Wisbech & Norwich:
Isaac Jecks and his descendants ...
a summary.
Isaac Jecks (1756-1841)
Born Norwich, Norfolk
Lived Wisbech, Cambs
Died Norwich, Norfolk
Image: Photo of a painting. Date of painting unknown.
What follows is a summary of the book titled "The Jecks Family, Yeomen Farmers of Norfolk, Book 2; Isaac Jecks of Wisbech and Norwich". This book followed Book 1 of "The Jecks Family, Yeomen Farmers of Norfolk" which details nine generations of Jecks in North Norfolk. Isaac Jecks himself was one of the ninth generation after John Jecks of Aslacton (south of Wymondham, Norfolk). Book 2 was written by John E. Barrett and myself, Murray G. Jecks-Johnston first in 1978, followed by updates in 2002 and 2003. John Barrett is a descendant of the family of Mary Bloomar's mother, Sarah Barrett. Book 2 in its later form is some 180 pages long, containing many images, driving the preference here, on a website, to include a summary only.
ISAAC JECKS, Snr
Isaac was the youngest of seven children of Robert Jecks and Ann Colman. However, four died young leaving only Isaac, his elder brother Robert, and Ann, the eldest of the three remaining. Robert remained in the Norwich area, Ann married Richard Liversidge and lived in London, while Isaac relocated to Wisbech about 1780. On the River Nene, Wisbech is just over the border from Norfolk into Cambridgeshire, technically in the region known as the Isle of Ely.
Although Robert Jecks married, he had no children. Therefore it was left to Isaac to continue the Jecks family name. In fact, Isaac and his third cousin, Charles James Jecks of London (see Book 3 and the page titled "Book 3: London" on this website), became the only two Jecks known to leave Jecks descendants of the south Norfolk family surviving today.
Isaac's move from Norwich to Wisbech probably took place soon after the death of his father. Isaac was a resident of Wisbech in 1782 when he married Mary Bloomar, daughter of Newcomb Bloomar and Sarah Barrett. The Bloomar (not Bloomer, as often misspelt) family lived in Newark, Nottinghamshire, some 65 miles northwest of Wisbech.
The Jecks family were non-conformists, members of the Unitarian Baptist Church. Virtually all eleven children of Isaac and Mary were christened at the Meeting House of that church in Wisbech, on Deadman's Lane (established 1693 and later renamed Great Church Street then Alexandra Road). Meanwhile, soon after arrivig in Wisbech, Isaac established a parnership there as a Grocer, Draper and Tallow Chandler named "Jecks & Dawbarn". Isaac also became successful in the timber business as early as 1810. Two Jecks timber yards are marked on maps of Wisbech in 1830, one of them named "Boucher & Jecks".
Isaac carefully recorded the births of his children in a family Bible, still in the possession of his descendants today.
1.1 Mary b Nov 1785
1.2 Susannah b Jan 1787, Died about 17 weeks old
1.3 Thomas b Jan 1788
1.4 Susannah b Feb 1789, Died about 15 months old
1.5 Susannah b Sept 1790
1.6 William b Oct 1791
1.7 Sarah b Oct 1794
1.8 Charles b Sept 1795
1.9 Ann b May 1797
1.10 Isaac b Mar 1801
1.11 Eliza b Oct 1802
The growing family eventually established themselves at an imposing residence at 7 North Brink on the River Nene, a house with a history back to the 17th century. Isaac and Mary and family lived there from 1808 until 1835 whereupon Isaac retired to Norwich, his birthplace. Isaac's two sons William & Charles had taken over the Jecks timber business with its wharf on the River Nene and other Jecks businesses including a "common brewery", a corn mill, and flour merchant. Charles and William closed all the businesses with Boucher except timber in 1837. The sale of "W & C Jecks", the Wisbech timber business, to "H & J English" in the summer of 1845, marked the family's final exit from Wisbech. However, W & C Jecks were busy establishing new timber locations in Norfolk and Suffolk. William remained in the North Brink residence until 1846 - this was his home in 1841 - while Charles was in Norfolk.
