Spent some time lately documenting the work of my great-great uncle Price Wallator Carter (1898-1971), long time lecturer in botany at Aberystwyth. I would welcome contact from anyone who knew him or has more information about him.

When researching our family history, the first record we had of Elias Amy Gallie was his marriage to Sarah Long in Truro, Cornwall. He states on his marriage certificate that his father was called David Gallie and was a master mariner. His birthdate or birthplace does not appear on his marriage certificate. He appears on the 1881 census working as a mate abroad the Maria Elizabeth. In the 1891 census he (as Elias A Gallie) is living in Penzance with his wife and six children. His unusual (for a boy) middle name has long been a source of interest and the middle name Amy was also given to many of his sons and grandsons. He confirms that he was born in Jersey in the 1891 census.

The problem we had for many years was trying to find any prior records of Elias Amy Gallie in Jersey or elsewhere. No master mariner by the name of David Gallie can be found on official records. The surname name ‘Amy’ is fairly common in Jersey as so is Gallie and one family theory was that Elias was adopted by a person with the surname Amy. David, Elias and the similar name Elie were very common as well so there were several Elias Gallies and Elias Amys who may have been ‘the one’, but their birth dates, death dates and places they were found living never seemed to match up. My father began his research in the early 1980s travelling to to various county records offices around England and Wales (I joined him on a few of these visits in the early 1990s). I think it would be close to impossible to piece together all that follows prior to the invention of the internet.

Notwithstanding Elias Amy Gallie’s claim that his father was a master mariner two main David Gallie candidates for his father emerge. One of these is a sailmaker who was born in Jersey in Grouville, Jersey in 1827. He married Ann Rachel Le Masurier in 1854 and many of the trees on ancestry.com have settled for this theory. This David Gallie and his wife Ann Rachel moved to London and David tragically took his own life in 1882 (the coroner’s report into his death makes for difficult reading). This David Gallie and would have been 19 when Elias was born and Ann Rachel just 13, which makes it highly unlikely that she was his mother. Another possibility was this David Gallie’s father, also a sailmaker and also called David (1801-1856) who married Catherine Sarre (died 1852). If Catherine was Elias Amy Gallie’s mother she would have been 46 when he was born; unlikely, but not impossible.

So far though we have no definite evidence of Elias Amy Gallie in Jersey before 1873 or anywhere else for that matter.

The first clue in the puzzle is one I cannot take credit for, but another user on ancestry.com found an entry in the 1851 for a 4-year-old boy called Elie Amy Eguigon living in the workhouse and general hospital in St Helier and labelled this name as Elias Amy Gallie. This user has kept their tree private, but I suspect that they too have now been able to work out more of the full story. This Elie was a ‘pauper’ listed with many other children including a two month old Mary Ann Eguryon (sic), presumably his sister and, more importantly for our purposes on a different page was their 26 year-old mother Ann Mary Equiyon (sic).

The next stage was not to trace Elie who may have been Elias Amy Gallie, but Elie’s mother. Her next engagement with officialdom seems to have come in 1853 when she married a much older man named David Gallie. This David Gallie was 52, his wife Catherine Sarre having died the previous year. Ann Mary was just 30, so now Elie was presumably living with his mother and his new stepfather. However, David Gallie died in 1856 when Elie would have been ten (yes this David Gallie was the older David Gallie mentioned above, making the younger David Gallie, presumed by many to be his father his step-brother).

Following David Gallie (Senior’s) death Mary Ann Equiyon married an Englishman named James Mallowby, a sailor and young widower born in Wandsworth, Surrey. Helpfully there seems to be a Jersey tradition of referring to women to their birth name in official records (but not the census) and even noting that this Ann Mary Equijon (the spelling changes all the time) was the widow of David Gallie. This marriage took place in December 1861, though in April 1861 they were living in St Hellier as husband and wife with their son, a 14 year old called Elias Mallowby (presumably the boy previous known as Elie Amy Eguigon), as well as other children who may have come from this relationship, but were more likely to have been the children of James Mallowby’s first marriage to an Englishwoman called Anna Dartnall who he married in Sittingbourne, Kent in 1846. Their lodger was called Mary Gallie, age 33, possibly a daughter of the late David.

By this point, we have a boy who has been known as both Elie and Elias as firstnames and Eguiyon, Marrowby and possibly Gallie as surnames. From the later censuses in Cornwall we can reasonably deduce that Elias Amy Gallie was born around 1846, and presuming Ann Mary Eguiyon was his mother I may now be able to find his birth. In January 1847 Ann Mary Guion had her illegitimate son baptised in Gorey. His name was not Elias or Elie, but Helier. Helier too was a common forename in Jersey and is only the first and last letter away from Elie. Guion or Guyon seems to be the ‘correct’ spelling of Eguiyon or at least spellings which are not unique to Ann Mary and her family. Now we have a Heiler Guion who turns up in the workhouse four years later as Elie Amy Guion.

