Bruce, thank you for those two John Garrett burials. Either would do the job of clearing Margery’s husband out of the way in time for her to have her child Catherine, presumably with a Joughin father. This is a bit of a lucky dip, and there might be Garrett experts out there who will tell us that neither of these could be Margery’s husband

My thoughts on who that father might be were that there was only one Joughin family in Jurby at the time, a family of blacksmiths. My chief suspect was Andrew, baptised on 29th February 1824. In 1851 at Michael he married Ann Cannell, with whom he raised a family of about eight children in California, where the family has continued to prosper. That was not before Andrew had sown a few wild oats. In 1843 he had a son Thomas Joughin, mother Margaret Ellison, who did not give a father’s name at the baptism at Jurby. We know that Andrew was the father because when he married Ellen Kneale at Andreas in 1862 he gave his father’s name as Andrew Joughin, blacksmith.

If we look for similar information from Catherine, we must turn to the 1877 marriage to Paul Corrin at Braddan. She was a spinster of full age, of John Street, Douglas, daughter of Daniel Joughin, farmer. The witnesses were William Crebbin and Catherine Cowley. Let’s not get too excited about Catherine Cowley, whose name would not have been a rarity, and who could not have been the Catherine Cowley you mention. My feeling is that Mrs. Corrin was not the same Catherine Joughin. Again, her name was not a rarity. What ages does Mrs. Corrin give in the 1881, 1891 and 1901 censuses? Possibly she was a sister of the William Joughin, son of Daniel Joughin, farmer, who married Margaret Fargher at Lonan in 1861 and founded a Lonan family of Joughins that became extinct in 1994. These almost certainly descend from the Joughins of Rhenab, Maughold, whereas the Jurby Joughins descend from an Andreas line.

To get back to Margery Teare, the date of 24th March 1805 from the LDS submission tallies well with her age in the 1871 census as Mrs. Cowle. If Andrew Joughin was indeed the father of Catherine, then at just 19 he had a child with a woman of about 38, unlikely, until we remember that the man that Margery then took as her second husband was even younger than Andrew.

Another possible candidate is Andrew’s elder brother, Humphrey Joughin, another blacksmith, said by his distant cousin, the author Clucas Joughin, to have weighed 336 lbs (24 st), and to have been a fast swimmer. He didn’t marry, and on his death in 1873 he left his estate to various family members, including his septuagenarian mother, with no mention of any of the characters we have been looking at. So I discount Humphrey.

Another possibility was Andrew and Thomas’s father, another Andrew Joughin, blacksmith, b 1798, so not so much older than Margery, but as a married man and father of six, the youngest being born in 1840, I give him the benefit of the doubt.

On your later point of Kewley and Cowley sounding nearly the same, I think that’s right, and that the old Manx pronunciation would have been Kyowlya and Cowla respectively.