In Norwich, Isaac lived in Chapelfield, on The Crescent, a prestigeous housing project of the 1820s occupied by professionals and former estate owners of the area. Isaac and Mary are found there in the 1841 census with a granddaughter and a servant. Isaac Jecks died only ten days after the census was taken. Two newspapers paid tribute to him, one of which stated, "It may be truly said that strict integrity and universal benevolence marked his character." Isaac's widow, Mary, lived for another ten years, mostly at the home of her bachelor son William in Framingham Pigot, a few miles south east of Norwich.
The children of Isaac and Mary Jecks
1.1 MARY JECKS was the eldest daughter. In 1806 she married Charles Hursthouse of Tydd St Mary, Lincolnshire, not far north of Wisbech. They had nine children, six of whom were christened at Wisbech. Portraits of Charles and Mary Hursthouse were completed in 1822 and survive at New Plymouth, New Zealand. However, Mary died at the age of only 43 in the summer of 1829 of "consumption" (tuberculosis). By 1841, Charles and his family lived at Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he was a "merchant", one of several of the wider family involved with the Jecks timber business. He left England and sailed to New Zealand, where he established himself and several of the family with him in New Plymouth, on the central western coast of the North Island. Maria Jecks, wife of Charles Jecks, wrote several letters to Charles Hursthouse in New Plymouth in which she lamented the political and other living conditions in England, while enquiring about Charles' "primitive house", and picturing Charles "busy in his garden".
Mary and Charles Hursthouse left many descendants including the Stanger family (daughter Sarah), Percy Stephenson Smith (daughter Hannah), and of course, others through his Hursthouse sons. Charles himself died in New Plymouth in 1854.
1.3 THOMAS JECKS, the eldest son had been sent to school in Islington in North London. In the summer of 1807, at the young age of 19, he married Mary Gaches at Houghton, near St Ives in Huntingdonshire. Initially, Thomas lived at Hemingford Grey, Hunts, where their first two children were born - Fanny and Mary. By 1811, they were resident in Waltham Abbey, Essex, a town north of the greater London region, where their third child, 1.3.3 Isaac Bloomar Jecks, was born. However, Isaac Bloomar Jecks died aged only a few years.
Thomas was a Corn Factor based in London, engaged in the buying and selling of corn; London directories of the time record him and his profession. His son, Thomas, was born in 1814 while they lived in St Ives Huntingdonshire, and the last two children, Emma and Isaac, were born in 1815 and 1817 after the family moved to Hackney, Middlesex.
To establish himself as a miller, Thomas decided to acquire the lease of several large water flour mills in Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire. He attended an auction there in August 1811, aged only 23, and bid the highest annual rent of £240 for the mills and related premises. However, subsequently he found the premises were badly dilapidated. In September 1813, at Chancery, London, Thomas launched a legal complaint against the Borough of Godmanchester concerning the mills and premises. He alleged he had been defrauded of funds from the prior lessee to repair the very dilapidated mills and premises. The Borough answered that Thomas had been made aware that the mills were dilapidated and that the Borough was not paying for necessary repairs. Somehow, Thomas must have exited the rental contract, because the mills were re-leased in March 1817 after another auction.
Thomas Jecks died in 1822 aged only 34 and was buried in Benington, Hertfordshire. Family records note that he died of "damp smallclothes", and that he left five children. His widow remarried a year later to Joseph Hilton. Mary Hilton died in 1852 and is buried alongside her first husband, Thomas, and her parents at Benington. Although he died young, Thomas's young family were to leave many Jecks descendants around the world.
Thomas's eldest child, 1.3.1 Fanny, married John Emerson in 1849 in Ceylon. John Emerson was a nephew of Sir James Emerson Tennent, then Governor of Ceylon. According to family legend, Fanny died in childbirth in Ceylon.
The second child, 1.3.2 Mary Jecks is found as a passenger on the ship Robert Watt arriving in New York in 1835. She travelled with the Preston family, including Henry, who hailed from Lincolnshire, England. The Preston family and Mary Jecks did not travel far to make their home, settling in Williamsburg, later Brooklyn, New York. Mary Jecks and Henry Preston married there two years after arrival from England, where they had eight children. Their eldest was Thomas Jecks Preston (sometimes spelt "Jex"), who married Jennie Weller. Thomas J Preston Snr and Jennie's eldest child was also named Thomas Jecks Preston. At the age of 50, Thomas J Preston Jnr married Frances F Cleveland, the widow of Grover Cleveland, formerly President of the USA. They lived at Princeton, New Jersey, where Thomas was a Faculty Dean and Professor of Archaeology at Princeton University. Mary Preston, nee Jecks, died at Newark, New Jersey in 1900. Many of the family, including Thomas Preston, were buried at Green Point Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City.
