Many of the events in the Chilcompton area (such as baptisms, births, marriages and burials) were badly recorded or in some instances very misleading.  It has been difficult gathering all the information about Mary Mears and her family, none more so than her son James.   As James is the son of Mary from whom our branch of the Mears family is descended, it was particularly important for me to find all the information about him that I could.  From the birth certificate of James’s son Charles, I found that the name of Charles’s mother was Elizabeth Mears, formerly Salvadge [which should be spelt Salvidge].   I obtained this birth certificate in 1986 and then began to search for the marriage records of James Mears and Elizabeth Salvidge.  There were several marriages of men with the name of James Mears in Somerset during the 1840’s and 50’s but none of these were married to a woman named Elizabeth Salvidge, or anything like it.  I eventually obtained the information I needed in 1998 (after almost 12 years of searching) and this came to me from a woman named Janet Mears who lives in Northampton.   She is  researching  her  husband’s  family  tree  and  he is descended from Mary’s brother James.  She was following avenues of research that are rather obscure when she came across the marriage records of James Mears to Elizabeth Salvidge. You will now be able to see why I was unable to find the details of this marriage for myself by searching through all the usual records.    

When James Mears married Elizabeth Salvidge on the 1st August 1847 he did not get married under the name of James Mears.  He was married using the name of William James Green.  Also his bride was entered in the register as Elizabeth Savage rather than Salvidge.  As the name of James’s father was James Crease and the name of his mother was Mary Mears, this now poses the question of why James was calling himself William James Green.  The mystery deepens even further when we look at the birth and baptism records of James and Elizabeth’s eight children that they had after their marriage.  The first of these was Charles who was entered in the register of births as Charles Mears, but he was baptised as Charles William the son of William James Green and Elizabeth Green of Crocks Bottom, Binegar.  The next child was Sarah Ann who was christened Sarah Ann Mears but does not appear in the record of births.  After Sarah Ann came Emily, Harriet and Elizabeth all of whom were both registered and christened with the surname of Green.  Next came Matilda who was registered Emma Matilda Mears and christened simply as Matilda Mears.  Finally there were two sons, James and Henry Frank who were both registered and christened with the surname of Mears.  So from these records we can see that from the time of his marriage in 1847, (and possibly several years before) until the baptism of his daughter Elizabeth in 1857, James Mears was calling himself William James Green.  Also, in the 1851 census the name of James Mears does not appear.

The mystery of the surname Green does not end there because at the marriage of James Mears to Elizabeth Salvidge the two witnesses were James’s brother William and his wife Eliza.  They were entered as William Mears (or) Green and Eliza Mears.  Then, when James and William’s sister Ann Mears married Isaac Targett in 1850 she was married under the name of Ann Green, although she was the daughter of  Mary  Mears  and  William  Sperring.   Once again the two  witnesses were William and Eliza who were entered this time as William Green and Eliza Green.   So these three children of Mary Mears – William, James and Ann – were all using the surname of Green during the 1840’s and 50’s.  The answer to the question of why they were using this surname rather than the surname of Mears may be found in the marriage records of William and Eliza. 

On the 13th May 1844 William Mears married Eliza Gould in the parish church of Binegar.  In the register of this marriage William is entered as William Green (or Mears) and in the column for the father’s name the registrar has written, Mother’s name Mary Green (or Mears).  At the bottom left-hand side where it says, “This Marriage was solemnized between us” there is written, X Mark of William Green and X Mark of Eliza Gould.  The fact that both William and his mother Mary are entered with the surname of Green, followed by the name Mears in parenthesis indicates that Green was their true surname but this had been changed to Mears at some time during their past.  If this was so, then Mary was not a Mears at all, but a Green.  It is possible therefore that her mother (also called Mary) was married to a man with the surname of Green, and he was the true father of Mary.  It is also possible that this man’s full name was William Green because this is the name used by James as William James Green and also the name that he and his wife christened their first son as Charles William Green.  So perhaps Mary’s true father died at about the time of her birth and Mary (the mother) was later re-married to a man named Robert Mears.  They then had two children named James and Elizabeth and these became the half-brother and sister to Mary and not her full-brother and sister. Mary’s surname would then have been changed from Green to Mears but this may never have been changed officially. If Mary were in fact still a Green, then this would explain why William, James and Ann chose to use this surname rather than that of Mears.  There is also the possibility that Mary Mears was the illegitimate daughter of a woman named Mary Green who later married Robert Mears. 

I have checked the marriage records of the late 18th century for a man with the surname of Green, or the full name of William Green, who married   a   woman   named   Mary;   and  I  have  also  had a  look  at  the  baptism records for a Mary Mears and a Mary Green from 1795 to 1805, but so far I have found nothing.  Once again the records are proving to be rather difficult.  If my theory about Mary Mears is correct then her son James (from whom we are descended) would have been the illegitimate son of James Crease and Mary Green, and the name of Mears has only come into this family through Mary’s stepfather, Robert.  This does not mean that the family name today isn’t Mears; only that it wasn’t Mears in the male line before James, or in the female line before Mary.  As it is usual to follow the family back through the male line, and James’s father was James Crease, then this is the line we must now follow.  There are various spellings of this name such as Crease, Creas, Crees and Creese.  So far I have found only one possibility and that is a man named James Crees who married Sarah Bath on 6th July 1802 in Midsomer Norton.  If this is the same James Crease who was the father of James Mears, then he would have been about 20 years older than Mary and 45 years older than James. 

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