The question of Mary’s son Robert

One of the main question arising from the Mary Mears story is, did she have an illegitimate son named Robert by her own brother?  Of course, there is no proof one way or the other but we can get a good idea by looking at the evidence.  This is as follows.

In the 1841 census a four-year-old Robert appears in the house of Mary Mears and is recorded as being her son.  In the 1851 census Mary Mears is again entered as the head of her household and living with her is sixteen-year-old Robert who is once again listed as being Mary’s son.  From these records we know that Mary had a son named Robert who was born early in 1836.  There is no record of any other Robert Mears of that age living in the Chilcompton area at that time.  The 1861 census shows twenty-five-year-old Robert as the head of his own household living with his wife Emma.  As this is the only Robert Mears who has been found in any of the records for the Chilcompton area during the 1840’s, 1850’s and 1860’s, there can be little doubt that this was Robert, the son of Mary Mears (who was married to a woman named Emma).  The only marriage of a Robert Mears to an Emma anywhere in the Chilcompton area during the 1850’s and early 1860’s was Robert Henry Meares to Emma Norris on 16th August 1860.  This is obviously the same Robert who was the son of Mary Mears.  Further evidence that this was Mary’s son is that one of the witnesses at the marriage was George Sperring, a member of the same family as William Sperring, the father of Robert’s sister Ann.  The spelling of the name Mears (as Meares) on the marriage certificate is one of several versions of the way this name was spelt.  As very few people could read or write the spelling was always left to the registrar.  The name Henry does not appear on any other record and may have been a pet name used by Robert in much the same way as his brother James used the names of William James when he was married.

In the column for father’s name on the marriage certificate, the father of Robert Mears is entered as James Mears.  The question is, if Robert Mears was the illegitimate son of Mary Mears (who never married), then who was this James Mears?  There are only five possibilities.

1. He was the brother of Mary.

2. He was the son of Mary.

3. He was an unrelated man who happened to have the same surname as Mary.

4. He was a distant relative from outside of the Chilcompton area.

5. Robert lied about whom his father was.

It is very unlikely that Robert lied about his father because the marriage took place in church, in front of witnesses and almost certainly with many family members being present.  Therefore they would have known if Robert was lying, and lies would not be told in church during those very religious times.  If Robert didn’t want to give the name of his father for any reason, the registrar would simply have drawn a line through the column for the father’s name.  From the information given on this record we can be as sure as possible that Robert’s father was a man named James Mears. 

If Robert’s father was either a distant relative, or an unrelated man who just happened to have the same surname as Mary, the questions are, who was this James Mears and where did he come from?  Apart from Mary’s brother James and her son James, there has been no other James Mears found in any of the birth, baptism, marriage, death or burial records in the entire Chilcompton area at any time before 1824.  To be the father of Robert he would have needed to be born before 1823 at the very latest.  Also the surname of Mears was extremely rare in the Chilcompton area and throughout Somerset before the 1820’s, so the chances of this James Mears being a distant (unknown) relative, or someone unrelated from outside of the area is extremely remote. 

As for Robert’s father being Mary’s own son, James, this is very unlikely.  He was only twelve years old when Robert was born and only eleven when Robert was conceived.  This makes the possibility of Robert’s father being Mary’s son James almost impossible.  This only leaves Mary’s brother James who was exactly the right age (being just a few years younger than Mary) and living less than one mile away.  This James was married to a woman named Mary Lovell and they had five daughters before Robert was born.  Only the first of these five girls lived beyond infancy, the other four died before they were four years old.   After the birth of Robert, James  Mears  and  Mary  Lovell  had  a further five children, the first of these being a son named Philip who grew up and married a woman named Harriet Norris, the sister of Robert’s wife Emma.  This is further evidence of just how close-knit this family was.  In the late 1850’s Mary went to live with her brother James and his wife in Downside near Chilcompton and this is where Robert was living when he married Emma Norris. 

Of course, there is no proof that Mary had a son fathered by her own brother, but from the evidence it certainly seems that she did.  However, you can now make up your own mind about this.

Next