This account is mostly based on internet research, and occasionally on interpretation, guesswork and family recollections, and most recently on the research by Susan Appleby and Angela Welch. I have tried to link the facts together with speculation, and this inevitably leads to errors and dead-ends. If the facts that YOU know differ, please email me and I will correct later versions. And if you are a descendant of the Boccius family, I would like to hear from you - and that includes my cousins and their children, as we seem to have lost touch over the years.

The most fortunate encounter in my quest for information about the Boccius family has been with two other researchers, Susan Appleby and Angela Welch. Susan particularly has a wealth of Boccius literature and documents, which I will gradually incorporate into these pages, and Angela manages to keep in touch with other branches of the family. One fascinating document was Gottlieb Boccius's account of the origin of the name Boccius; his handwritten original is very hard to read, but luckily Susan has transcribed it, and I include it below.

If you would like to view a fairly comprehensive family tree of the Boccius family, email me, and I will then be able to 'invite' you to view the tree on Ancestry.co.uk. (My email address is boccius (at) ntlworld.com - put the @ symbol between boccius and ntlworld.com. Sorry for this long-winded way of writing the address - it is an attempt to stop the page being hacked by internet robots!).


THE FAMILY BOCCIUS.

The idea that there could be two families in London (or even England) with such an unusual surname is just possible, I suppose, but I think that most people whose ancestors were called Boccius are in some way related, particularly if their origin is in Saxony. (There are Boccius's in the far west of Germany, but I have never found any link with our Saxon ancestors).

Talking of the name, it seems that in Germany and other parts of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries it was common for university graduates to ‘latinise’ their names, so Angela might become Angelus, and Bock, Boccius. Gottlieb Boccius's explanation differs slightly from mine; this is what he wrote in the mid-19th century:

“Genealogy of the name of Boccius

The founder of the name of Boccius was the fourth son of Baron von Bock of Sonnenwald in Saxony ceded to Prussia in 1815. He studied theology at the university of Leipzig in the later part of the 16th Century and commencement of the 17th C (Ed: could mean 17th and 18th)

He passed his examination and attained his “Diploma of a Magister” but instead of taking orders he took up arms in defence of his country against Prussia and formed a regiment of Hussars at his own expense which to this day bears his name the “Bockschen Huzaren”.

During 14 years service he became a noted commander but at length, disgusted by the cabals and intrigues which existed in the Saxon army, he retired and again returned to his professional duties and became Pastor to the Diocese of Duben in Saxony (also ceded to Prussia in 1815).

He married in the name of Baron Von Bock to ....... but shortly after his marriage he changed his name from General Baron Von Bock to Boccius which, being a Latin termination, means also
Von; or of, Bock
– the signification of nobility in Germany. At that period it was not unusual for the junior branches of the nobility to change their names if they sought private life or entertained mercantile speculation.

The reason assigned by the gentleman for changing his name was that it was not fitting a clergyman in his profession to bear the calling of a nobleman and soldier!!

At his death, by marriage he left two sons, Gottlieb Wilhelm and Johann Gottfried, the former born about the year 1727 and the latter about 1730, both of whom studied at the university of Liepzig, Gottlieb Wilhelm, pharmacy and Johann Gottfried that of juris prudence.

The father (the first Mr Boccius) dying, the elder son Gottlieb Wilhelm turned merchant and established himself at Liepzig but his brother Johann Gottfried entered the Austrian Army in the Commissariat department.

Gottlieb Wilhelm married Rosina Eleonoria Kleinerton in 1756 at Liepzig by whom he had one son, Frederick Gottlieb, born 21st February 1757. The mother, Rosinea Eleanora died 14 days after the birth of Frederick Gottlieb.

The father Gottlieb Wilhelm Boccius continued to live single for some years in that town as a merchant. In 1764 he had to go to Russia and he placed a guardian over Frederick Gottlieb and left Saxony. Frederick Gottlieb was brought up as a furrier and merchant and traversed in a period of years Germany, Switzerland and France and when the last revolution of 1783 broke out left Paris for London where to his great surprise he found his uncle Johann Gottfried established as an East India merchant. This gentleman had lost, through one battle with the Prussians, £60,000 as Chief of Commissariat and which caused him to leave the Austrian Army and come to England, where after amassing sufficient to live on, he retired to Eulenberg in Saxony and died without issue.

[in 1797 crossed out] After some few years that Frederick Gottlieb had been established in London as a merchant he learnt with great astonishment that his father was still alive, practising as a physician in a small village near Rostock in the Duchy of Mechlenburg Strelitz when he had not heard of him for 23 years and had there married to a second wife by whom he had two sons. (One was 1820 Chief Councillor to the reigning Duke and the other a wealthy land owner.)

