This post expands on a few Willis/Woolsey connections, primarily through the marriage of Rev. Henry de Laval Willis and Mary Anne Woolsey in 1841....
Captain John Woolsey was the High Sheriff of Louth in 1826, and was the founder of the brewery in Castlebellingham which employed about 70 people there. He was an early shareholder in the Dublin Steam Packet Company which had been co-founded by Richard and Charles Wye Williams. He married Janet Jameson, whose father, John, had founded the Jameson Distillery in Dublin.
http://alison-stewart.blogspot.ie/2012/05/woolsey-family-of-castlebellingham.html
The children of Captain John Woolsey (son of Rev. William Woolsey and Mary Anne Bellingham) and Janet Jameson were:
a) Mary Anne Woolsey (1813 - 1881) who married Major John Simmons Smith in 1836.
b) John Woolsey (1815 - 1819).
c) Margaret Woolsey (1816 - 1877), married to Rev. Charles Thornhill.
d) William Woolsey (1818 - 1887) married twice, first to Frances Rose Vesey, then to Mary Elizabeth Heath Jary. He ran the brewery with his younger brother John.
e) Helen Jameson Woolsey (1819 - 1908).
f) Robert Jameson Woolsey (1821 - 1838).
g) Frances Hester Bellingham Woolsey (16th August 1823 - 28th September 1838).
h) Major General O'Brien Bellingham Woolsey (1827 - 1910). He married Anna, the daughter of Sir john Walsham of Knill Court, Hereford, in Dinnington, Northumberland, on April12th 1855. In 1841 he was visiting the family of Robert Jameson of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, Scotland; here are the details of the census, with notes...
Head of household: Robert Jameson, born Alloa, 1772.
Wife of above: Helen Jameson, born Alloa, 1776.
Rev. William Jameson, born Ireland in about 1811. This was the grandson of John Jameson and Isabella Stein; John Jameson was the founder of Dublin's Jameson Distillery. Rev. William Jameson married the daughter of Arthur Guinness, Elizabeth. He died on 20th November 1886 and was noted as being formerly of Biarritz, France, of Hollybrook, Drumcondra and of Roebuck Grove, Donnybrook.
George Jameson, born Ireland in 1826; brother of Rev. William Jameson.
Mrs. Janet Woolsey - O'Brien Bellingham Woolsey's mother, who had been born in Alloa in 1791, and who had married John Woolsey of Castlebellingham in 1812.
Helen Jameson Woolsey, born 1821 in Castlebellingham, Ireland, to John and Janet Woolsey; she later married Rev. William Thornhill, rector of Offord Darcey; she died in Eastgate, Castlebellingham, on 10th May 1898. Amongst her children were William Blundell Thornhill born 1858, Eveline Maude Thornhill born 1861, and John Thornhill born 1863.
O'Brien Woolsey, son of John and Janet Woolsey, born Ireland 1828.
John Woolsey, born Ireland 1830, see below.
i) John Woolsey (1830 - 1887). He ran the family brewing business along with his older brother, William, and married his cousin, Elizabeth Lucy Willis. They lived at Castle Cosey, Castlebellingham.
'In memory of William Woolsey of Milestone, died 11th May 1887, aged 68 years, and his brother, John Woolsey, of Castle Cosey, Castlebellingham, who died 23rd May 1887 aged 56 years. This tablet has been erected in loving remembrance by their employees.'
Thomas Woolsey (b. 1784 to Rev. William Woolsey and Mary Anne Bellingham in Louth, died Sep 1834) married Elizabeth Gibson, the daughter of William Gibson, on 2nd August 1813 in St. James's, Clerkenwell, Middlesex. The witnesses were W. Gibson and Mary Anne Gibson. The children of Thomas Woolsey and Elizabeth Gibson were all born in London, where Thomas was working in the Admiralty, and baptised in the Old Church, St. Pancras -
- William Woolsey, baptised 16th November 1814. He worked in the Admiralty at Somerset House, and never married.
- O'Bryen Woolsey, born circa 1816. He also worked as a clerk in the Admiralty, Somerset House. He had a cousin, O'Bryen Bellingham Woolsey, born to Captain John Woolsey and Janet Jameson in Castlebellingham, Louth. An 1845 Directory notes two O'Brien Woolseys of the Admiralty, Somerset House, one of them 'O'Brien Woolsey, Junr.'
- Mary Anne Woolsey, later wife of Henry de Laval Willis, born 4th August 1817, baptised 27th August, St. Pancras.