1.3.4 Thomas Jecks, the fourth child (the third child, Isaac Bloomar Jecks, had died young) mirrored the adventurous spirit of his uncle Isaac, and emigrated to the new colony based at Perth, Western Australia. In Guildford, a few miles north east of Perth, he married Elizabeth Jones in 1837 and Thomas established an Inn. The pair had a large family. Of their 13 children, seven survived beyond childhood, and so Thomas became the ancestor of one of the largest Jecks contingents in any one country.
1.3.5 Emma Jecks, the fifth child and youngest daughter, born in Hackney, Middlesex (according to herself in census records) married David Dewing in 1842, in Holborn in the City of London. The pair lived in Norwich for some time where David died, although Emma moved to Worthington in Lancashire, where she died in 1881. The couple had five children in Norwich. One of their daughters, Alice Emma Dewing, born 1847, married Michael Henry Lakin in 1869, who was created a Baronet in 1909. Emma's only son, Thomas Jecks Dewing, died in 1866 aged only 14 in Withington.
1.3.6 Isaac Jecks the last child. Isaac had been given the name (albeit without the additional "Bloomar") after an elder son of Thomas and Mary with the same name had died earlier. Isaac was another who eventually left a large contingent of Jecks, in his case, in the United States. Isaac joined the British Army and while in service was sent to Ceylon (coincidentally to where his sister Fanny may have gone), where he was promoted to Sergeant. Interestingly, John Hursthouse, a cousin, reported meeting another soldier in Ceylon in 1842 who knew of Isaac Jecks. Isaac left the Army and emigrated to America, only months after he married Mary Stokes of Feltwell, Norfolk, at Ely in Cambridgeshire in April 1857. One of the witnesses at Isaac's marriage was his sister Emma Dewing, nee Jecks. Isaac, Mary, and Mary's son William (who may have been Isaac's), arrived in New York in November 1857. They likely visited Isaac's sister Mary in Utica New York before moving to and settling in the farming country of McHenry County, Illinois. Isaac Jecks became a naturalized citizen of the United States in November, 1872. Isaac and Mary had eight children in the US, the first born in the USA being Thomas Preston Jecks, illustrating the connection between the two American immigrant Jecks families. Only one of their nine children, including William, died young. Three of the Jecks' sons left Jecks descendants in and beyond Illinois - the three eldest, William Augustus Eagle, Thomas Preston, and Frederick Isaac. Charles Edwin Jecks married but had no children, while Charles Bloomar Jecks never married.
Isaac Jecks (1817-1892).
Born Hackney, Middx, England
Died McHenry County, Ill, USA
1.5 SUSANNAH JECKS. The second eldest daughter, Susannah, married Joseph Newsham in Wisbech in 1814. They had six children, most with first names resonant of the Jecks family: William (1815), Eliza (1816), Jecks (1817), Bloomar (1818), and Thomas (1821). Susannah died in 1853 and is buried with her parents in the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich.
1.6 WILLIAM JECKS
William Jecks (1791-1864). Picture taken 1864.
William was the bachelor of the family and the long-time business partner of his younger brother Charles. The brothers owned a successful Timber business in Wisbech for several decades until mid 1845 when they sold the firm to H&J English. They also sold the family home on North Brink at the same time. William then followed the rest of the family to Norfolk.
Like his brother, William invested significantly in property as well as developing their Timber business in Norwich, Norfold and Suffolk. In August 1845, William bought nearly 80 acres from a deceased estate, including 45 acres in Framingham Pigot with “Framingham Hall" in the SW corner of the parish, and 35 acres in Framingham Earl. Often he had relatives residing with him - not least of all, his widowed mother. William added over 37 acres in the shape of a triangle, adjacent to the SW of Framingham Hall, and another 4 acres, being two separate properties. Thus his Framingham Hall estate comprised 121 acres in all.
