Jun 152012
 

In May 2003, an email was sent to the Stedman email list documenting the Stedman lineage of Sir Michael Phillip “Mick” Jagger. The lineage seemed good and, based on the records easily available at that time, it could be mostly well proved.

There was one step in the lineage which was vague. Oops… Florence Mary Ann Ensley Pearson supposedly married an Alfred Scutts about 1910 and had daughter Eva Ensley Scutts who married Sir Mick’s father in 1940. Eva supposedly was born in Australia. The fact that his mother was a Scutts and the family name Ensley flowed through the family seemed to make it safe even though we could not find a marriage record for Alfred and Florence nor a birth record for Eva.

Let us skip ahead to 2012…

I can now say that the genealogy I have published for almost ten years showing Mick Jagger as a Stedman descendant was WRONG!

I have been reviewing and updating a lot of the UK genealogies that I worked on years ago to add in all of the newly available census, BMD, etc. records now available. You will see from the genealogies the result of this effort. I have not had to correct too many of my genealogies, but I have to make a public statement and apology about this one. This one stands out because it is such a public line that gets mentioned a lot. I would guess that at least 100 RootsWeb and Ancestry trees must also have this mistake. I fear that many of them got this from me.

I have now updated this genealogy on-line. Below is a summary of what I now believe to be the correct genealogy to be.

Eva Mary Ensley Scutts was born 6 April 1913, and her birth was registered at Marrickville in New South Wales, Australia. Her parents were reported to be Alfred Henry and Gertrude Jessie Scutts. Eva Ensley M Jagger died in May 2000 near London. Her death registration index gives her birth date.

Alfred Henry Scutts (1879-1963, s/o Alfred Charles Scutts and Mary Louisa Gardiner) married Gertrude Jessie Archer in Kent in 1901. They had 4 sons before departing for Australia in July 1912, arriving Sydney in September 1912. One of the sons, Percy died in 1936 in Sydney. Percy’s death notice in a Sydney newspaper made note that Alfred and Gertrude must have been estranged because she was back living in Kent. Eva married in Kent in 1940, and Gertrude and the other three sons died in Kent between 1964 and 2004.

Gertrude Jessie (Archer) Scutts (1879-1964) was the last child of John Archer (1836-1882) and Ensley Bailey (1841-1907). Gertrude’s oldest sister was Mary Ann Ensley Archer (1860-1923) who married Harry Steadman Pearson (1858-1917). Their youngest daughter, Florence Mary Ann Ensley Pearson (1889-1951), did not marry Alfred Scutts but married Ernest E. Page in 1917.

So you know how the Stedman connection comes in… Harry Steadman Pearson is a grandson of Capt. James Stedman and Mary Catherine Edgecombe and great-grandson of Phillip Stedman (of Sevenoaks, Kent) and Susannah Tarbut.

In laying this correction out, I may have made the discovery process seem simple. It wasn’t. I first needed to work up Alfred Scutts’ genealogy in England. It was my good fortune that Alfred Scutts is not a common name! I also had to review all of the details I had for Florence’s family, including finding people in the 1911 census. From this, I discovered that Florence had married in 1917 in England so I was fairly certain she had not gone to Australia. I needed to find when Alfred went to Australia and what was going on with his family there.

I had to prove that Gertrude Jessie Archer and Mary Ann Ensley Archer were related. They were born so far apart that Mary Ann was married about the time Gertrude was born.

Then I had two great contacts in Australia locate the birth registration for Eva (1913 NSW births are not yet released on the web site but are available from some old CDs) and other details of the family in Australia, including evidence that at least part of the family had returned to England before Eva was married.

I stress, when I am teaching genealogy techniques, to find the names of spouse parents. All too often when understanding a spouse’s family, you will learn about hidden cousins.

This example also teaches that family legends might have a grain of truth in them, and, when researching family legends, it is important both to find the correct genealogy and to find out what might be the basis for the legend.

Let me give a shout out to Warwick Anderson and John Graham in Australia and Nick Stedman, David Stedman, and Carl Russ in the UK for their help with this analysis. And help with other issues that I will report from time to time.

John Lisle
Nashua, New Hampshire

  3 Responses to “Mick Jagger is not a Stedman Descendant!”

  1. I guess my father’s love the Stones is not as easily explained as it was before… 🙂

  2. Hi all interesting info and correct as far as I can see…..tho no mention of me…but then why should there be?
    Chris jagger

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