The Merrie Family
Ever since I saw the family bible we own from the Merrie family, I’ve become fascinated by them.
A rough outline of the family begins with William Merrie, born in Old Cumnock, Ayr, Scotland in 1774. He served in the Royal Scots Greys as a Quartermaster and seems to have travelled the country quite widely.
He married Lucy Green on the 6th August 1805 in Romsey, Hampshire.
From there onwards, I can place him at York in 1806, Edinburgh in 1808, Dublin in 1810 and then he seems to have settled in Romsey, probably when he left the army in 1810, until he died there in 1855.
He also seems to have been the schoolmaster for Romsey Free School for some time.
The various items passed down to my family seem to have come from his eldest daughter, Eliza Lucy Merrie (my 4th-great-grandmother), but I don’t really know what happened to the rest of the family.
There is a George James Merrie listed as living in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, who is one of his sons. Otherwise, the male side of the Merrie family seems to have died out, with quite a short lifespan for most of them. Unless you know better?
The Merrie association with Romsey is also raising a few questions for me. Despite the IGI listing quite a few Merrie family members being born there, I couldn’t find many mentions in the transcriptions of the Romsey parish registers. I’m not familiar with the area around Romsey, so perhaps he was living just outside the boundaries?
If you know of any Merrie related people I'd love to hear from you