In August 1848 William bought 13 acres just SE of Norwich in Trowse Newton, including Newton Lodge, which William occupied at the time of the sale. Soon after, William moved out to Framingham, and his youngest brother Isaac jnr became the occupant of the Lodge. In three separate sales, in 1848, the lodge itself in 1856, and the last portion in 1856, William exited his Trowse holding.
In August 1854 William bought the copyhold of 105 farming acres in Framingham Pigot, mostly in the northern part of the parish. He then bought the freehold of the same land in 1863 for £363, probably in order to give free title to a purchaser, as this land did not appear in WIlliam's estate.
William died in Great Yarmouth in 1864. William left a long will with many bequests intending that his portfolio of real estate holdings should be sold and used to fund his generous bequests to many nieces and nephews. He left his share of the Jecks timber business to his brother, Charles. Properties sold included many in Wisbech and his 121 acre estate, Framingham Hall. The Hall itself was demolished in 1866 after the Fitzgerald family bought the estate.
1.7 SARAH JECKS. Sarah was yet another of Isaac and Mary's children to marry in Wisbech. She married John Coote in 1815 and their only chiuld, Thomas, was born in 1817 at Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, not far from where her brother Thomas Jecks lived. Sarah died in Shalford, Essex in 1822. Their son, Thomas Coote, married and had a large family in Fenstanton. He seemed to have taken on an occupation similar to his uncle Thomas, as a corn and/or coal factor, and later in life became a Justice of the Peace. Later, Thomas assisted his uncle Charles Jecks with a loan secured over Charles' Woodlands estate.
Charles Jecks' leased estate (outlined in red) beside the River Yare, home from about 1838 to 1847.
1.8 CHARLES JECKS. Charles and his brother William partnered in several businesses in Wisbech, likely, initially at least, with the financial assistance of their father.
One of these businesses was a brewery, another was the Timber business "W & C Jecks", for which a timber yard was located at the back of the family home on North Brink. In 1821, while living at Wisbech, Charles married at Tydd St Mary, the home of his sister and brother-in-law, the Hursthouses. His bride was Maria Robertson, originally from the Glagow region of Scotland. They had only three children, Mary Eliza, William, and Charles. 1.8.1 Mary Eliza died aged only 24 after a long battle with cancer and is buried in the Rosary Cemetery, Norwich.
Charles moved from Wisbech to Norwich in the late 1830s with his parents, where by 1841 he had leased over 11 acres of riverside property in the attractive village of Thorpe-next-Norwich, enjoying a large house, gardens, woods, and a boathouse.
In 1847, in two separate deals, Charles bought a property known then as "The Grove". The farm and home adjoined the northern border of his leased riverside premises. The Grove became the Jecks' family home for the next 11 years.
[Photo courtesy of the Janet Smith Archive held by Thorpe St Andrew Town Council.]
"The Grove" or "Grove House" occupied by Charles Jecks and family in the late 1840s and most of the 1850s. Later, from about 1880, and currently, the house is known as "High House".
In 1842 the executors of a major landowner in the area sold their father's estate by auction, and Charles became the largest single buyer (including acting as agent for other buyers). On his own account, whether freehold or copyhold (later buying the freehold), he acquired three farms and farmhouses (Lots 42-44), totalling 347 acres, including the "High House" farm and farmhouse. These farms, together with 35 acres in two later complementary add-on acquisitions, made up a farm estate of 382 contiguous acres located in the northeast of Thorpe parish.
"Woodlands", home of Charles Jecks and family from about 1858 to 1871.
Towards the end of the family's time living at "The Grove", Charles demolished the original farmhouse standing at the High House location, right at the centre of the 382 acre estate, and built a new mansion he named "Woodlands".
Charles sold "The Grove" house and farm in 1858 at a healthy profit and the family moved to Woodlands. Since 1848, Charles had taken out and repaid several mortgages to finance his various property dealings. Subsequent to the sale of Grove and move to Woodlands, Charles owed a remaining £5,500, which was repaid in 1863.
