the 1812 marriage was John JULYAN, so that he is definitely unique in that record.

However, there was a James PENVER burial at St Austell 9 Oct 1803, so that the first marriage lasted only 2 years. And if Elizabeth did not remarry until 1812 (when she would have been 51), then she might well have been considered a Spinster again and not a widow, though I have never seen this before. But this family is full of things I have not seen before. But it seems likely that both of the marriages were the Elizabeth who was Isaac's mother.

I cannot find a definite burial for Isaac's mother under the name Keam or Penver or Julyan.

Who Was Isaac's Father?
This is a more difficult question, since no father is given. However, the father apparently had the surname GEORGE. So what men named GEORGE were married in St Austell soon after the birth of Isaac? There was only one: John GEORGE married Temperance MARTYN 8 Nov 1803 [ https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-11110-174542-4 ]. There are no later St Austell GEORGE marriages until 1815 and none earlier until 1764.

What about Luxulyan GEORGE marriages? There were none at any time. There was only one at St Blazey, but that was in 1834. So the John GEORGE married at St Austell in 1803 is the leading candidate for Isaac's father. But it is impossible to know more from the records.