Coe Family Tree
Welcome to the Coe Family Tree!
We have traced our branch of the Coe family back to 13 January 1772, when our 4xgreatgrandfather Jonathan Coe married Mary Shaw at Great Wakering parish church in south-east Essex.
Our story begins in the autumn of 2002 when an old family tree came to light. Written by James Clarence Charles Coe (JCCC) who was born in Woolwich in 1875, it traced the family back through several generations of Royal Arsenal wheelwrights to a Jonathan Coe whose parentage was ascribed to John Coe, a prosperous Maldon merchant who died in 1779. But the link with the merchant Coes of Maldon or further back still with the 14th century mercenary, John Coo, who won his lands in north Essex through his adventures in Italy, cannot be authenticated.
Since the beginning of 2003 three second cousins (Selina Jackson, Joan Shaw and myself) have been hard at work putting flesh on the bones of JCCC's tree, authenticating births, marriages and deaths with the help of certificates, censuses, wills, photographs and the memories of elder relatives. Through our pooled efforts we found that our forbears came to life in a very enjoyable and intriguing way. But despite the prevailing family tradition that our roots lie in Maldon, all the evidence points otherwise.
Our Jonathan Coe of the mid 1700s is much more likely to have been connected with those other Coe families who eked out a living on the land or dredged for oysters in the marshes behind Southend on Sea. If you can shed any light on Jonathan's origins or you think you may be related, please email me at .
Jane Swan, April 2012 Site updated 28 August 2014
About this website
When we began making sense of the old hand-written family tree and decided to put our findings onto a website so that we could share the information with other family members, it seemed a perfectly harmless activity. However we are aware that people may well have different views - they may not want their family details to be published in this way. (See Privacy below). They may be offended to find their close relatives misrepresented, with incorrect information or even the wrong photograph. We may upset people by accidentally assigning a death to someone who is very much alive. If therefore we have inadvertently trodden on anyone's toes, please contact us and we will do all we can to put it right.
In the interests of privacy and with the disturbing increase in identity theft, the names and details of all living persons are omitted. Persons are deemed to be alive if their birth date is less than 110 years ago and no date of death is known. Also another difficulty is the recent death of children and young people. It would be wrong to publicise all their details when the rest of the family is simply shown as Unnamed Person (stealing the identity of recently deceased persons accounts for ten per cent of identity theft). These are therefore also shown as Unnamed Person.
New website
The site has been completely overhauled to make it easier and quicker to regenerate, now using Family Historian software both to manage the database and also to create the website.
Mike Swan, April 2012 Site updated 28 August 2014
Created with Family Historian 5