- Elizabeth Lucy Woolsey, born 26 August 1821 in St. Pancras, London. On 15th July 1856 in St. Pancras, Middlesex, Elizabeth Lucy married Theophilus Moon of HM's Customs. Theophilus' father, also Theophilus Moon, was dead by this time, as was Elizabeth Lucy's father, Thomas Woolsey. The witnesses were Elizabeth's siblings, O'Bryan Bellingham Woolsey and Sophia Frances Woolsey. (Theophilus Moon Senior had married Isabella Gibson in St Pancras on 29th March 1813. In 1843, a Theophilus Moon was working in the office of the Registrar General of Trading Ships of Britain and Ireland.)
In 1861, Elizabeth and Theophilus Moon were visiting Theophilus's brother, Arthur Moon, who worked for the Inland Revenue, and his sister, Isabella Moon, in Hampstead.
In 1881 the couple were living at 25 Adelaide Road, Hampstead, with a visitor, a member of the Willis family - a D. Mary Willis, who had been born in 1861 in Ireland. By 1891, Theophilus was dead, and Elizabeth Lucy Moon was living at 83 Portsdown Road, Paddington, with her sister-in-law, Isabella Moon, who had been born in Pentonville in about 1819.
Elizabeth Lucy Moon died on 11th February 1906 at 51 Carlton Mansions, Maida Vale; probate was granted to her nephew, the dentist, William Willis, and to her nephew, the solicitor William Robert Moon. William Robert Moon had been born in Paddington in 1869 to William and Sarah Augusta Moon.
- Thomas Frederic Woolsey, born 2nd Dec 1823, baptised 31st December 1823.
- Sophia Frances Woolsey, born 21st Feb.1828.
Rev. Henry de Laval Willis and Mary Anne Woolsey:
Rev. Henry de Laval Willis had been born in 1814 to Thomas Gilbert Willis and Deborah Charlotte Newcombe of Portarlington, Co. Laois.
Henry de Laval Willis was the cousin of our great-great grandmother, Geraldine O'Moore Creighton, who married our great-great grandfather, Richard Williams of Eden Quay in 1846. Geraldine's mother was Eliza Willis, the sister of Henry's father, Thomas Gilbert Willis.
http://alison-stewart.blogspot.ie/2012/01/children-of-thomas-willis-schoolmaster.html
On 16th Oct 1841, in Kilsaran, Co. Louth, Henry de Laval Willis married Mary Anne Woolsey of Castlebellingham, Louth. Mary Anne's father was Thomas Woolsey of Castlebellingham. (see above.)
Henry was educated in Trinity College, Dublin, taking a B.A. in 1837, and a D.D. in 1855. He was noted as the perpetual curate of Portadown parish in 1845 and was appointed to the incumbency of St. John's, Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1850, dying at Crockenhill Parsonage, Kent, on March 31st 1867.
In 1851 the Rev. Henry de Laval Willis and his family were living at 2 Bellevue Avenue, Mannington, Yorkshire. By 1861 they were resident at Little Horton Lane, Bradford. Their married daughter, Hester Frances Bellingham, was living here with them when she had her first child, Alice Mary Walker, in 1864.
Rev. Henry de Laval Willis died in 1867, and the widowed Mary Anne Willis moved to Shipton, Christchurch, Yorkshire, where the census captured her with two of her children, Henry Thomas Gilbert, a manufacturer/wool merchant, and Mary D.C. Willis. Also present in the household was Mary Anne's eight-year-old grandchild, Alice Mary Walker. In 1891, the widowed Mary Anne Willis was living in Chlesea with her grandson, Henry de Laval Walker, and his wife Edith.
The children of Rev. Henry de Laval Willis and Mary Anne Woolsey were:
- Frances Hester Bellingham Willis, born Limerick, 17th November 1842; baptised there on 17th December 1842 in St. Michael's, Limerick. Frances was named after her mother's first cousin, Frances Hester Bellingham Woolsey, the daughter of Rev. William Woolsey and Mary Anne Bellingham of Castlebellingham, Louth.
The younger Frances would later marry, on October 16th 1861, John Walker, the second son of William Walker and Keziah Wesley Stamp, of Bolling Hall, Yorkshire.
In 1871, Frances, who called herself Hester F.B. Walker, was visiting her brother-in-law, Arthur Walker, the Vicar of Easton, Somerset.
Hester and John Walker had two children. Alice Mary Frances Bellingham Walker was born in Kilburn, Middlesex, on 28th October 1864, and baptised by Hester's father, Henry de Laval Willis, in St. John's, Bradford, on 25th December 1864. In 1893 Alice married George Williamson Walker, a solicitor/assistant commissioner in the Charity Commission, who had been born in about 1863 in Greenock, Scotland, to George Wallace and Mary C. Williamson. The couple had three children - Hester M.C. Wallace in 1895, James Stuart Wallace on 6th July 1899, and George H.D. Wallace in 1900. Alice Mary Frances Wallace died on 1st June 1924 at 6, Scarth Road, Barnes Common, Surrey; following her death, her husband lived for a time in Egypt, but died on 28th November 1952 at Waterfall Cottage, Kearsney, Dover.
