˚

EXCERPT

The Family Copas Tale—
The story of where Elsie Ellen Hawkins came from

FOREWORD

Aside from being a single skull champion of England in 1926, and the heroine of books by Janet Evanovich, Elsie Ellen Hawkins was a cousin*. In 2019, I received an unexpected legacy. We had never met, and I knew little to nothing about our connection. Elsie Ellen Hawkins 1931–2015, was born in Kentish Town. Daughter, and only child of Ernest William Copas 1897–1952 and Nellie Whittaker 1907–1996, she lived mostly unrecorded. In her last ten years she was a recluse with few family members visiting or speaking with her during that time. The following is an attempt to recognize and document her family, and mine, as seen through the Census and other records from 1800 and 1941.

Census as we know it, starts in England in 1841. Before that date, records of births, marriages, and deaths were locally maintained in churches, making most earlier records unavailable. In 1999 when I first started our family tree, it was first retrieved from Original Public Registry Books back to 1832 at Somerset House in London. Now of course, ancestry.com and others have digitized much of this historic data, in their readily available websites. Gaps still exist, but is mostly from a lack of linkages, which I suspect will be a ‘work in progress’ for decades ahead.

—Michael Copas, Winter 2020, Village of Orrville, Ontario Canada

CHAPTER 1: RICHARD

The start of a family tree is rarely so precise or specific, but that is a fact for the Copas’ of Kentish Town, England.

It starts with Richard Copas, who was born in Twickenham, Middlesex, England in 1805, the only child of James Copas and Ann Strongitharm. Ann died when Richard was an infant, James moved back to Surrey, married again 15 years later and had a second family of five children. Richard disappears from the records, until the Census of 1851, when he reappears married and living in Kentish Town.

I spent hours trying to find where Richard may have gown up, but search of Ann’s and James’ parents and siblings showed no presence of Richard, after Ann’s death. Those were the most likely places for the missing infant, and prompted a deep search of both family trees back to the early 1600s. With Richard’s early life unavailable, I focused on the 1851 census to discover a complex nuclear family. Richard Copas (shown as Copus) at age 38 (suggest he was born 1813), a Labourer, born in Twickenham. Now living at 7 Cornilius Place, Regent's Park, St. Pancreas, Middlesex. Charlotte Copas (nee Horn) is 30, and born in St. Pancreas. The children: Henry, Robert, Emma, and Sarah are 11, 9, 2 years, and 2 months respectively. 7 Cornilius Place no longer exists.

We will follow individual family member’s births, marriages, and deaths, as completely as possible. To avoid the label of paternalistic, we will trace Copas wife’s at least one generation, where we can identify their maiden name. We have, of course expanded the search for Elsie.

—
Notes: Spelling of names and places are high volatile over time, Copas, has three main variants Copus, Copass and Coppas, and are easily understood in the context of an aural society. This is true of all names and places, so I have standardized both to establish consistency and clarity for this story. No offense is intended.

* this caused a major hurdle to any Google searches, be overwhelming search constraint criteria