I believe Joseph Grice was born in 1790 in West Bromwich to John & Hannah Grice. Initially I knew that Joseph's father was called John and was a 'gun implement maker' (From the certificate of Joseph's second marriage to Sarah Carrington)

There is an IGI record giving his birth as 25th December 1790 which I chased up at Birmingham Central Library and confirmed that the baptism did take place and  is noted in the 'All Saints', West Bromwich Parish Register.  The other children born to John & Hannah are also recorded in the same register. Of particular significance in terms of confirming John & Hannah as Joseph's parents is the baptism of Isaac in 1798. I'm confident that this is the Isaac Grice that Joseph was visiting in 1841 on the night of the census see later.

Having found the record of Joseph's birth along with all his siblings I was confident that the marriage record for John & Hannah would also be found in the All Saints register. However there is no record of such a marriage.... but there is a marriage of a John Grice & Hannah Gilbert recorded in St Mary's Handsworth Register on  12th November 1788 . As these two parishes are adjacent to one and other I now believe that this is the marriage of Joseph's parents John & Hannah. It would be nice to find some reference to John's occupation - need to keep looking!!

Anyway, moving on, I believe Joseph married Esther Gilbert in 1817 in Birmingham St Phillips, there were two witnesses - Hannah Worley & John Grice (probably Joseph's father or younger brother). In all Joseph & Esther had ten children before Esther died in 1838. In the twenty one years they were married Joseph's occupation was variously recorded on his children's birth records and commercial directories of the day as a wood screw maker or carriage bolt maker. This may well have influenced his eldest son, John, to start up his own coaching business which by the time of the 1861 census was a flourishing Axletree making business employing eleven men and nine boys. The business apparently continued, in one form or another, for at least one more generation through two of his sons, John & Joseph who were both coachsmiths and by 1881 John was employing forty five men and eight boys in the business.

Esther died before the first census in 1841 and for some time I believed that Joseph had suffered the same fate, I could find no record that seemed to match his name, age and occupation. The only potential matches were:

I won't bore you with the details but suffice it to say that I am now pretty certain that in 1841 Joseph and his eldest son John were both visiting Joseph's brother Isaac and his family at their place in Surrey! and, by the way, this is the Grice family (Isaac that is) who's children emigrated to Australia in the mid 1800s and started a Grice dynasty in the antipodes! - and finally, by 1851 Joseph had been widowed and had remarried, this time to - Sarah Carrington.

In the 1851 census Joseph & Sarah were running the grocery business and had two of Joseph's daughters, by his first marriage, Eliza & Martha living with them. Joseph died aged about 60 in 1852 and was buried in the same cemetery as his first wife Esther.

By the 1861 census, about ten years after Joseph's death the grocery business was apparently being run by Eliza & her husband Samuel Baker. However Sarah was living with them and she continued  living with her stepdaughter's family until at least 1881 when she appeared in the census of that year aged 79.