The two Janes are of different generations and not related by blood, but are both connected to the same unfortunate man. Young Jane is the mother of Joseph Edward COLLEY, who drowned from SD Research in 1925. The older Jane is a great grandmother on his father’s side.

I have sought to establish the parentage of old Jane, born who knows where or when, and have so far failed. In 1841 she is with husband John and all five of her known children, in Prospect Place, Filey. Her age is given as 38 but her death registration nine years later says she was 56-years-old. If that is correct, she was 33 when she had the first child for whom there is a christening record. In the absence of a marriage source, we can only wonder if she gave birth to children before William in 1827. And dying before the 1841 census deprives us of a birthplace more specific than “Yorkshire”.

Filey Genealogy & Connections runs with Jane as the wife of John Colley.

The FamilySearch Shared Tree is uncertain, offering three possibilities.

Mary and Sarah get the red lights because there are no sources to support their existence, let alone the relationship with John.

The third and the most compelling possibility has a “just Jane”, married to John and with just one child – the seeming first-born, William. With Jane JENKINSON, William has five children and two or three generations of descendants that bring the family into the 20th century. There is only a christening source for William and neither John nor Jane have birth and death dates. But they are both buried in St Oswald’s churchyard.

Sacred to the memory of JANE, wife of John COLLEY, Master Mariner, who died May 5th 1850 aged 56 years.

‘A loving wife, a friend sincere

A tender mother lieth here

In love she liv’d, in peace she died

Her life was crav’d but God denied’

Also, the above named JOHN COLLEY, who died Oct 13th 1872, aged 79 years.

‘Blessed are the dead

Which die in the Lord’

Old Jane’s parents may be impossible to find but Young Jane connects to a “super pedigree”. I don’t suppose for a moment that she knew of her direct descent from kings of Wales, Man, Mercia, Saxony, the Franks, the Goths, and the Visigoths. Take a pinch of salt, start here (where Young Jane connects to “Wrong Mary”), and see how far you can go. On my first run, I reached Julius Caesar and on the third Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni. Your mileage may vary.