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Showing posts with label FAMILY HISTORY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FAMILY HISTORY. Show all posts

4 Nov 2017

The Three Counties Challenge

Come on then folks! Which of your forebears do you reckon qualifies for the Three Counties Challenge? Entrance qualifications are simple: they need to have exactly three counties of origin! Here are my four contenders who had a massive impact on my tree.

(1) My first forebear was my grandmother Mary, born 1921 in Cheshire. She has ancestry in Somerset, Cornwall and Norfolk, which impressed me very much at the time.
Q. What brings these genes together?
A. Methodist ministers marrying girls from 'out-of-county' two generations in a row.

(2) Then we go back nearly a century to Dad's great-grandma Annie Gibson, born 1836 in Allendale, near the geographical centre of mainland Britain, but far north of anything I'd heard of before. She brought three new counties to the yard: Cumberland, Northumberland and some part of lowland Scotland, most likely Dumfriesshire. I can't help thinking of John Peel with his coat so gay, out hunting in the Cumberland countryside when I think of this line.
Q. What brings these genes together?
A. The uber-meddling Christopher Bird, vicar of Chollerton, who pulled my relatives across the Pennines. Then a certain knee injury on the railway in 1844, which proved fatal, and which spat poor Annie back the other side of the Pennines again.

(3) We reverse another 25 years to the birth of Blanche Morton, my Grandpa's great-grandmother, born about 1811 in Newport, south Wales. She brings Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire and, much earlier, Carmarthenshire to the table. This is an impressive haul, and without her, I'd really have no proper Welsh ancestry at all, so big thanks go to Blanche on this one. As a bonus we have her photo too.
Q. What brings these genes together?
A. Water and boats. The boatbuilder moved along the coast and up the rivers, marrying and moving as he went.

(4) It's now time to put the time-machine back in fast rewind, to get back another whole 43 years before this. That's right folks, we need to whoosh past Trafalgar, the French revolution and even American independence, back to 1768. I'm sorry it's a little cold out here, with the mini ice-age just having left and we're only halfway through the hundred years of Georges.

It's time to introduce Nathaniel Gee, born in West Bromwich in 1768. His birthplace is not somewhere I expected to find on my tree - ever. My family have managed to avoid the Midlands, carefully skirting around it, but Nathaniel is born slap-bang in the middle, just as the industrial revolution is hitting. Exciting times, no doubt. Nathaniel provides yet another three new counties: Cheshire, Staffordshire and the much earlier Shropshire.
Q. What brings these genes together?
A. The magnetic pull of Wolverhampton and its satellites, sweeping ironworkers into town. And more importantly, water and boats. The boatbuilder moved around the canal network, marrying and moving.

The final list of counties hauled in by these individuals is impressive: Somerset, Cornwall, Norfolk, Cumberland, Northumberland, Dumfriesshire (probably), Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, Carmarthenshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. And the causes were Methodism,  a meddling vicar, a trapped knee, and plenty of boats on the water.

Can any of your ancestors pass the three counties challenge? I'd be interested to hear about them.

30 Aug 2016

Speculative Search in Australia: The Tale of Rosa Jones

From the helpful will of Jane Elizabeth Jones, I could piece together that her sister, Charlotte Jones had sailed for Adelaide in the 1860s and had married at the Mount Barker Inn (or very near) to Mr Tydeman, the innkeeper.  Great!  That certainly beat trying to second guess where Charlotte might have gone, and to then find her in that mystery location.

That meant I'd ticked off the following Jones children: Jane, Charlotte, Mary (a spinster), Amelia (in an asylum), Elizabeth (a grocer's wife), William (went to Tasmania), Edward (deceased).  Hold on, this was not a complete list. 

There was still REBECCA Jones unaccounted for.  Uh oh - she could have gone anywhere in the whole world, or stayed behind in St Peter Port.

