Brick walls are inevitable in genealogy research and they’re frustrating. You research a family line until suddenly you can’t go any further. Some are permanent barriers due to the lack of records in a particular locale. Irish research, for example, can be especially difficult since a large chunk of valuable records, including census returns, parish registers and centuries of original wills, were lost in a fire in the Public Records Office during the Irish civil war in 1922.
Once in a while, though, you get lucky and find a document that helps you remove a few bricks or even break down a wall completely. So imagine my excitement at a recent breakthrough that has now taken my research back hundreds of years—and in Ireland to boot! This discovery relates to the ancestry of my 3G-grandfather Samuel Hoskin May.
Military records indicate Samuel was born in Belfast, Ireland, and enlisted in the army in 1813 at the reported age of 17. Later research, however, suggests he was actually a few years older, born about 1793. Samuel progressed through a number of regiments, including the Royal Artillery, 98th Regiment of Foot, 94th Regiment of Foot, and finally the 29th Foot (Worcester Regiment) where he served as schoolmaster sergeant.
Eleven years of Samuel’s military career were spent in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, about 2000 kilometres off the southeastern coast of Africa. The English ruled Mauritius for over 150 years beginning in 1810, and Samuel’s service there was fairly soon after England took the island from the French during the Napoleonic Wars. His regiment was possibly there in some peacekeeping capacity.
While in Mauritius, in 1828, Samuel married a widow named Margaret Moore. Nothing is known of Margaret’s background but it is likely she was the widow of another soldier and as such received no pension, forcing her to quickly remarry as a means of survival.
Samuel returned to England in 1838 and the following year was discharged from the army after 27 years’ service.
The 1841 census finds Samuel living at the Picquet Barracks in Devonport, Devon, now with a wife named Mary Ann and two young daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Ann. At this point, he was working as a clerk at the brigade office of the 4th Kings Own Regiment. The family was still in Devonport in 1851, although minus young Elizabeth who had died of scarlet fever in 1842, at age 6.
As it turns out, Samuel and Mary Ann (née Lord) were not actually married during this time. They finally tied the knot on 7 Jul 1851 in Antony, Cornwall. The marriage record named Samuel’s father as James May, gentleman, my only clue to his heritage. What had become of Samuel’s first wife, Margaret, is unknown but I theorize that Samuel and Mary Ann, although they lived together as husband and wife, were forced to wait until Margaret’s death to legally marry.
In 1855, the couple welcomed a son named Charles.
Samuel died of apoplexy (stroke), age 71, on 10 Oct 1865 in East Stonehouse, Devon. His widow can be founding living with son Charles in London on the 1871 census. But no record of her is found after that, and Charles is enumerated alone in 1881, so it’s likely Mary Ann died some time in the intervening years. Daughter Mary Ann had married William Douglas in 1859—their story is included in an earlier blog post.
At this point, I had hit the proverbial brick wall, which remained stubbornly intact for several years. I knew nothing of Samuel May’s background other than his father’s name.
The brick wall crumbles
Although most of the wills and administrations proved in Ireland before 1900 were lost in the 1922 records office fire, a valuable substitute was the notes of both Sir William Betham, an English-born antiquarian, and genealogists Dr. Francis Crosslé and his son Philip, who had in the 19th century created genealogical abstracts from almost all Irish prerogative wills and marriage licences.
Those handwritten abstracts have now become available online and among them I recently discovered a document that enabled me to break through my brick wall. It is a summary “extracted from a bundle of letters (very verbose) whereby Charles May, in Oct. 1871, claimed to be one of the heirs to Thomas May who died in 1846.”
This Charles May was Samuel and Mary Ann’s son, and Thomas May was his great-uncle (brother of Samuel’s father, James May). It seems some property that formed part of Thomas’ estate had been claimed several years after his death by a spinster niece named Eliza McCamley. Twenty-five years after Thomas May’s death, 16-year-old Charles was attempting to claim a share of that property, which was generating rents to his cousin Eliza. She, however, asserted that Charles’ grandparents had never married, deeming his father, Samuel, illegitimate and thus disqualifying Charles as an heir. On this basis, the court rejected Charles’ claim.
