Missing data

Hi, I am looking for help in finding a marriage about 1769.
The baptismal records for St Marys, Portsea, Hants, record the baptisms for 7 children of Josiah Wadge (name variants !) from Feb 1770 to Mar 1780, mother recorded as Sarah in some of these.
In December, Josiah - described as a widower aged 42 - married Sarah Levinstone/Livingstone at the same church. I know from other legal records that Josiah was born in Callington, Cornwall in 1768.
I have been unable, despite extensive & repeated searches over more than 30 years, to find any record of the marriage or the death of the first Sarah.

 

Sorry, a typo.
Yes, he was baptised 25 July 1738

 

Elizabeth Rumney 4 Feb 1770
Josiah 4 March 1772
John 13 March 1774
James Livingstone 25 Dec 1775
Sarah 18 May 1777
Agrippa 11 Oct 1778
Thomas James 26 March 1780 aged 2 months.

 

All baptisms at St Mary's Portsea.

 

If I've understood you correctly, it was not until 1780 that Josiah married Sarah Livingstone. However, the middle name of James in 1775 suggests that Sarah Livingstone may have been his mother - unless his mother also had the maiden surname Livingstone.

If Sarah Livingstone was mother of James, then was she mother of all 7 children? If so, there has to be a question mark over Josiah's marital status at the 1780 marriage, and whether or not there is a marriage to find around 1769.

If Josiah was a genuinely a widower (which could be why he and Sarah didn't marry until 1780) then his relationship with his previous wife may have ended before these 7 children were born, and she may not have been a Sarah.

 

According to Findmypast, which has the images for the marriage records of St Thomas, Portsmouth (not St Mary's Portsea) where the marriage between Josiah Weedge and Sarah Levingston took place on 11 Dec 1780, the couple were married by licence. I don't know if this is significant.

 

Findmypast also has all the baptisms, with images of the original entries.

 

Sarah Levinston/Livinstone was baptised 25 January 1760, so no way was she the mother of the earlier children - I have assumed that they married by licence because she was a minor.
I have long puzzled over the use of James Livingstone as the name of the son botn 1775, since learning that James Livingstone was Josiah's bondsman for the 1780 Allegation of Marriage, but cannot find any relationship to Sarah. her father was Peter, both he & his wife Eleanor had died before 1780 & there is no record of Sarah having a brother called James.
Peter - the images are available on FMP, some of the baptisms give the mother's name as Sarah.
I too have wondered whether Rumney was the maiden name of Sarah the first, but so far, I have been unable to find a suitable family

 

Re place of marriage - apart from what I wrote earlier abour Sarah being a minor, there is also the fact that St Thomas' is where Sarah was baptised and therefore her 'home' parish.
Re masterclass article - I have followed all the advice given, I have looked everywhere I can think of - Ancestry, FMP, Family Search, Dusty Docs, National Archives etc & had correspondence with local archives & researchers in the Portsmouth area.
Unfortunately, very few of the family lived to beyond 1841, but I have various records such as apprentice indexes, property transactions, wills, military records .....

 

Sarah's parents were both from London, but he was a Marine officer so clearly based at Portsmouth for a time, as Sarah & her siblings were all baptised at St Thomas'.

 

While some of us may be very happy to help if we can, one problem here is that you have a lot of information on this family that we are not party to. So for example, you already knew that Sarah Livingstone was too young to be mother of all the children born before the 1780 marriage, but for those of us unaware of this, it was a perfectly logical suggestion that she was their mother. In order to make useful suggestions, I guess we really need more information, not least the full information from the 1780 marriage licence - you gave us Josiah's age, but not Sarah's.

And it would also be helpful to know Josiah's parents' names and Sarah's mother's maiden name - were her parents the couple who married in London in 1746?

I know you can't give us all the information you have, but given how much research you've already done, it's difficult to see how others can add anything useful when only knowing part of the story.

 

Apologies - as you say, I have a great deal of information that I did ot initially share - for obvious reaons, nobody would have read beyond the first few paragraphs. I suppose that, as I really have researched extensively & in depth for several decades, what I was hoping was that someone may just happen to have seen something I do not have.

Josiah was the son of Josiah & Ann (née Doidge) of Callington in Cornwall
On the 1780 marriage, no age was given for Sarah, I only know her age from her baptism. Her mother was Eleanor Willmott, who was a minor when she married Peter Livingstone in 1746, I have not found her baptism.
Family names from the Wadge family were Ann Doidge (mother), Richard Doidge & Agrippa (brothers), George Doidge (gt uncle), Peter Trisket (Peter Truscott was Josiah's gt grandfather).

 

Just to clarify - no age was given for Sarah on the licence, but she was given as a minor? And do you have other evidence that her parents were Peter and Eleanor, or only from the baptism? I’m just trying to understand how you knew the 1760 baptism is the right one.

 

Looks like we were both having the same thoughts at the same time, Peter!