Jocelyn Timothy THOMAS

  General Notes:

Brockenhurst
Hants, S042 7QS

26 October 2004
Dear Dr Ferran
I have your letter and am delighted to help; Connor was put in touch with me by Snow Thomas in Tasmania, after tracing me , in a roundabout way, via a cemetery in Carlow Ireland. My side of the family were always told by my father, with his Irish type of humour, that the cousins in Tasmania were eaten by the natives.
The Thomas family came originally from Wales, probably Pembrokeshire. I have not been able to trace the exact date of leaving, but legend has it that it was during or shortly after the English civil war- as usual the Welsh changed sides to try and keep in with the winner, but it took quick footwork: maybe they got it wrong and had to leave, for Ireland. The first name I can identify is Joshua Thomas , who was born in 1680, in Ireland. I enclose a family tree covering the years since then. We left Ireland (Carlow) in about 1955, and the only family "asset" there now is the private cemetery.
I have tried to fit Matthew Henry Thomas into the tree: my great grandfather General Henry Thomas was only married once, in 1837 to Elizabeth Idonea Taylor, daughter of the Rev Robert Taylor of Clifton Campville Staffordshire. She was one of 3 sisters who married 3 brother officers in the XXth Foot, the others being Gaspard Le Marchant (from a Channel Island family) and a Captain Barlow. Henry was 50 when he married- and their only child was my grandfather Jocelyn Henry Watkins Thomas, born in 1 839.Henry was the youngest of 3 brothers ; the eldest, Jocelyn, emigrated to Tasmania in the late 1820s, with his family. He wrote back to the next brother Bartholomew and asked him to join him out there and told him what to bring- I had a contemporary copy of that letter, which I have given to Snow. Bartholomew sailed out, but without his family, and joined Jocelyn in starting a farm at Northdown, where Snow lives and farms now. Bartholomew was not long after killed by a group of aborigines and is buried at Port Sorrel, near Northdown, though the grave site is lost and the headstone is in the cemetery at Northdown. The best source for the Tasmanian history is a book written by Snow's father, called "Sam Thomas and his neighbours"; I had a copy but it was borrowed by a member of my family and I cannot remember who.


Harry Melville Thomas appears in family photo albums from Belmont in the early 1 900s and is referred to as Cousin Harry - from memory there are wedding pictures. Those albums are in Dublin, lodged with the Irish National Archives- I deposited them 5 years ago due to storage problems, they are bulky. It is possible that Matthew Henry is a son of Bartholomew- it is the only likely connection I can see. It is interesting that he named one of his sons Le Marchant. He was born in London in 1837, when Henry (his cousin) was based in London as a member of Parliament, for an Irish constituency.
There is another "coincidence"- Marianne Skinner, wife of Matthew, was the daughter of Georgina Burrell; Georgina was the daughter of Mary Anne Theresa ,born Thomas, the elder sister of Jocelyn Bartholomew and Henry- Matthew, if the son of Bartholomew, married his cousin.
I note that Harry's son Robert Jocelyn Henry died in North Africa in 1941; his cousin Aubrey French, only child of my aunt Idonea. died there in 1942. I am going to Alamein next May to pay respects.
The name Jocelyn came into the family with the marriage of Bartholomew Thomas (father of Jocelyn et al...) to Anne Davidson; her father was Jocelyn Davidson. It has remained popular and all my 4 sons have it and now grandsons . I have quite a bit of information about past family members, but maybe not enough to identify Matthew's parents. If you have an exact date of birth we can try and find birth records which will fill that gap.
Please forgive my even longer letter- my family say I do not know how to stop...
Best wishes
Timothy Thomas