Daughter of the late Major-General D'Arcy
A death notice in a London paper names Robert D'Arcy's rank, his corps and the fact of his death — and calls the dead woman his daughter.
Robert D'Arcy's parentage of anybody has rested, until this fortnight, on a family tree. Two contemporary newspaper notices now name him as a father. The second of them is the better one, because it gives his corps.
“At Chatham, CAPTAIN J. M. JONES, of the ROYAL DENBIGH MILITIA, to MISS D'ARCY, ELDEST DAUGHTER OF COL. D'ARCY, OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS.”
Oxford University and City Herald, Saturday 1 November 1806, page 2. The Chester Courant of 11 November adds the church and the officiant: “at Chatham Church, by the Rev. I. T. Jones”.
So the corps is on record in 1806, thirty-seven years before the notice this page was built around — in the report of this very marriage. What survives is smaller and still worth having: the 1843 notice is the only one that calls her his daughter AFTER his death, and the only one that says “late”. The 1806 notice is better on every other count, including “ELDEST DAUGHTER”, which fixes her place among the ten children. corrected twice in one day Both earlier notices →
The notice
Major-General. Royal Engineers. Late — he had died in 1827. There is one man that describes, and this archive has his commission of 1776, his marriage of 1779, five gazetted promotions, seventeen death notices and a funeral at Chatham with military honours.
Everything that calls Robert D'Arcy a parent
| When | Paper | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 23 September 1805 | Salisbury and Winchester Journal | “Captain GEORGE D'ARCY … SON [of] LIEUT. COLONEL D'ARCY [to] Miss Ludlam of Guernsey” Rank only. Robert had been gazetted Lieutenant-Colonel six months earlier. → |
| 13 February 1843 | Morning Herald | “MARGARET, wife of Major Jones, Denbigh Militia, and DAUGHTER OF THE LATE MAJOR-GENERAL D'ARCY, R.E.” Rank AND corps AND the fact of his death. Nothing else in England fits it. → |
Major John Maddock Jones
“21st, at Ingonville, near Havre, MAJOR MADDOCK JONES, late of the ROYAL DENBIGH MILITIA, and PEN-Y-BRYN, RUABON.”
He married Margarett Maria Isabella D'Arcy at Chatham St Mary in 1806, her brother JOSEPH signing as witness. His will was proved on 24 January 1844 and is at Kew as PROB 11/1991/312. It has never been opened.
The register, read
Both deaths are in the French civil register. It is digitised, free, and asks for no account. This archive pursued these two deaths through the National Archives at Kew for a month, where they sit behind a subscription or a journey. The acts were never hard to reach. Nobody had gone and looked.
Acte de Décès de Marguéritta Maria Elisabella Darcy, sans profession, décédée de ce jour sur les six heures du matin en son domicile situé en cette ville, rue de l'Hôpital, maison Lechevalier, âgée de soixante-un ans, née — le lieu de sa naissance est inconnu — épouse de John Maddack Jones. documented
- Age
- sixty-one — which puts her birth about 1781
- Died
- six in the morning, at her own house in the rue de l'Hôpital
- Birthplace
- entered as unknown
- Declared by
- Jean Baptiste Lecordier, rentier, fifty-nine, and Jean Olivier Quesney, rentier, fifty-eight and a half — both of Ingouville, neither a relative
Acte de Décès de John Maddack Jones (Major), vivant de son revenu, décédé de ce jour sur les huit heures du matin en son domicile situé en cette ville rue du Champ de Foire, âgé de soixante-huit ans, né — le lieu de sa naissance inconnu — fils de — les noms et prénoms de ses père et mère sont inconnus — veuf de Marguéritta Maria Elisabella Darcy. documented
- Age
- sixty-eight — which puts his birth about 1774
- Died
- eight in the morning, rue du Champ de Foire — not the street where she had died seven weeks before
- Parents
- both entered as unknown
- Declared by
- Généreux Edouard Laillet, appariteur de police, twenty-two, and Jean Philippe Hébert, cultivateur, forty-eight — both of Ingouville, neither a relative
An age is the thing this page has wanted since it was written. Sixty-one on 1 February 1843 puts Margaret's birth about 1781 — the first dating of a child of Robert D'Arcy that comes from a record rather than from a tree. Sixty-eight puts her husband's about 1774: seven years her senior, and thirty-two when he married her at Chatham in 1806.
Each act names the other person. Hers calls her the wife of John Maddack Jones. His, seven weeks later, calls him the widower of Marguéritta Maria Elisabella Darcy. A marriage entered at Chatham in 1806 is confirmed in 1843 by French clerks who had never heard of Chatham and spelled both names by ear.
What it changes
- It is the first record to give Robert D'Arcy a corps as well as a rank. Everything else that names him as a father says only “Lieut. Colonel D'Arcy”. This says Major-General, Royal Engineers, late — and that is a description with exactly one referent.
- It confirms the Chatham marriage from the far end of a life. The archive has held the 1806 marriage of Margarett Maria Isabella D'Arcy to John Maddock Jones since it read the Chatham register. Thirty-seven years later a London paper describes the same couple in the same terms, in an obituary neither of them wrote.
- And it makes three of Robert's children documented as his. Joseph by his baptism at Portsea in 1780; George Pitt by the marriage notice of 1805; Margaret by this. Richard remains inferred and Constantine unplaced.
Robert and Jean's family → · The 1806 marriage → · His will at Kew →