The death of William, Charles' brother, in 1864 likely seriously impacted the operations of the Jecks timber business. In his will, William left his interests in the business to Charles, who brought in his son, William, as his partner. Adding to his workload, in the same year, Charles took on the appointment of Sheriff for a year. Charles formally retired in 1868 after 60 years in the timber business, leaving his son and a new partner, Mr Ranson, to continue operations.
[Photo courtesy of the Janet Smith Archive held by Thorpe St Andrew Town Council.[
Charles Jecks (1795-1884). Picture taken 1864.
In the late 1860s, Charles encountered considerable financial strain, at least partly due to the bankruptcy of local banks: the first in 1866, Overend and Gurney, and the second in 1870 - by Sir Robert John Harvey, of Harvey & Hudson in Norwich. In 1866, Charles took out a new mortgage of £16,000 secured on his estate, and in 1870, a second mortgage of £10,000 provided by his nephew Thomas Coote. With the additional burden of unsecured personal debts, Charles was forced into receivership in 1871. His Woodlands farm estate was auctioned for £37,000 (equivalent of about £4.25 million today) as well as his personal and movable assets on the estate. With all debts repaid, he was discharged from receivership - but he was left with virtually nothing.
After the sale of his Woodlands estate, Charles and Maria moved from Thorpe to Great Yarmouth on the coast of Norfolk. His wife Maria died there in 1873 and was buried at the Rosary in Norwich. Less than a year after Maria's death, Charles remarried at Great Yarmouth to Sarah Ann Parker, a widow, 28 years younger. They continued to live at Great Yarmouth for several years. Eventually, they found a new home at a cottage called "Jecks Mount" at Symonds Yat in Herefordshire, a picturesque holiday area on the River Wye. Charles died there in 1884. He was buried at the Congregational Chapel on a hill at Symonds Yat.
About a century later his great granddaughter Alice had pictures taken with herself outside the cottage and at the chapel beside his gravestone. Later, the chapel was sold as a private residence and in 1993 the gravestones moved to a nearby location. Both of Charles' sons married and eventually left Jecks descendants, albeit in opposite corners of the world - one in South Africa and the other in New Zealand.
Provenance of this original picture of Charles Jecks: Charles Jecks / Emma Jecks (Australia) / Fauntleroy / Leo van de Pas / Murray Jecks-Johnston
1.8.2 William, Charles' elder son, became involved in his father's timber business, living in Thorpe and later Lowestoft managing one branch or the other. When his father retired in 1868, he took over as the Jecks partner in a new partnership, "Jecks & Ranson", Timber Merchants. His wife was Maria Cooper and they had six children in Thorpe-next-Norwich. At various times, including in 1870, William is found as one of the sitting magistrates at Lowestoft court. Likely as a consequence of the dissolution of his timber business and partnership in November 1871, in 1872 Maria and all the children, but without WIlliam, emigrated to South Africa and settled at Port Elizabeth (Uitenhage), Eastern Cape. WIlliam himself remained in Norfolk, and in 1881 is living with a "wife" in Reedham. He died in Caister, north of Great Yarmouth, in 1885.
In South Africa, William's eldest, Mary, married Caleb O'Flaherty, had two daughters, and later returned to England where she died in 1920. The second, Gertrude, married Walter McFarlane, had two children, also returned to England, where she died in Cornwall in 1917. Fanny married George R Deare, also produced a daughter, also returned to England, where she died in Norwich in 1929. She left her estate to her daughter Effie, who by then lived in Alberta, Canada. The sixth and last child, Maria, married Henry R Deare (1st cousin of George) and had three daughters and a son. One of her daughters married and as Helen Mills made a copy of "The Jecks Genealogy" in 1915.
William's fourth child was his elder son, William Robertson Jecks. W R Jecks was the Director of his own company in Johannesburg. His spouse was Alice Augusta Grandvaux and they had a son and a daughter, Marcel William (1905) and Cynthia Yvette (1908). Marcel apparently took over his father's company and died in 1970 in his hometown of Johannesburg. William Jecks' second son was named Charles Bloomar Jecks, who never married and decided to become a cleric in the Anglican Church. Within a few years of arriving in South Africa with his family, he returned to the UK and in 1881 is found living with his aunt (a sister of his Uncle Charles' wife Maria) in Hampshire, a student at Durham University. In 1885 he returned to South Africa to take up an appointment as Curate in the Eastern Cape Province and in 1893, he was appointed Rector of Uitenhage. He died at Uitenhage in 1911, appointing his brother William as executor of his very small estate ... although William declined, because he lived in a different province. C B Jecks' meagre belongings were left to Marjorie Deare, one of his nieces.