In addition to confirming Samuel’s father as James May, this abstract also gave me the name of his mother, Anne Hoskin, noting that she “had been on the stage.” What followed was a deep dive into Irish newspaper archives and publications on the history of Irish theatre, which uncovered a wealth of information on Anne Hoskin’s life on the stage in the north of Ireland, together with the revelation that James May was also an actor. And it turns out that Anne’s parents (my 5G-grandparents) were involved in the theatre as well, her mother as an actress and her father, Charles Hoskin, a theatre builder and proprietor.
Amazingly, I also found the proof that Charles lacked of his grandparents’ marriage, a notice in the Belfast Newsletter of 14 May 1790: “MARRIED. Mr. May to Miss Hoskin, both of the Theatre, Derry.” Charles’ father, Samuel, was not illegitimate—his parents had married about three years before he was born.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hoskin, Anne Hoskin and James May on the Irish stage
Published histories of the Irish theatre include biographies of both the Hoskin family and James May.
Anne Hoskin’s mother was always referred to as simply “Mrs. Hoskin” or “Mrs. Charles Hoskin”; her first name and maiden name are unknown. At her first appearance in Dublin in February 1770, she was reported to have come from London’s Drury Lane theatre, although no playbills mentioning her there have been found. Over the next three decades, she played regularly in Dublin, as well as in Limerick, Cork, Kilkenny, Belfast and Derry.
Little is known about Charles Hoskin, who was purported to have been the builder and proprietor of Dublin’s City Theatre on Capel Street. After his unexpected death on 24 May 1770, his wife assumed his role as one of the managers of the theatre in addition to performing on stage.
Their daughter, Anne, first appeared on stage with her mother in 1779 when she would have been in her early teens, appearing in productions in Limerick, Belfast and Derry through to 1790 when it is reported that she “disappears from the record.” I now know that she continued to perform but was billed as “Mrs. May” rather than “Miss Hoskin” following her marriage to James May that year.
The Irish theatre
The first theatre buildings in Ireland were founded in Dublin in the mid-17th century at a time when theatrical productions were often politically inspired. By the mid to late 18th century, however, a more diverse range of productions was staged, drawing larger audiences. What followed was the establishment of a number of new theatres and concert halls throughout the country, even in relatively small towns, often built in a town hall or similar building and paid for by public subscription.
Theatre was the hub of fashionable life in Dublin and its multiple theatres frequently imported performers and productions from London’s Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres.
Belfast too had an active theatre life. It was the liveliest centre politically and the fastest-growing town in Ireland, being the centre of the linen industry and of shipbuilding yards that would eventually be the largest in the world. And while its population had grown to 20,000 by the end of the 18th century, unlike Dublin it was still not large enough to support a resident company of professional actors. So entertainment was provided by the occasional visits of strolling and touring troupes.
“Strolling companies were comprised of actors, usually of the second or third rate (and often novices), who had little or no ‘regular’ employment at major theatres in Dublin or in Britain and who lived a peripatetic existence between the medium-sized towns of Ireland, and the British provinces, performing sporadically in whatever venues they could hire for a few nights. Judging from the few surviving playbills, these companies usually numbered from 12 to 15 performers with the ratio of men to women being about 3 to 1, and had at their head a person of some reputation who functioned as actor-manager and whose notoriety could be depended on to attract audiences. The actresses were almost always married and acted with their husbands.”
—Theatre in Belfast, 1736-1800, by John C. Greene
Life as a touring performer was not easy. In the 18th century, it took three days to travel from Dublin to Belfast by horse-drawn carriage. Companies would often stop along the way at Newry, a prosperous merchant town with a growing interest in drama and the arts, which opened its first theatre in 1769.
James, Anne and her mother toured primarily with a company under the management of an actor and theatre builder named Michael Atkins. Atkins’ company, with an established core of regular actors, performed almost exclusively in the north of Ireland, in theatres he had built in both Belfast and Derry, with short visits to neighbouring towns. James May was appointed Atkins’ deputy manager in Derry during the 1792–3 season while Atkins was building a new theatre in Belfast.
A typical evening performance would run about four hours, the curtain rising around 7:00, and comprise two or three full-length pieces covering Shakespeare, opera, tragedy, comedy and farce, and each actor had to play several parts. Theatre managers rarely advertised performances in the newspapers, instead relying on handbills, posters and word-of-mouth. For the most part, the only playbills that survive were those inserted in newspapers by the actors, at their own cost, to advertise their own benefit nights, from which they would have expected to receive the night’s net profits. Actors usually received one or two benefits each season, with principal actors able to choose their own plays.