A son, Henry de Laval Walker, was born on 15th April 1867 to John Walker and Hester Frances Bellingham Willis and was baptised by his grandfather, Henry de Laval Willis, in St. John's on 25th May 1867. Henry de Laval Walker worked later as a marine insurance clerk in London, and, in 1890, married Edith Lucy Verity, the daughter of Major Charles Felix Verity and Elizabeth Ann Godwin of Fulham.
In 1891 the young couple were living in Chelsea - staying with them was Henry's widowed grandmother, Mary Anne Willis, née Woolsey, aged 71. I see from the internet that Henry de Laval Walker was the founding editor of 'The Genealogical Quarterly'.
They were living in Willesden, London, in 1922, where Edith Lucy died the same year; Henry de Laval Walker died in Lewisham in 1938.
- Elizabeth Lucy Willis, born 1844, Ireland - she married John Woolsey of Castlebellingham and Castle Cosey, Co. Louth. John Woolsey was her mother's first cousin - his father was Captain John Woolsey, her mother's father was Captain John Woolsey's brother, Thomas Woolsey. Elizabeth Lucy Willis and John Woolsey married in about 1865, but Elizabeth Lucy died on 10th November 1870; John Woolsey died childless on 25th May 1887.
- Mary Charlotte Deborah, born circa 1845, in Portadown, Ireland. She never married.
- Henry Thomas Gilbert Willis, born St. Mary's, Lancaster, on 2nd May, 1849. A wool merchant, on 6th July 1886 in the Parish Church, Marylebone, London, he married Ada Susan Robinson, the daughter of John Robinson, a commercial traveller. At the time, both bride and groom were living at 40 Blandford Square. The witnesses were an M.H. Alcock and one of the Walker family. (Initials illegible.) In 1891, Henry and Ada Susan were living in Manningham, Yorkshire. Henry Thomas Gilbert Willis died and was buried on 3rd June 1891, aged 42, at Burley, St. Mary's, West Yorkshire; Henry's widow, Ada, subsequently married Henry's first cousin, Gilbert de Laval Willis, who was the son of the Rev. William Newcombe Willis and Emily Evans. Ada and Gilbert de Laval Willis settled in Dublin.
- Francis William Willis, born in Bradford, York, England, on 23rd February 1851. Known later as William Francis Willis, he practised as a dentist, and proved the 1906 will of his maternal aunt, Elizabeth Lucy Moon. William Francis Willis married Clara Thomasine Quinn in August 1877. She had been born in about 1855 in Camden to Thomas Quinn and Mary Anne Cooke, who had married in St. Pancras on May 13th 1843. (Both their fathers, Thomas Quin Senior and Peter Colloton Cooke, were dead.) The 1911 Census showed the couple living in Hove, Kent, and mentioned they had one living child. William Francis Willis died at 27 Worcester Villas, Portsdale, Sussex, on 24th August 1918, and his will was administered by a Henry de Laval Willis, a major in the RAF. I can find no reference to his birth, but this was most likely William and Clara's only son, who had been named after his paternal grandfather. He appeared with his Jersey-born wife, Nina, lodging in 1911 in Kent - he was then a lieutenant in the Royal Marines Light Infantry and had been born in Kensington in 1883. His wife, Nina, had been born in 1890. This Henry de Laval Willis died in Surrey in 1948.
- Charles Hope Willis, born 1860 in Offerd, Huntingdonshire. His wife was Lilian Kate Anderson, born circa 1865 to William and Julia E. Anderson. The young couple married in Radipole Church, Dorset, on October 31st 1888. Charles was a Captain and Adjutant in the Royal Marines, living at Walmer, Kent. There were three witnesses - Julia and William Anderson, and Charles Hope Willis's brother-in-law, Harry Walker. In 1891, Charles and Lilian were living at 19 Cavendish Road, Portsea, Hampshire, with a one-yr-old son, Charley S. M. Willis, and Charles's sister, Mary C.D. Willis. By 1900, Charles was away, presumably at sea, and Lilian was living at 9 South Avenue, Rochester, Kent, with her two young sons, Charles, who'd been born in Walmer, and one-yr-old Arthur, who'd been born at Chesnut Road, Kent. Lilian's parents, William and Julia A. Anderson, were also there. William Anderson had been born in about 1832 in High Wycombe; his wife, Julia, had been born in about 1839 in Wareham, Dorset. Lilian Kate Willis died in March 1949 in Bath.