| John Forster and Emma Treays | see Family Tree | (generation 19 JF&E Emma = John) |
Emma was born during 1833 in Stoke Damerel the daughter and only child of
Peter Treays and Susanna Phillips
and granddaughter of
Samuel Treays and Mary Souther.
She was baptised in the
Morice Street Wesleyan Chapel/Church
in Devonport [Baptismal record ‘Treayes’.]
After her mother Susanna died, she appears to have lived with her
widowed father until at least 1851.
In 1855, as Emma Treays, she married John Foster/Forster in Plymouth. Her husband had been baptised in
North Hill, Cornwall in June 1831, the son of Richard Forster and Mary Basset who had married there in 1821. He was probably, like
Emma's father, working in the Police Force when they married. In the 1861 census he is recorded as John Forster, a metropolitan police constable, living with Emma and two
children in Stoke Damerel.
The next record we have of Emma is in the 1871 census return where she is recorded in the Devon County Lunatic Asylum in Exminster as
'Emma Foster, patient, married, age 36, housewife, born Devonport'. She appears there in the 1881 census as 'Emma Forster, patient, married, age 47,
wife of a policeman, born Devonport' and in the 1891 census also as 'Emma Forster, 57, single, no occupation listed'. She appears to have
died there in 1901 aged 67 before the census for that year was taken. Currently no information has been found to throw further light on
what physical or mental trauma led to Emma's sad fate.
The census returns until 1891 show that her husband John continued working as a policeman living in Stoke Damerel in 1871 and living in
East Stonehouse in 1881 and 1891. In the 1891 census he is, like Emma, recorded as a single person.
John and Emma appear to have had at least three children, two of whom survived infancy: -