| Born: | 21 Mar 1814 Hare Street, Woolwich |
| Died: | 1875 Sep Qtr Woolwich |
| Father: | James Coe |
| Mother: | Sarah Hamblin |
| Spouse: | Sarah Scott Wren |
| Married: | Aft 1856 |
| Children: | Sarah Maria Coe, James Coe, Eliza Coe, Margaret Mary Coe, John Coe, Charles Henry Coe |
| Occupation: | Wheelwright, Woolwich and Montreal |
| Christened: | 10 Apr 1814 St Mary Magdalene Woolwich |
| Buried: | 1875 Sep Qtr St Mary Magdalene Woolwich |
| Other Spouses: | Maria Wren |
| Updated: | 07 Mar 2009 |
James was born on 10 April 1814, the eldest child of James and Sarah Coe, at Hare Street in Woolwich; James senior, a wheelwright, had left Foulness in Essex to seek work at the Royal Arsenal around the beginning of the 19th century when the Napoleonic wars were stimulating the production of armaments. In 1816, by which time the family had moved to Powis Street, a daughter, Sarah, arrived. The next few years were spent back in Essex, where James senior resorted to labouring jobs; a son John was born in South Weald in 1819 and in 1821 another son, Charles, was born in Hornchurch. Two years later the family were back in Kent, where James's sister, Eliza, was born, in Dartford. It is not until 1826 that we find James and Sarah back in Woolwich, now living in Sun Alley, and the parents of a new child, Mary.
Two years later James's father was dead at the age of 43; James would have been 14. Perhaps he then became apprenticed to the wheelwright's trade in order to bring some wages into the family; his younger brother John died in Berbice in 1831, the year that Demerara and Essequibo were united with Berbice to become the colony of British Guiana.
At the age of 24, in 1838, James married Maria Wren, also the offspring of a Woolwich Arsenal wheelwright, at the parish church of Upper Chelsea in Kensington; James gives his address at Wilson Road, and Maria was staying at Cadogan Place in Kensington. Sarah Coe, his mother, was present at the wedding. The couple made their home at Beresford Street, Woolwich, and proceeded to have four children in quick succession - Sarah Maria, James, Eliza and Margaret Mary. The latter was born in February 1845, and between that date and the birth of John in November 1846 the family were drafted to Montreal in Canada; presumably James, as an "artificer", or "soldier mechanic attached to the ordnance, artillery and engineer service", was attached to British Army regiments who were serving in Canada at that time. From the gaps in the Montreal Directory in 1848 and 1852 it would appear that the family moved around the country. Another son, Charles Henry, was born in 1848, but tragically Maria Coe died on 1 October 1852 and was buried on the fourth of that month at Trinity Chapel Montreal, where John and Charles had been christened.
From the absence of further references in the Montreal Directory it would seem that James took his children back home to Woolwich, perhaps initially to stay at his mother's house in Church Street (a property that she owned and shared with her unmarried daughter Mary and a couple of lodgers until her death in 1859) but by 1857, when he made his will, he was living at 45 Frederick Place, Plumstead. The 1861 census finds James, a journeyman wheelwright at the Royal Arsenal, at 11 Melbourne Place, Plumstead, with four of his six children and a new "wife", Sarah Hadden, sister of James' first wife Maria Wren and now a widow with five of her children from her previous marriage.
By 1871 James and Sarah Coe were back at 45 Frederick Place with a reduced family, namely son Charles aged 22, Maria Hadden, Sarah's daughter, aged 21, and seven year old Emily, listed as James' daughter but in reality the illegitimate child of his daughter Margaret. James now describes himself as "late Foreman Wheelwrights". Four years later James has died, leaving all his effects to Sarah Hadden, his executrix, and after her death to his daughters and granddaughter Emily. The effects realised under £200. Sarah Coe (sic), with her daughter Sarah Lucy Hadden, a dressmaker, continued to take care of little Emily while her mother Margaret worked in service.
ID: 29 Generated by GedTree on 07 Mar 2009