What is their story?

Our Family Story, handed down over at least ten generations, is that our Jollys were not really English…though they had lived in England for hundreds of years. Our Jollys were actually French. They were Huguenots who left France in fear of their lives, because they were persecuted for their religious beliefs in their homeland.

I heard the Family Story on my father’s knee. He told it over and over again, as the years of my childhood went by. He said his father told him the Family Story, and instructed him to pass it on to his children. I wonder why that story was so important to the family? Was it just their identity, their story, their sense of who they were?

The Huguenots – The two major departures of Huguenots from France were in 1560-80 and, then, a century later, after Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in the 1680s. The earlier emigrants were able to take some of their possessions & wealth with them. The later groups fled in haste, often under threat of death, and against French laws that did not legally allow them to leave; they had to sneak out of their home country.

The earlier wave of emigrants from France in the 1500s had settled into their new homes, scattered as they were into various countries, both near and far. They were able to provide much-needed assistance to the later, more desperate Huguenot travelers in the late 1600s.

About 50,000 displaced Huguenots settled in England between 1670 to 1710. It’s unknown how many Huguenots might have landed in England in earlier waves. England, as a nation, welcomed them, and England’s king offered them sanctuary. But some local people surely resisted the influx. The Huguenots were often skilled tradespeople & craftsmen who perhaps threatened the locals’ livelihoods. The Huguenots were typically educated & progressive with new ideas, new clothing and new foods…all of which were disruptive to the established population.

England did not allow the incoming French to just live anywhere. Petitions were made to establish French communities in various villages, and they were not always granted. Additionally, the French tradespeople had to pay more taxes than the local people, and they were required to take a certain number of Englishmen as apprentices. The French were allowed to teach their trades to their own children, but not to other French emigrants. England wanted to ensure that these new ‘French’ skills were shared within the English population.

French churches had been established in several places in England before the 1500s, and the successive waves of French immigrants caused the membership in these churches to temporarily surge. The earliest generations of emigrant French typically married within their own people, continued to speak French, and traded within their own communities. But within a few generations, the Huguenots were generally assimilated, had Anglicized names, and married with less regard for heritage.

Nonetheless, our family did not forget its roots.

Is our Family Story true?

Can we go back far enough in time to find a Jolly ancestor from France? So far, the most distant-in-time, verifiable ancestor discovered is Thomas Jolly. Thomas was born in the mid-Suffolk area of England, in 1755…only a few generations after the later, 1680s, wave of Huguenots fled France. (Thomas Jolly’s second wife, Anne Brett, may have also been of Huguenot extraction: Brett, formerly Le Bret, is a French Huguenot surname.) We need to find his grandfather…or great grandfather…to get back across that English Channel.

How to get further back in time? England has a wealth of old family records. Really, it’s amazing how many are available from the 1700s and even further back. Of course, the records are incomplete: churches burned to the ground along with all their records, and the limited number of people who could read & write made record-keeping difficult. We can’t be sure that the records we need even exist, or, perhaps, ever existed.

Nonetheless, there are many records from the 1700s of Jolly families in the East Anglia (see map below) region of England where, so far, our ancestors lived. The problem is determining which ones are part of our Jolly line, as the surname, ‘Jolly’, with many spelling variations, existed in England prior to the Huguenot arrivals.

What about the spelling of the surname, Jolly? Spelling ‘rules’ were non-existent in early England. There were a limited number of folks who could read & write, and names were spelled phonetically as the scribe heard them. And then there is the difficulty in reading these old, stained & faded written records! The spelling of the name means almost nothing in early records.

So, how do we determine if the Jollys living in one village in the 1700s in East Anglia are related to our Jolly line?

One clue is the first names (forenames) of the family members. In the 1700s to early 1800s, our Jollys are predictable about first names. Their family first names are like Humpback whale songs that change only a bit over time & location.

For the boys, it’s John, Thomas, William, Robert & James. For the girls, Sarah, Mary, Anne & Elizabeth. (Has anyone noticed these names don’t sound very French?) One son (often, but not always, the first son) is named after the father. One daughter is named after the mother. Other children are named after the father’s siblings. ‘New’ first names are introduced into the family from the mother’s side or maybe through established friendships. There is little variation from this naming scheme until the mid-1800s when names become more creative.

The problem with using first names to identify relatives is that there are a plethora of Jollys in the area in the 1700-1800s with those same common first names: John, Thomas, William, Robert & James; and Sarah, Mary, Anne & Elizabeth!

Is it possible all these Jolly families with similar forenames are all related?

Let’s think about that. If one male Jolly (Gen1) of  typical marriageable years of the day (age 25-30) came over from France around 1680, and quickly started a family in England, twenty-five to thirty years later (early 1700s), there would have been another Jolly generation (Gen2) ready to reproduce.

And it’s unlikely that only a single male Jolly immigrated. The Huguenots fled France as entire families. Records from the French churches in London show Jolly brothers, busy reproducing. (So far, no connection has been made from our Jolly line to these London Huguenots.)

