Origins of surname
This surname has nothing to do with the present-day English word 'eager' but is derived from the personal name Edgar, which was originally 'Eadgar', composed of ead = 'prosperity' or 'fortune' and gar = 'spear'. Presumably the early Edgars used their spears to become prosperous. We have treated Edgar as a distinct family with its own page.
Early records
The marriage of William Eager to Jeanne Le Masurier was recorded in St Clement in 1567, but not followed by any baptism records. The next appearance of the name was in St Helier in 1827 with the baptism of the first of three children of John Eager and Catherine Hester. None of their sons appears to have married and had children in Jersey.
It was another Eager, who came from Devon in the 1870s, who started the family shown in the tree below.
Variants
- Eager
- Edgar, a separate family
Family records
Family trees
Church records
- Eager baptisms in Jersey
- Eager marriages in Jersey (groom)
- Eager marriages in Jersey (bride)
- Eager burials in Jersey
Great War service
Notes on our list, abbreviations used etc
- Clarence Arthur Eager MM (1887-1945) (St H) son of Joseph Charles Thomas Eager and Fanny Quenault, Sergeant, Northumberland Fusiliers, wounded twice
- George Eager, Private, Australian Infantry, discharged with eyesight problem before leaving Australia
- Joseph Charles Eager (1899- ) (St H) son of Nicolas Charles Francis Oscar and Amelia Monamy, Private, Labour Corps
Family histories
- Joseph Charles Eager, the amazing life of a man who came to Jersey to work in the oyster fisheries at Gorey, was shipwrecked three times in one year, served as a 70-year-old civilian in the battlefields of the Great War and received medals from French Marshal Petain and King George V.
Occupation records
Family wills
These wills created by members of the Eager family are now held by Jersey Archive. By visiting the archive site and using the names, dates and reference numbers shown here, it is possible to view a copy of each will. You will have to subscribe to the Archive's online service to do this. To find out more about this collection, which covers the period from 1663 to 1980, and how to search for your family's wills there, visit our Jersey wills page
- Catherine Eagar of St Helier, widow, bequeaths to the Reverend William Bullock her property in Elizabeth Place, St Helier - 10 December 1870, D/Y/A/35
- John Eagar of St Helier - 31 July 1865, D/Y/A/32
Burial records
Family album
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Tips
The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.
We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling
The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.
New records
Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form
A--B--C--D--E--F--G--H--I--J--K--L--M--N--O--P--Q--R--S--T--U--V--W--X--Y--Z
Notes and references
- ↑ Florence does not fit into the Eager family tree above. She was the daughter of Robert Eager (1841-1908), from Ireland, and Alice, nee Burgess (1843-1925)