Actually she couldn't have stayed behind in St Peter Port as I had combed through all the BMDs for that town and for Guernsey as a whole and there are no spare Joneses hanging around AT ALL.

What if Rebecca had made a similar journey out to Australia that her sister Charlotte had?  Time for another speculative search.

Rebecca Jones marrying South Australia some time around 1865 (give or take)

With this thought, all the hard work had been done.  As Iris Murdoch would say, the story has already been written - now it just needs to arrive on paper.

Her full name was given as Rebecca Rosa Jones, not her birth name, but indicating she preferred to be known as Rosa.  In fact it is as 'Rebecca Jones' that she crossed the oceans but as 'Rosa' that she appears in her last British census entry, at Redhill Surrey.

This might not seem much to go on, but the revelations didn't end there. Her first son was given the middle name of 'Welford', which when I found this (at around 1am) meant that the chances of sleep were going out-of-the-window. 

Welford was the cousin who took on the remote west Queensland valley lands and gave his name to Welford Downs out there, around the time Rosa was reaching Adelaide.  Unfortunately he'd been a little bit too trusting or lacking an understanding of the indigenous migration patterns and been killed.  The book Early Days in North Queensland gives a bit more background to the time.

We also learnt that Rosa's passage had been paid because she was from a family with lots of women in, and (this may be a non sequitur) Adelaide needed an awful lot of women to dilute the flagrant amount of testosterone out there in 1860.  The Archbishop of Adelaide was losing his hair over the problems with his wild flock and wrote asking for 'shiploads of women' to come out 'as soon as possible'.

She arrived on the Emigrant in Spring 1854 with 42 others from her native land (Guernsey) including a multitude of the promised single women of good character.  The Archbishop was delighted.

More about the period with some actual quotes are here:
http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/manning/sa/immigra/misc.htm
http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/australia/SAassistedindex.shtml

Rosa has plenty of descendants from her marriage to a Devon shoemaker and unlike Charlotte's, a chunk of these are still in Adelaide.

24 Aug 2016

Finally found my Danish cousin, born 1900 Nyborg, living Copenhagen 1921

After years of Googling, I hit the right combination of key strokes and have found a reference to my cousin May Park Sørensen under her full name May Augusta Park Sørensen, born 21 May 1900 presumably at Nyborg, Svendborg, Denmark, living in Copenhagen 1921 and 1922.

This information is from the website http://www.politietsregisterblade.dk which seems to have attracted some rather puzzled forum posts in the last year or so.  I was pretty glad to get the following sniplet out of it before it shut me down completely.

If anyone can help track this lady onward I'd be most appreciative.  At least I know now the country in which she resided.

UPDATE: now found her brother in the same resource and May's entry in the 1921 census in the main shopping street of Copenhage: Østerbrogade, see the image below.

Facts

1) daughter of Holger Johannes Sørensen 1871 ('corn merchant') who married in Edinburgh, Ida Augusta Park 1872- before 1922; and sister of Carl Frederik Sørensen.  Nothing known about these individuals onward from the above dates.  These slim details already published on my website's family pages.

2) named with her brother in the will of grandmother Augusta Park which was dated about 1922

I think this was her brother, who is listed here as musician in Odense, Carl Frederik Sørensen born 13 Dec 1897 at Nyborg, just about ten months after his parents married in Edinburgh!
 The 1921 census
And for the brother (both in Copenhagen)
 The dad is in hospital in Middelfart, the other side of Odense, a widower and seemingly a former grocer.  For some reason he is in the index but Copenhagen does not yet seem to be.

Genealogy Potluck Picnic: Creating Speculative Searches to Find Missing Records Online

or Inspiration in Family History
In this day and age we live with a multitude of resources at our finger-tips, some would say too many.  There are 55 million records for William Jones on Ancestry, and 100 million entries for Elizabeth Smith, for example.
With all this content, I never want to leave holes in the middle of my family tree. I'm always on the look-out for something to move the story forward and today I'm making the case for good old-fashioned guesswork - supposition, if you will.  I'll show how using your intuition, and posing 'what if?' questions is a valuable dish to bring to your internet meal.

