Hi Viv

It’s interesting that John Caine seemed only to use the middle name Stanley when registering the births of some of his children. For the baptisms, he was just John Caine, likewise for his 1897 marriage. I wonder whether wife Eleanor could have been the one who registered the births and added the middle name Stanley for her husband. Also interesting that the 1911 details, supposedly handwritten by John, are filled in as Cain rather than Caine. Perhaps he got someone else (with neat handwriting) to do the task for him, and that could explain the fact that all the members of the household have the birthplace of Douglas. Do you think that John’s occupation in 1901 was “bottler”, overwritten by someone else with the word “cellar” ?

Like David, I’ve been looking at legitimate births for your John Stanley Caine, and having had no success, I’ve moved onto investigating illegitimate possibilities.

Of the 2 known census entries for JSC, the birthplace of Peel given in 1901 seems more likely than the Douglas of 1911. So, restricting an IGI baptism search to 1870-5 / Peel and German, half a dozen illegitimate births show up. But they all have a John with a “wrong middle name” apart from one ------- John Clegg 3rd Nov 1872 German to Janetta Clegg.

As luck would have it, Janetta was the only Janetta Clegg/Clague on the island of her age group, so she was instantly recognisable as one of “my” Ballamillaghyn Gelling descendants. Eric’s comprehensive notes show that she had an illegitimate child, Lucy Alice Clague bap 11 Aug 1867 Douglas, and that she went on to marry Fritz Friebus in Liverpool in 1873. Lucy Alice was with Janetta in 1871 and was listed in 1881 as Lucy Alice Friebus. But there’s no John b 1872 with Janetta. There’s no burial for a John Clegg/Clague b 1872 on the IOM between 1872 and 1881 so it’s possible that he was adopted or living with his biological father’s family.

This will probably turn out to be a red herring, though.

One other strange thing is that none of John and Eleanor’s children seems to have married on the island. It seems likely that the family moved off island, perhaps emigrating to eg Australia, USA. Have you looked at passenger lists ?

Jean