Charles Moore Jones-d'Ernée

1837 - 1897

***You are now 5 generations before the current children***

Charles Moore arrived on 7th August 1837, a son to John (described on his birth certificate as 'gentleman') and Elizabeth (nee Sargent ?Sarjeant) at St Anne Terrace, St Anne Street, Islington (County Lancaster, District Liverpool).

Charles Moore Jones d'Ernée; has been identified as an accountant in 1860 , a merchant's clerk in 1866 , an ironmonger in 1872, a broker in 1876 and an accountant in 1877. Is this the parabola of a career that saw a steady rise in the cotton industry centred on Lancashire, followed by reduced circumstances after the crash? The one photograph we have of Charles Moore Jones seems to be of a man in his mid-to-late twenties (i.e., roughly mid-1860s), in a prosperous state (or aspiring so to be), married and the father, or about to be the father, of Vyvyan . At some point, we have the cotton wealth, followed by the crash, and then perhaps the antique shop at Waterloo (of family oral history) and, when that failed, an ironmongery (hardware store).
Charles bequeathed the whole of his property and moneys (effects £161) to his daughter Marguerite late in 1896, appointing Mr Cornelius Prout Newcombe, schoolmaster (brother-in-law) of Muswell Hill London as sole executor. His address then was given as 18 Mount Pleasant, Waterloo, Lancashire.

Charles married Eliza Newcombe on 11th August 1860. The marriage was performed in the Union Congregational Chapel, Islington. Since marriages were almost always within one's class, the union of a tanner's son and a butcher's daughter is entirely appropriate. In fact, John Jones very likely bought his hides from Frederick Newcombe, the two fathers planning the marriage as an alliance of related businesses.

I suspect that the name d'Ernée, adopted on 26th May 1868 by affidavit, owes as much to a desire for status as to the desire to acquire lands. Victorian England was a time of desire for advancement, and spurious titles and the hunt for a better names than Jones may be yet another example of the climb of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois and laborers to greater respectability.
D'Erné is the MIDDLE name of their second son, Vyvyan. This is two years BEFORE his father changes the surname to d'Ernée, lower-casing the D and adding an e, and thus bringing the name into conformity with French usage. I will bet that Eliza Newcombe's mother's maiden name was D'Erné, and that her maternal grandfather was the owner of the "certain lands and properties" mentioned in Charles' affidavit as the reason for changing his surname.

to quote Michael mates

Charles' children might offer some sort of clue to his fortunes. The two successful sons were John Arthur Frederick Jones, the Admiralty paymaster, and Vyvyan, the eventual Lord Mayor of Mt. Gambier. (True, he was also a hair dresser, but he must have done well in the business.) They were born in 1864 and 1866. Unsuccessful Sydney, known in Basil's letters as "a bit of a lad" and a "box car willy," was born in 1872.

Perhaps the two older boys were raised in wealth in their early years, and were determined to regain it. I have a vague memory somewhere that the cotton market crashed in the late 1860s, after the American Civil War. If so, this would give Sydney no memories of wealth, and thus no desire for their restoration. (This hypothesis may be belied by the fact that Marguerite Elise, born in 1877, went on to huge success as a private secretary. It may also be belied by Charles' status as broker in 1876 and accountant in 1877.) We just don't know. If we could find a demographic history of Liverpool and rate the addresses given on documents with their social status, we might have a better idea of how the family was doing.

ref: Michael Mates, 1997