The strange case of Jeremiah Andrews

Well, I know Irish research is not easy, but I'm really on a path to nowhere.

Start with your oldest living relative, and pump them for information, says the rule. That was my mother, and she could tell me a lot about her mother, and her mother's mother, but not so much about her mother's father, and even less about the family's origins. "Your great grandfather was a Prison Governor in Cork, and the family originated as horse breeders in the North." That was all she knew.

Not a lot to go on, but enough to piece together the life of my great grandfather, Thomas Andrews, from about 1870 onwards - his marriage in Waterford, his promotion to deputy governor of Waterford Gaol, and subsequent promotions to Deputy Governorships and Governorships around Ireland - all well documented from the mid-1870s, once the old county bridewells had been merged into a national Prison Service.

And when they invented pensions, he gave his date and place of birth, as Armagh in February 1844. Being Church of Ireland, he was baptized at the cathedral there, the son of Jeremiah Taylor Andrews.

So what happened between 1844 and 1870? Where was he brought up? How did he get into the prison service?

Fortunately the local press has a bit of information. Jeremiah Taylor Andrews was an auctioneer. Between 1843 and 1845, he placed advertisements in the Armagh Guardian and the Newry Gazette, about sales in his auction rooms in English Street, Armagh. But then he disappears. I assume he moved away, but where to? A book giving biographies of famous Cork people around 1910 says that Thomas was "educated privately", so there's no sense in looking at school records. The newspapers tell us nothing about his father's auction business after 1845. His mother died in Waterford in 1882, but there is no trace of Jeremiah's death - presumably before the start of civil registration in 1864 (and yes, I've checked England, Wales and Scotland)

Jeremiah Taylor Andrews is a distinctive name, you'd have thought. The only insight into him, apart from his auctioneering in Armagh, is his wedding, announced in the Belfast-Newsletter in July 1835 - to Martha Rogers "of Armagh", with the marriage celebrated by "the Rev James Gibson". But no church in Armagh has such a wedding in its registers, and no directory of the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians (or the Roman Catholics, for that matter) mentions a Revd James Gibson. Jeremiah is not in Griffiths. So where was Jeremiah before 1843 and after 1845?

Help!! Possible lines of enquiry?

Coriniana

Between being born in 1873 and marrying in 1902, Walter Charles Corin

• sailed before the mast to Australia,
• went farming in Canada, jilting a fiancée there,
• worked for a firm of legal publishers,
• was apprenticed to Speaight and son,
• and took photographs in St Moritz (and Andermatt?).

What do we know about these escapades?

Pettman and Baker of East Kent

Margaret Castell (1813-1887) married Thomas Pettman in Islington in 1832. They were both "of this parish". Was Thomas really living in Islington in 1832?

Thomas Castell, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, died between 1815 and 1822. When? Where?

Edward Baker joined the customs service around 1786 in Sandwich - is there any record of this?

In 1841, Thomas Pettman dedicated The Missionary Hymn to the Revds T Fisher and Adams, and for the benefit of "the organ fund". Thomas Fisher, aged 34 in 1841, lived in Preston by Wingham and was a Methodist minister. What is known about him? What organ? There was a Methodist church in Hardres Street...

Before 1844, Thomas' children were baptized at St Peter's Thanet - thereafter at St George's Ramsgate. Does this indicate that he moved then?

Thomas had songs published by Coventry and Hollier (Moonlight 1835) and Cocks (Goodbye 1840) - is there any record of these?

Watts of Bunmahon

Who was mentioned in Richard Watts' will, dated 1875? The original was lost in the Four Courts fire. Does anything else remain?

William John Watts married Lucy Lavinia White in 1900. They had four children, all alive in 1911.
Who was the fourth, and what happened to them all?

When Anna Maria Watts (1858-1928) emigrated to Boston in 1885, she was "of Piltown, Ireland". What was she doing there?

Matilda Watts (1848-1909) married Robert Clement Dawes in Dublin in 1892. She left on her own for Massachusetts in 1902. Why alone, and what was Robert doing? Where were they at the time of the 1901 census? And where were Robert's older children in 1911 (and Fanny Cuolahan, too)?

John Downs was of 3 Frederick St., Limerick in 1877 when he married Elizabeth Watts. His father Thomas was a shopkeeper - was this also in Limerick?