From Gilvray patronyms to Gilvray history

On the Gilvray side of our ancestry, Granny Gilvray Harley, who was so proud of the Harley ancestry, told us little or nothing of her own.  We knew her maiden name was Gilvray.  Her given names, Elizabeth Joy, were not unusual for a woman, but “Joy” we were told was not the familiar girl’s name but rather a patronym. Elizabeth’s younger sister, our great-aunt Ella, carried another patronym, her full name being Ella Kent Gilvray.  From Uncle John we learned that both Joy and Kent were family surnames, a much needed clue in a story in which the men were hard to find. [1]

I think I understand Granny’s reticence.  For while the Harley family came from the heart of England, the family of Elizabeth Joy Gilvray came from the four corners of the realm, stopped awhile in the east end of London, and were perennially on the move until they landed a few miles from the Harleys in Birmingham. While the Harley men were models of industrial enterprise, Bessie’s forefathers were men of less noble stock, and the Kent and Joy men were seldom home when the census taker called.  They were gamekeepers and mariners, wigmakers and salesmen who left little mark on the world.

So the Gilvray story is one of mothers and grandmothers, and unsucesful marriages: Elizabeth Vaughan Joy, whose children were born around the seaports of the south coast but was respectably married to a mariner; her daughter, Mary Ann Joy Kent, born in Dorset, children born in the Midlands, left her husband and moved to London, yet lived for 30 years in California where she died; her daughter Emma Kent Gilvray who married the ironmonger from Newcastle who appears not to have been much support for the family; Granny Harley herself, whose husband ran off to New Zealand; and Joan Harley Macnee whose marriage was an on-and-off affair for several decades. 

While tracing any line of ancestors presents its problems, the female ancestors present the most difficulty, given the absence of maiden names in most of the records (Scotland retains women’s maiden names).  But in many cases the census records provide clues that allow one, given some luck, to identify the women’s birth families.  Gilvrays contributed Beat, Forrester, Kent and Joy amongst others. 

[1] We were told that Uncle John’s full name, seldom divulged if he could avoid it and perhaps not true, was John Joy Harley.