Back to the math…with a healthy mother, the typical number of children in the late 1600s to early 1700s was seven to ten. Birth records indicate that a healthy mother typically had babies over a 15 year span…and sometimes over 20 years. Whew!

So, let’s say Gen1 has eight children, four of which are boys. We are ignoring the daughters, not because we don’t love them too, but because, in those days, they couldn’t carry on the Jolly name. The exception was so-called ‘base born’ children, those who were born to unwed mothers: the children were given the mother’s surname, though, if the mother married, this surname was often discarded in favor of her ‘new’ surname.

Anyway, back to Gen1‘s four sons…by 1710 or so, there could be four new male Jollys, Gen2, ready to make new babies. If all goes well for them, and they are able to survive cholera, black plague, famines and such, these four Gen2s could each create another four sons, Gen3, for a total of 16 potential new Jolly families.

Thirty years later, the 1740s, the 16 Gen3s dive into reproduction. If they each have four sons, Gen4, we now have 64 potential new Jolly families created in less than a hundred years, from 1680 to 1770! Sixty four!

But what if our Jolly line came over from France in the earlier wave of immigrants in the mid-to-late 1500s? Typical marriageable age was younger (17-22), and life spans were shorter. And epidemics and famine were so rampant that families were lucky to have one or two sons survive to reproduce: church records that indicate that many children did not survive childhood. Women often died in childbirth; I’ve found Jolly men who had three wives in quick succession.

In the century from 1580 to 1680, the reproductive rate appears to be about half of what it was a century later.

So, if one male Jolly arrived in England in that early wave in the late 1500s, he & his progeny would have been lucky to have increased the number of Jolly families to thirty families by 1680.

And, if there were actually thirty Jolly families reproducing by 1680, it’s possible there were almost 2000 Jolly families by 1800!

Where do all these Jolly families live? London was the most common arrival point for Huguenots: there were several ‘French’ areas with their own churches. And, Ipswich, Essex, on the southeast coast of England was also a popular port for Huguenot arrivals.

Where did our Gen1 Jolly lineage arrive in England? One clue is tracing the locations of our known Jolly lineage families back in time. Sons often carried on their father’s trade: baking, blacksmithing, whatever. It was typical for the oldest son to carry on the father’s family enterprise, and stay ‘at home’ as he grew up.

Younger sons had to move to new areas to ply their family’s trade…or learn a new trade. It’s likely that some of these Gen2 children wanted to explore, and write their own stories. But family would always be important. They needed each other for survival in difficult times, and surely they also appreciated the bond of family, the shared love…even if they argued over politics & religion over dinner. The new generations may have wanted to move out, but not too far away.

Travel in the 1700s was by foot or horse…or maybe a wheeled cart of some kind. Roads were muddy. In one day, people could travel about 10 miles, maybe more, depending on roads, weather, how much they were carrying, their health, and so forth. England also had fairly strict rules about where people could move, especially if they were poor, although enforcement of those rules was difficult & more scattered in more rural areas.

We know that Thomas Jolly (1755-1797) was born in Hunston, Suffolk, and raised his family in Badwell Ash, Suffolk. These two small villages are only 25 miles from Ipswich on the southeast coast of England, but they are over 90 miles from London. Later generations of our Jollys moved to Colchester, near Ipswich: perhaps they were rejoining cousins who had stayed in the area? These are possible clues about the ‘entry’ point of Gen1 to England, but nothing definitive.

To find our ancestors, I’ve started a map to locate the Jolly families (both our lineage and other branches) who were living in East Anglia & London from 1500 to the 1800s. Interactive Google map of these Jolly families: https://jillsgarden.home.blog/2019/02/23/jolly-lineage-map/ This map is a work-in-progress. Check back for updates.

Huguenot Records

Another step in the pursuit of ancestors  is to purchase records from the Huguenot Society. This organization has CD-ROMs of various resources. The surname, Jolly, appears in their list of available Family Research Files as a Huguenot name, so that’s hopeful: https://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/uploads/docs/FRF_WEBSITE.pdf

More about the Huguenots here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot
and here: https://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/ and here https://www.historytoday.com/archive/englands-first-refugees

What does the DNA tell us?

Our Jolly paternal haplogroup is R-Z282. The paternal haplogroup is passed down unchanged from father to son. Daughters inherit their father’s haplogroup too, but they don’t pass it on to their children.

If our surname Jolly is truly an unbroken male line, there should be Jollys in France with that haplogroup…assuming not all of the Huguenot Jollys left France. More about information about haplogroups here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup

And my DNA indicates that I have French ancestry. See map below.

My paternal & maternal DNA ancestor countries

Genealogy is sort of like a crossword puzzle, where some of the clues are missing, garbled or in a foreign language…and some the squares have been written & erased too many times to be legible. But it’s fun anyway! Back to research!