Becoming a widower again he married a third wife by whom he had a daughter and died in the summer of 1790 from the effect of joy produced by again finding his first born son Fredrick Gottlieb Boccius alive.

Frederick Gottlieb married Charlotte Scott of London in 1794 and died at Liepzig in1815 leaving Charlotte a widow. He left two children, Gottlieb born in Petersburg in 1797 and Angelica born in London in 1801.

Gottlieb married Caroline Frances Barth of London in 1834 at Fulham in the county of Middlesex. Angelica, sister to Gottlieb was married to Henry Pratt of Richmond Yorkshire in 1834 at Hammersmith in Middlesex and has no issue."

(Transcribed from the handwritten original by Susan Appleby).



In 1793, Frederick Gottlieb Boccius applied for naturalisation in London. He had been born in Leipzig, Saxony, and his parents were Gottlieb Wilhelm and Eleanora. Frederick was about 30.

Frederick probably came to England a few years before he applied for British citizenship, and must have had a practical reason for doing so; it might have helped with customs duties, for example.

In the 1780s, he was trading in furs, in London. By 1794, he was recorded as trading with John Steinberg as ‘Boccius, Steinberg & Co, Merchants’, at 10 Labour-in-vain Hill, in the City of London. By 1808, the company was listed as Steinberg Boccius & Co, of 10 Old Fish Street Hill. Both these listed companies traded in furs. Since Frederick Boccius died in Leipzig in 1815, the change in emphasis in the company's name (from Boccius Steinberg to Steinberg Boccius) could be because John Steinberg had taken over the sole running of the firm while his partner was in Europe. (Labour-in-vain Hill is an old name for Old Fish Street Hill).

Nowadays there are TWO Fish Street Hills, 'Old Fish Street Hill', and 'Fish Street Hill': for a comprehensive explanation of how Fish Street migrated from its 'Old' location towards St.Pauls, moving 500m down towards the Thames and Billingsgate fish market, this link is useful:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45070
If you can't be bothered, then sleeping pills may help instead.

John Steinberg was almost certainly a friend from Saxony, as there is mention of a Steinberg & Boccius company in Leipzig in the 1770s.

Steinberg applied for naturalisation in 1796. He was married, and his children were baptised, in Saint Nicholas Cole Abbey, the same church as the Boccius family used – the church is on the corner of Fish Street and Victoria Street, and later (in the early 19th century), the Steinbergs lived in a few doors away from the Boccius family, in Shepherd’s Bush.

Whether Frederick and John came to England as poor young Saxons hoping to make their fortune, or whether they came to England as RICH young Saxons with a fortune behind them, we may never know. The Scott family, into which they both married, was a prominent name in Hammersmith. Charlotte had been born in Devonshire Street (off Harley Street - then as now an exclusive area), so it was quite possible that the Scotts were happy that their daughters were marrying into Saxon wealth.

Frederick Boccius and his wife Charlotte were in Moscow in 1797 where their son Gottlieb was born. The church was the ‘Chapel of the British Factory’. The Factory was a term for ‘a trading station or an establishment for traders carrying on business in a foreign country’ – something like a modern trade fair. It was in Moscow until 1823, when it moved to St.Petersburg. What Frederick was doing in Moscow is not known, but it seems likely that it was connected with the fur trade.

Overland to Moscow would have been difficult and dangerous during the revolutionary period in France and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars. Going by sea would have involved travelling up the North Sea, and down through the Baltic, with a long land journey to follow. And was Charlotte already pregnant with Gottlieb during the trip, or indeed for the return trip with Eleanora? They returned to England for Eleanora’s birth in 1799, and Angelica’s in 1801. Frederick died in Leipzig in 1815, but whether he returned to Saxony alone, or with his family, we don't currently know.

The family lived over the shop for a time, in Old Fish Street, but moved out to the expanding Shepherd’s Bush. Gottlieb Boccius was living in New Road, Shepherd’s Bush, in 1841 (it later became Goldhawke Road). Steinberg ‘and girls’ were living in Goldhawke Court in 1848, and the Boccius family was still there. Who this 1848 Steinberg actually was, again we don't yet know. John had died in 1824, and it seems that only Christiana Steinberg was still there, so maybe that reference from the 1848 Post Office Directory refers to her (Steinberg) and her servants (the 'girls'). Further investigation will help. John Steinberg lived at Old Fish Street with his wife Maria until at least her death in 1814.

Even the idea that the family originally lived in Old Fish Street is speculation, but from the description of the property (taken from The Times of 1824, when it was being sold after John Steinberg's death), it seems big enough for at least one family, and possibly two (see below), and the speculation is backed by the facts that most of their children (both Boccius and Steinberg) were christened at the Nicholas Cole church, almost directly opposite 10 Old Fish Street.