1.8.3 Charles, the younger of Charles and Maria's sons was born 1827 in Wisbech. Unlike others of the family, he did not take up a role in the family timber business, preferring a more genteel lifestyle. Charles married at the age of 36 to Hannah Horsey, the daughter of a wealthy Northamptonshire family. Hannah bore five children (the eldest died a baby) before she died in 1871, with her youngest child only three years old. Only a few months before her untimely death, she, Charles, their four children, a governess and three servants were "non-residents" at the seaside in Hastings, on the south coast of England. Seven years later, In Melksham Wiltshire, Charles married again to Anna Martin, a spinster of the same county. After their marriage, Charles and Anna took up residence in Clevedon, Bristol, where they lived in 1881 with Charles' two daughters. In the 1880s Charles moved to Richmond Terrace in Cleveland, where he remained with Anna for the rest of his life. A short notice in the local newspaper in 1912 said he died after a long and painful illness in his 86th year.
Charles' elder daughter, Edith Garland, one of twins, never married and lived with her father in Cleveland, Bristol. Sometime after Charles died, Edith moved to the south coast of England, where she died in 1951. Edith's twin brother, and Charles' eldest son, was Harold Harry Robertson Jecks. The young Harold was sent to boarding school at Rugby, where he was at the time of the 1881 census. As desired by his uncle John Horsey, following school, he qualified as a solicitor in 1890. But he didn't want to be a lawyer, and instead attended Durham University, taking a BA and MA and was ordained in 1895. Over the next ten years Harold Jecks held three appointments as Curate in England, and travelled to New Zealand to officiate at his brother's wedding. He made his final trip to New Zealand in 1912 to take up an appointment as Vicar of Mt Albert in Auckland. In 1917, aged 51, he married Amy Louise Reid. Much of his early professional life in his Auckland parish was conducted on horseback. He retired, though continuing some work with the Church, and died in 1952 in Auckland.
His children, Samuel, Alice and David each married. Samuel's only son, David, married and had two sons but unfortunately died on his farm when his children were still very young. Harold's second son, David Jecks, had five children, of whom three sons survive today. Harold's daughter, Alice Jecks, married and one of her three children is the author of these Jecks family histories.
Charles jnr's younger daughter was Mary Beatrice Jecks. She married Thomas Oldfield Bartlett in 1890 at Clifton, Bristol. They had two daughters and a son, Charles Vernon Bartlett, who as "Vernon Bartlett" for 40 years was one of Britain's leading broadcasters and journalists. Mary died in Dorset in 1935. Last but not least, the younger son of Charles and Maria was Ernest Horsey Jecks. At the age of 13, Ernest attended high school at Stoke in Coventry, Warwickshire. Eventually, Ernest made his way to New Zealand, where in 1901 he married Jane Ross, known as "Jeannie". Their son was Arthur Horsey Jecks, who married "Ronnie" Bonisch and had a son and a daughter, who for many years lived in the north of NZ's South Island.
1.9 ANN JECKS. At the age of 21, Ann married James Hill jnr, somewhat a local celebrity at the time - a leading advocate of liberal reform and the founder of the Unitarian school on Deadman's Lane. Ann Hill died in 1823 aged only 26 after bearing three children: Julia (1819), Frederick (1820), and Louisa (1822), of whom Frederick died an infant, and Julia aged only 19. Ann was buried in Wisbech and later removed by her brothers and reburied at The Rosary, in Norwich. James Hill remarried some 18 months later, to Ann's younger sister, Eliza, which technically was illegal at the time.
