The Seear Mystery

My Seear brick wall has been around for decades. Seear is a nightmare to research because it has so many variants and not all are picked up by ticking FindmyPast’s ‘include name variants’ box. Seear, Sear and Seer are the obvious ones but then you need to add an e, or an s, or an es, to all of those. The name is sometimes mis-transcribed as Secar(e/s/es) or Scear(e/s/es). In addition, mis-transcriptions of the initial letter lead to indexing as Teear, Leear etc.. I have used Seear here for consistency here unless the spelling is relevant to the argument. I have ‘always’ known that my great great grandfather was Frederick Seear from East London , as I have my great grandparents’ original marriage certificate which names him and very early on in my family history journey, I discovered that Frederick’s grandparents were William and Mary Seear. In fact, as my great grandparents were first cousins, William and Mary are my 4x great grandparents twice over, making the brick wall doubly frustrating.

I built up a detailed picture of William’s life. I quickly found nine children born in the 1780s and 1790s. There was a strong suspicion of an earlier son for whom there was no baptism and thanks to marriage witness signatures, amongst other evidence, he later took his place in the family, as did a short-lived daughter, who became the eldest known child of what was now eleven in the family. I still think I may be missing a child, as it seems unusual that there was no son called William after his father.

There were clear connections with the Seear family of St. Albans, with intermarriage and members of both families together in the census. The only clue I have for William’s date of birth is his age at burial, notoriously unreliable, particularly as his wife had predeceased him. This suggested that he was born between February 1753 and February 1754. There was a William Sears baptised in St Albans in January 1755, close but I needed more evidence. I could find no obvious alternative future for the St Albans William unless he became my William. I mined this family for all I was worth but they yielded very little. I could only confirm one marriage and one infant death for the five siblings of the St Albans William. There was almost certainly another sibling, again missing a baptism (they really have an aversion to baptising their Thomases) and here I was more successful but there was still not enough evidence to claim these ancestors.

I was also missing ‘my’ William’s marriage to Mary ?. The world and his wife on Ancestry are convinced she was a Mary Stone. I am definitely not convinced. I have ‘my’ William’s signature as a witness on three of his children’s marriages and even allowing for the passage of years, it looks very different. He signs consistently Seear, whereas the marriage to Mary Stone is William Sears.

''My' William's Signature as a Witness

The Signature of the William who Married Mary Stone

Although I found out more about William’s descendants, as far as William’s ancestry was concerned, this is how the situation remained for nearly forty years. Then a few years ago I discovered a will for a Joseph Seear, a grocer in Ham, near Kingston. I should mention that three generations of the Seear family intermarry with the Smiths, who originate from Ham, whilst my Seears were in Stoke Newington and Hackney. Joseph appears in Land Tax Records and Freeholders’ Lists in Ham between 1791 and 1806. It is also important to note that Ham at this time was very small, with only a dozen or so householders.

In his will, Joseph mentioned his brother John Seear, a shoemaker of South Mimms and his brother William Seear, a gardener of Stoke Newington. Thirty years before this, my William had been a shoemaker, not a gardener but there is no sign of any other William Seear in Stoke Newington. In addition, the will mentions Joseph’s niece Charlotte Seear, who was my William’s daughter and also Charlotte’s future husband, my 3x great grandfather, (John) Jeremiah Smith. Furthermore, one of John of South Mimms’ daughters and one of ‘my’ William’s daughters married brothers, suggesting a connection. After much investigation, I was happy that this was the right family.

I now had a group of three siblings to look for instead of just one, I also had burials and therefore approximate dates of birth for each brother. There was a John in the St Albans family who tied up beautifully with John of South Mimms but no Joseph. If Joseph’s age was right, he would have been born before the parents’ marriage in the family that I was hoping was mine. I checked for illegitimate baptisms but there were none. There was no alternative Seear family with a Joseph, William and John of the right sort of ages.

In his will, Joseph’s first bequest is to his ‘brother’ John Steel, a ropemaker of Sunbury and John Steel’s son, also John. He also mentions a ‘sister’ Sarah Treakell, a clergyman’s widow, who turned out to be a Sarah Steel. John Steel senior was and remains elusive, with no obvious marriage or burial and John junior was no better. I did track Sarah Treakell down and found an age at burial for her, leading to a possible baptism for a Sarah Steel in Putney, very close to Ham. She came from a large family, which did include a John. I assumed the Steels might be Joseph’s brother and sister in law or possibly half siblings but there was no marriage for a Joseph Seear to a Steel, or to someone who might have been a widow, formerly Steel. I couldn’t unearth any suggestion of half-siblings. Another roadblock.

