Richard Harvey

  General Notes:

MESSAGE FOR JAMES C. ANDERSON
1640 Gillard Drive, KELOWNA BC, CANADA VIY 4K1
Good Morning James,
Firstly, may I say what a pleasure it was to visit your PORTER/ASHWORTH family research site recently. It was good to see such attention to detail.
My interest in your site is because of my own research into the HARVEY Family, and the fact that Abraham HARVEY is my 2nd great-grand Uncle (!!). Because of a lack of official marriage between my great-grandparents it has taken a long time to establish the birth facts of my grandfather. However, now that has occurred I am beginning to make progress further back in the HARVEY generations.
Abraham HARVEY's father was a Richard (or Richeau) HARVEY ~ but at the moment I am unsure of his birth date or marriage details. However, my attention has recently been drawn to some information which may solve that problem, and which also suggests that Richard HARVEY's father was a William HARVEY baptised at Messing, Essex, on 3rd August 1788. I mention this in the light of a comment on your Website about the Witnesses to the marriage of Christiana HARVEY and Abraham Ward PORTER ie: William HARVEY and Hephzibah HARVEY ~ and your suggestion that perhaps these are unknown siblings of Christiana. May I suggest the following:
[a] At the time of her marriage Christiana had a 19-year-old unmarried first cousin by the name of Hephzibah HARVEY ~ who was the daughter of Abraham's brother Henry HARVEY.
[b] The above-named William HARVEY (born 1788) would have been Christiana's great-grandfather, and may very well have been alive at the time of the 1875 marriage.
[c] You also mention a 6-year-old William HARVEY, whom you suggest could have been a first-child of Christiana HARVEY. But obviously bearing the name HARVEY he would have needed to be born to Christiana before her marriage to Abraham PORTER. Another possibility which I would like to suggest is that this 6-year-old William is the son of Jesse HARVEY (Christiana's younger brother). On the 1901 London Census Jesse is 50 years old, married, working as a labourer and boarding with Christiana and Abraham PORTER in Hackney. There is a hint here that something may have gone wrong with Jesse's marriage. Jesse may also have married before his older sister Christiana, because Christiana did not marry until she was 27 years of age (which is quite old for that era).
As the research game is a question of learning from each other, I'm sure you won't mind me making these observations. Although the HARVEY family is not your priority research, I will be very glad to hear anything further which may be of assistance to my own research,
Cordially
FRANK HARVEY
[PO Box 810, BALLINA, NSW 2478, Australia]