Although the name Amy was not used at his baptism, the name used in the workhouse provides some clues to the identity of Elias Amy Gallie’s biological father. One way a women might identify the father of an illegitimate child is his give him his father’s name and this led me to look into the name Helier Amy as a possible candidate. There were a number of Helier Amys in Jersey, but the most likely was one born in 1822, though another Helier Amy was born in 1829. This is where we go back to Elias Amy Gallie’s marriage certificate – this Helier Amy was awarded a certificate of competence as a master mariner in 1854. On the basis of this evidence Elias Amy Gallie gave his birth father’s occupation and his first step-father’s name.

Helier Amy died at sea in 1864 at the age of 42. A Lloyd’s of London register for 1866 notes that Heiler (born 1822 in Jersey) had not been of any voyages that year – maybe they had not been informed of his death. At the time of his death Helier Amy was resident in Liverpool. Probate valued Helier’s estate at under £20 though as he died at sea this would have reflected what he would have had on his person. Where exactly Helier Amy died is uncertain. If he died aboard a British registered vessel, his death should have been recorded, but I have only been able to find a record or probate – not a death certificate. Interesting a number of other people on ancestry.com who have Helier Amy as an ancestor and say he died at sea in the Royal Charter storm of 6 October 1859 just off Anglesey, Wales – the Royal Charter itself was sailing back to Liverpool from Australia, but other ships were wrecked too and it has been estimated about 800 people died. Again, I can’t find any evidence that this Helier Amy or any other died in this incident. The probate record specifically records Helier’s death as taking place on 14 July 1864.

In 1856 Helier Amy went onto marry a Welshwoman called Mary Ellen John (or Johns) in Milford Haven, West Wales with whom he had two children, Caroline Amelia Amy (born 1857) and Arthur Helier Amy (born 1859). Some ancestry.com trees state that Mary Ellen emigrated to Australia after her husband’s death, but I’ve not be able to find evidence of this. However, Arthur Helier Amy definitely did emigrate to New South Wales, Australia where he died in 1931, having had children and grandchildren.

Elias Amy Gallie’s mother Ann Mary (or Anne-Marie) lived a long life and died in Jersey in 1908, where her burial record notes she was the widow of both David Gallie and James Mallowby. Her father was Charles Guion (born 1793) and her mother was Anne Fellent. She also had a brother called Charles.

The second step-father James Mallowby seems to have returned to London where is entered the workhouse in Lewisham destitute at the age of 65 in 1890. At the time of the 1891 census he was a sea watchman on board a ship called the Diana, but I have not been able to find a record of his death.

Many questions still remain. At some point he chose to use the names of his biological father and his first stepfather in preference to his mother’s name or his second step-father. He would have been just 10 years old when David Gallie died, but he seems to have known something of Helier and his status as a master mariner. It would be interesting to know what ongoing contact he had with his biological father, (Elias Amy Gallie would have been 18 at the time of Helier’s death), his mother until her death in Jersey 1908 or his various half and step brothers and sisters. The reasons for his choice of his own name will probably be never known, but he used the Amy name for at least two of his sons Elias Amy Gallie (born 1883) and Francis Amy Gallie (born 1889). His eldest son was David Gallie (born 1874) who himself called his twin sons Elias Amy (who was my great-grandfather) and David (born 1894) and another son was named Francis Amy Gallie (born 1903), taking the male Amy middle name into a third generation. The Francis Amy Gallie born in 1889 called his son Francis Leslie Amy Gallie (born 1909).

Over the course of his life Elias Amy Gallie was also known as Helier Guion, Elie Amy Guion (various spellings), Elias Mallowby and possibly Elie / Elias Gallie. In Great Britain there were no adoption laws until 1926, so unless Jersey law was different there would have been no formal processes for name change.

As always there are questions outstanding, even if all this correct. There may be further knowledge to be obtained from the descendants of Elias Amy Gallie’s half brother Arthur Helier Amy. It is not even certain that Arthur knew he had an illegitimate half-brother. There is even a bit of uncertainty about which Helier Amy was which, one born in 1822 and one in 1829, so the Helier who fathered Elias Amy Gallie may not have been the one who married Mary Ellen John. Helier’s sea going activities seem to have involved him being missing for the 1861 census where Mary Ellen is referred to a ‘Mariner’s wife: Merchant Service’ – she does not appear on the 1871 census but her children where living in Steynton, Milford with their maternal grandparents and a number of unmarried aunts and uncles.

I recently took an Ancestry DNA test, which is consistent with the above. When searching my DNA matches on the name ‘Gallie’ I only get descendants of Elias Amy Gallie and they are all within the 4^th cousin range, I don’t get any Gallies from the 5^th to 8^th cousin range. However, I do get some Amys and Guions in the 5^th - 8^th cousin, but no closer relatives. This would be consistent with the above.

John Canning, April 2019 (Great-great-great grandson of Elias Amy Gallie).