Why can’t I find my great grandfather in Jamaica?
QMy great grandfather, James Edgar Clunis, was born c1887 in Kingston, Jamaica. I would like to know who his parents were and about his early life. He came to South Wales before the 1911 census. I found him living in Godrergraig, near Swansea, where he met my great grandmother Margaret Ellen Robinson (née Harris). I have not been able to locate a marriage for them. They had four children between 1915 and 1920. James died in 1923 aged 36. Mary Clunis
AI’ve seen your rootschat.com exchanges last year. However, like you I have searched the usual websites and found little to add. All Jamaicans were British Subjects at that time, but that does not mean their parentage was from Great Britain.
Civil registration for Jamaican births began in 1878, so a birth certificate should be available (rather than Presbyterian registers) on familysearch.org. If you can’t locate it, it could be that perhaps the birth wasn’t registered (or hasn’t been uploaded yet), or the birth could have been registered under the mother’s maiden name, if his parents weren’t married, so not as Clunis. If the mother’s surname is not known, the birth record will be very difficult to find, unless a Clunis was the informant. I tried searching using only first names and approximate year of birth, but nothing struck me.
I can’t find James coming into the UK on any passenger lists. If he was born under a different name, he must have known his father’s surname was Clunis and adopted it later in life, before leaving Jamaica.
Regarding the marriage and his life in Wales, it seems that he and Margaret weren’t married. Have you obtained their children’s birth certificates to see who is recorded as their parents? James died at an early age, from what? There might be an autopsy/inquest, or even a death notice in the local paper. Did Margaret leave a will when she died?
When the 1921 census is released in January 2022 on findmypast. co.uk, new information should be revealed concerning the parents and children of this family.
Stephen D Porter