Theatre audiences in the 18th century consisted for the most part of aristocrats and members of the legal profession and the army, and they could be harsh critics of productions. I’ve uncovered a few newspaper reviews for James’ performances and one for Anne but none for her mother:
While a new opera, Inkle and Yarico, performed in Belfast in late 1788, was generally well received, Anne’s performance was assessed less favourably.
- Belfast Newsletter, 26 Dec 1788 — “Miss Hoskin gave a very faint colouring to Narcissa, she was too languid; a point in which she is sometimes defective.”
James, on the other hand, received glowing reviews for his performances in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1790 and 1791.
- Belfast Newsletter, 9 Nov 1790 — “On Monday evening the tragedy of Hamlet was performed in the Belfast Theatre with much and merited approbation. Mr. May, in the principal character, entered so well into the spirit of his great author, as to give reasonable hope that he will one day arrive at very considerable eminence in his profession. His action was just, easy, and elegant,—his voice distinct and harmonious. He never sunk below mediocrity, and in many passages the most rigid criticism would not have called his dramatic genius in question.”
- Belfast Newsletter, 28 Jan 1791 — “Mr. May, in his second appearance on Friday last in Hamlet (for his own benefit) did not forfeit the encomium on his former performance of that character. The receipt of the house was £69 3s. Irish. Tho’ rising merit, such as Mr. May’s, in that favourite play of Shakespeare, deserved the reception it met with, we cannot avoid taking this opportunity of recommending it to the humane inhabitants of Belfast to shew at least an equal zeal in promoting a benefit which, we hear, is within a few days to be given.”
A year later, James garnered another positive review, although it appears the theatre had some trouble filling the seats.
- Belfast Newsletter, 3 Jan 1792 — “On Monday evening last was performed at this theatre the comedy of the ‘Suspicious Husband.’ It must be allowed in justice to Mr. May, that his ‘Ranger’ was an excellent performance; he supported the part of the rakish Templar with an uncommon degree of animation, and seemed quite at home in that difficult character. Mrs. Coates, also, in Clarinda, well deserved those frequent plaudits which burst from a numerous audience; her manner, dress, and elegant figure were perfectly well adapted to Ranger’s Merry Coz. Mr. May and Mrs. Coates as performers, are well worthy the attention of the polite audiences of Belfast; yet if we may judge from the bad attendance on the theatre, they do not always meet with that degree of public favour which their excellence so well merits.”
James and Anne May continued to perform until at least the early 1800s—a playbill for Anne was published in 1804, advertising a shared benefit for her and a Mrs. Richards, and an advertisement for a benefit on behalf of James appeared in 1808. Anne’s career would have been interrupted by the births of at least two children: my 3G-grandfather Samuel about 1793 and another son named Charles approximately three years later. (Charles, like his brother, joined the army, also serving in the 29th Regiment of Foot.)
A biography of Anne’s mother, Mrs. Hoskin, states that she last performed in 1799, in Derry. In a benefit playbill from 1795, she begged the public to rescue “their poor old favourite from the greatest misery and distress, and enable her to support herself in her latter days without soliciting charity which her spirit had hitherto prevented her from.”
The final newspaper mentions of James and Anne are their obituaries. James May died 20 Jan 1835 in Newry, at the age of 72. Anne survived him by three years, passing away 24 Jul 1838. No obituary can be found for Anne’s mother.
To be continued…
The theatrical background of the Hoskin-May family was not the only surprise revealed when my brick wall came down. James May’s family lineage can be followed back several more generations and includes wealthy merchants, a traitorous spy, a deadly duel, and some of the earliest Quaker families to settle in Ireland. There is more research yet to do, so all that will be a story for another day.
References
- The Irish Theatre, by Christopher Fitz-Simon
- A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800, by Philip H. Highfill
- Theatre in Belfast, 1736-1800, by John C. Greene
- Theatre in Dublin, 1745-1820: A Calendar of Performances, by John C. Greene
- Searchable indexes
- By actor and roles – Miss and Mrs. Hoskins, pages 1753-1771
- Eighteenth Century Theatre, by Aoife McMahon