Gottlieb, like his dad, was a merchant and general entrepreneur. In 1842 he applied for ‘a patent relating to gas and gas burners’, and in 1843 for ‘an arrangement and apparatus for the production and distribution of light’. (See ‘The Boccius Light’, below. This was from the first edition of The Illustrated London News, October 1842. Whether it was in the newspaper because they were trying to fill their columns, always a problem, or because it was a genuinely interesting object, we may never know).

In 1841, he published “A Treatise on the management of Fresh-Water Fish with a view to making them a source of profit to landed proprietors”. It’s only a 38 page book, but interesting to his descendants, including ‘German’ fish recipes. In 1848, he published “Fish in Rivers and Streams, A treatise on the production and management of fish in fresh waters”. I have a copy of the two treatises bound as one volume, probably 1850s (see picture of the title page).

He was commissioned by the UK government in the 1850s to attempt to transport salmon and trout fry to Tasmania, to supplement the apparently inadequate native fish stock. I have a reference to a paper he submitted to the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1854 on the problem of introducing salmon ova. Boccius's attempt failed, but the lessons he learned laid the ground for the subsequent success of transporting ova in the following decades.

He is recorded as submitting more patents to the London Patent Office in the 1850s and 60s, and died in London in 1864.

Here is a list of my immediate Boccius relations. I have deliberately concentrated here on those closer relations, leaving the cousins, second cousins, etc., to the Ancestry.co.uk family tree.

Gottlieb Boccius, m. Eleanora. both born c1740, Saxony.

their son:
Frederick Boccius, m. Charlotte, he was born c1765, Saxony.
their children:
Eleanora, 1799-c1800,
Angelica, 1801-c1875, and

Gottlieb Boccius, 1797-1864. Born St.Petersburg, died London.
his children:
Emily 1834-1917, Charlotte 1837-1921, Marion 1840-1926, Eleanora 1841-1930, Harriet b1845, Septima 1852-1944, Octavia 1853-1932, William, 1843-1873, (m. Susannah Fennel),
and

Frederic Boccius, 1838-1911, m. Ellen Babb, 1842-1905.

Their children:

Henry Alfred, 1865-1917, Mary 1866-1944, Ellen Louisa 1868-, Caroline Emily 1870-1940, Ernest 1872-, Charles Arthur 1875-1952, Percy 1878-1897.

Caroline, 1870-1940, lived with Hugh Allen, 1870-1926.
their children:

Barbara (later Thorpe), 1915-1992,
Lancelot (aka Bill) 1902-1973,
Eugenie (later Huck, m.cousin) 1898-1987,
Victor 1908-1979,
Nydia (later Lismer) 1896-1981, and

Hilda, 1905-1995, married Charles Ives, 1900-1963

Hilda was my mother.

Only two of Gottlieb's sons had sons of their own, hence only two possibilities of carrying the name Boccius down to us. One son was Frederic, the other was William Gottfried Boccius (wrongly written down as Boccins in the Saint Luke marriage to Susannah Eliza Jane Fennell of 1870). One of their children was
• Eleanora Caroline, born 1870,
Others were
• Charles Arthur.
• William Gottlieb, b 1875, d 1901, having married Alice Batten.

Boccius sometimes gets written down as Boccins, possibly by IGI workers reading copperplate ‘cius’ as ‘cins’. If you search for “* Boccins” in England on the IGI, you’ll find a reference to:

• Eliza Boccins, a widow, born 1847, living in Golborne Gardens in 1881. She is the daughter-in-law of Gottlieb. Her daughter, Eleanora b 1871, and her son William, born 1873, live with her.

Eliza Boccins is Eliza Boccius, i.e. Eliza Fennell, William's wife, now widow. She appears again in the 1901 census, as follows, along with these other household members:
Eliza Boccius, aged 55;
Eleanor Marney (nee Boccius), aged 30; (she seems to have dropped the foreign spelling of her name)
Alice Boccius, aged 25;
William Boccius, aged 2;
Gottlieb Boccius, aged 3 months;
Alice Southern, aged 59;
Edith Garney, aged 59; (could be Marney, misspelt?)


Frederick Boccius, my great-grandfather (Caroline’s dad). He was born in 1838, and appears in Tavistock in the 1861 census, working for the railway and lodging away from home. Family lore always said he 'married a west country girl', so he probably met his wife, Ellen Babb, whilst in Devon. He was described in later censuses as a 'foreman railway porter'. He seems to have lied about his age in the 1891 census, possibly because his employers would have been concerned that he was too old.