1.10 ISAAC JECKS jnr. Without a doubt, Isaac jnr was the renegade of the family. Born in 1801, by 1822 he had his first illegitimate child, Charlotte Bell, born in Stamford Lincolnshire, by Rebecca Bell. Within a few years Isaac settled in Northampton, where he embarked upon a business venture in the timber industry. However, during 1826 Isaac disengaged from both his business and house. While at Northampton, he married Dorothy Jackson, nee Jones, a widow. He had no children by Dorothy; she was 60 when she married Isaac. Seemingly unhappy with his marriage, Isaac linked up with Hannah Tobin, nee Spencer. They were never legally married although Isaac did refer to Hannah as "Mrs Jecks" in 1829. In that year, he and Hannah were some of the first settlers of the Swan River Colony of Western Australia. Soon after landing, Isaac and his "wife" applied for land and were granted lot 8 of nearly 7,000 acres. There is correspondence with the governor of the Colony dated in the early 1830s discussing various matters concerning his allotted land. Isaac wrote a letter from the Swan River Colony in February 1831 that was published in London, later that same year, concerning his wheat crop of 1830. In 1833, by which time Isaac and Hannah were in Capetown, he wrote to the Governor of the Swan River Colony about his right to erect an Inn at the extreme point of Mount Eliza.
While at Capetown, Isaac's daughter by Hannah named Mary Eliza Tobin was born in 1832 or 1833. Within a year or two of the child's birth, all three returned to England. However, perhaps after learning of the death of Dorothy in Northampton late in 1835, in Staffordshire Isaac married Sarah Orgill, by license, declaring himself a widower. Again, the marriage was childless probably due to the fact that Sarah was 46 at the time of the marriage. Meanwhile, Hannah "Jacks" had settled in Wales by 1841 with two daughters, one Mary Eliza "Jacks" aged 8 and the other, Caroline "Jacks" aged 3, which would have put her birth after Isaac had married Sarah - so perhaps Caroline was not Isaac's child.
Not done yet, Isaac had a liason with Hannah Fryett about 1840, by which a daughter Sarah Ann was born in 1841. Sarah Ann was baptized at Heigham (west Norwich), with the Register clearly noting that the father was Isaac Jecks, Gentleman, of Thorpe. Isaac is recorded living in Thorpe with his wife Sarah and a servant in 1841. In 1851 Isaac and Sarah are living in Trowse Newton in a large house called Newton Lodge, which at the time also accommodated Isaac's daughter Mary Eliza and a servant. By 1861 and again in 1871 Isaac is living in Great Yarmouth - in 1861 with Sarah, who died in 1868. He is alone other than for his servant in 1871. Isaac died in 1874 at Great Yarmouth, and was buried with family at the Rosary, Norwich. In his will, Isaac acknowledged his two daughters, Mary Eliza Wingrove and Charlotte Morris, both widows. His third daughter, Sarah Ann, had died in 1868.
Isaac was renown in the family for his enterprise, even if his ideas were not as successful as he might have hoped. His family sometimes commented on his activities in letters to family members. In 1855, Isaac patented an "improved machine for sweeping grass or weeds from lawns". In 1865 he published a 20 page booklet on "armour-clad ships at Shoeburyness - and a new principle for their construction". The booklet noted that there was a 4' long model of such a ship in the museum of patents in South Kensington, London. Even before Isaac sailed to Australia in puruit of another new venture, in the early/mid 1820s he had tried his hand as a timber merchant, attempting to set up a Jecks timber business in Northampton. In 1826, he sold the business as well as his "genteel residence" in Northampton. Soon after returning from Australia, early in 1835 Isaac advertises for sale his "comfort patent", "an easy method of drawing boots on and off"; probably unsuccessful like many of his other ventures.
Isaac's gravestone at the Rosary included the letters FSA, a reference to Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, although perhaps unsurprisingly, the Society has no record of his membership.
1.11 ELIZA JECKS. At Hastings, Sussex, in May 1825, Eliza became the second wife of James Hill, her elder sister's widower. The couple had a further four children: Margaret (1827), Arthur (1829), Ida Eliza (1830), and Kate (1831). Eliza died in 1832, a year after her fourth child's birth, and, like her elder sister, was initially buried in Wisbech but later reinterred at The Rosary in Norwich. James Hill, although well-known, was not successful in his business ventures; his Unitarian school failed and late in 1825, not long after he had married Eliza, so did his bank. James Hill married a third time in 1835 to Caroline Southwood Smith and had a further five daughters.