I revisit this problem every year or so ‘just in case’ and this time round found that Sarah Treakell née Steel had left a will. In this she mentions a sister Ann Birch of Somers Town. I can’t trace Ann, nor can I find a Steel/Birch marriage, although there is an Ann in the Putney Steel family. Sarah also refers to a nephew George Day. Joseph made George Day ‘maltster of Barnes’ his executor but didn’t specify a relationship. He also listed George’s wife Mary Ann and her daughter Anne Marie. Hurrah, I thought, a breakthrough; except George Day is even more elusive than everyone else. No Steel/Day marriages, no Seear/Day marriages. Apart from some land tax lists, no sign of a George Day anywhere remotely close to Barnes. There is a press reference to an Anne Marie Day of Isleworth in April 1841 but is she in the 1841 census? No of course she isn’t.

None of this helped with finding or confirming William’s parentage. Sarah Treakell, bless her, did mention a “ten pounds a legacy left me by my late brother Joseph Steel of Ham near Richmond with the aforesaid sum being in the hands of Mr Day my nephew at Barnes Terrace near Putney”. Ten pounds was the sum left to Sarah by Joseph Seear.

Could Joseph Seear actually be Joseph Steel? In which case, it could be the Seears who were Joseph’s in-laws not the Steels. A Joseph Steel married Sarah in Stepney in 1781. The clerk has written Sears but Sarah’s signature looks much more like Seear. The witnesses were not helpful. Robert Vaughan is a regular witness and I can’t trace Sarah Bradley. No children have been found for this couple as Steel, or Seear in the area surrounding Ham or Stepney.

There is a possible burial of a Sarah Steel, aged 40, in Wandsworth in 1785 and a Sarah Sears in Mortlake in the same year. There is also a marriage of a Joseph Seares widower and Sarah Leach in Wandsworth in 1794. These entries may or may not be relevant.

The Sarah Steel who was baptised in Putney had a brother John, who could be John the ropemaker, a sister Ann, who could become Ann Birch, despite Ancestry trees wanting to marry her off to someone else with no evidence whatsoever of a marriage record. This family also includes a brother Joseph. The age at burial for Joseph Seear who made the will, isn’t quite what I’d like it to be, as it suggests a birth between March 1743 and March 1744 and Joseph Steel, Sarah’s brother, was six years older but he was a widower with no children, who would have provided the details of his age at the time of his death?

So where does that leave me? I know what I think is correct. Thomas Sear and Mary Phillips married in St. Albans, Hertfordshire in 1746. Baptisms for six of the children are recorded in St. Albans: Sarah 1747, Mary, 1753, William 1755, Susannah 1757, Ann, 1759 and John 1762. I believe that in the gap between Sarah and Mary fits Thomas who, according to his age at burial, was born about 1749 and who spent his life in St Albans. He was a shoemaker. His grandson married ‘my’ William’s granddaughter and Thomas’ great grandson, a fruiter’s foreman, was to live in Islington next door to William’s grandson, a fruiterer. Of the other children of Thomas senior and Mary, Ann died young and Susannah married and remained in St. Albans. I believe that William became a shoemaker in Stoke Newington and my ancestor, that John also became a shoemaker and went to South Mimms and that Sarah married Joseph Steel, who changed his name to Seear and was a grocer in Ham.

The same Christian names do recur, although none of them are particularly unusual. Thomas junior of St Albans has Thomas, Elizabeth, Charles Robert (names from his wife’s family), John and William. John of South Mimms has Mary, William, Sarah, Elizabeth, Susanna, Emma, Catherine and Ann. ‘My’ William has Sarah, Thomas, John, Samuel, Mary, James, Susanna Maria, Elizabeth Ann, Frances, Charlotte and Ann. Do I consider that all this is enough to break down the brick wall? No, no quite. There are missing marriages and burials that would help. Locating Ann Birch and even more importantly George Day would be useful. The Putney Steel family does have some unaccounted for daughters who might have married a Day. I guess that, for now, I have to be content with the fact that the brick wall has fewer bricks in it than it did a few days ago. In the meantime, if anyone has a sledge hammer or two to take to the remaining bricks out of my wall I’d be grateful.