Our first two cases come from Wales.  Nowhere is 'just supposing' more needed, with a distinct shortage of names, few middles and a lack of other identifying criteria make progress a big challenge - until now!

What if.... family rumour was right after all?
When my mother's third cousin Sue let me see the family bible in Wales, 1997, I was pretty happy.  At last we'd get some clues about older members of the family, who were lost in the midst of time.
  She married a Hubbard in Swansea.
 
  She was born in Marloes, and her daughter Mary will be missing from the family home age 22..

These rumours from the family were just not helping.  There was no trace of Mary or Ann with the information provided from the bible, in the census and in death records.  Was it plain wrong?

Frustrated at the poor quality information about Mrs Hubbard I parked these notes.  One day, after coming back from my Aunt's house and seeing a copy of the rumours, I gave in and clicked on the nine possible marriages in Wales, and there in front of my eyes, was the groom, Mr Hebbard! (Mary had lopped five years off her age and faked her spinsterhood to make sure the marriage to this teenager went ahead.  Facts that were missing from the family bible!)
Ann Francis (born 1815) was still a puzzle.  In desperation, I looked at a map of Merthyr Tydfil, where she must have gotten married, hoping it would somehow help.  I noticed a community called Morlais.  What if Ann's birthplace had been misrecorded as Morlais, not Marloes?  Sure enough in 1871, the enumerator makes that exact error, and she is solved:
Mrs Ann Jenkins, age 55, born Morlais Pembrokeshire
But now there was the problem of Ann's missing daughter Mary Jenkins, who was not at home in the census aged 22.  What a common name!  How on earth was I going to find her?  I used my knowledge of the community to help me.  Nobody was going to afford servants or have an unmarried woman laying around the house.  If she wasn't at home, there were two options: dead or married.  So, let's see if she was married.  There were 40 married Marys in Merthyr of the right age in 1861 on FindMyPast - step away from the census, that's too many!  Yet, a simple click showed the first Mary had a baby boy Thomas Francis Bromham, bearing the family name of Francis.  Logic had paid off, but with the downside that I needed to fork out £9.25 in the form of a certified marriage document as proof.
Family rumour had been correct, and with some intuition about a tired census-taker muddling the place names, and the unlikelihood of a young unmarried woman floating around a town of ironworkers, our three mysteries had been solved.

Just suppose... there was a way in?
Still thinking about Wales, I was visiting a cloudy Black Sea coast town in the summer of 2012.  Hillary Clinton, who herself has ancestry from Merthyr Tydfil, had recently honoured an American study area in the town.  Around its black formica tables were gathered a number of Brits and Americans, soaking up the free WiFi and congenial company.  But my attention was elsewhere.
I was deep in nineteenth-century Wales.  I had fought tooth and nail to establish some kin of my ancestress Ann Morgan, born 1761, and I wasn't about to let them slip away.  I needed answers about Ann's five nieces, the Rees girls.  The way I saw it there was just one way forward.  Just suppose a Rees girl had decided to honour their father, Morgan Rees, and give his names to one of her sons?  I thought it was definitely worth a speculative try, on FamilySearch.
As if by magic, an entry appeared, Morgan Rees Price born in the Vale of Neath, 1810, son of Jenkin Price and his wife Jennet, formerly Rees.  This couple have quite a story to tell, running away to Bristol to marry and then becoming proprietors of Rutland Arms in the heart of Swansea.  I would never have found them without this imaginative work-around.  They will at some point get their own article.

I later repeated this strategy (2016) to find what became of her cousin, another Jennet - this time I thought she might have a son called Anthony.  She did.  So after eight years, I had a workable line taking me from Gwenllian Rees born 1751 to the Mid Wales Hotel in Knighton, Radnorshire 1930s and from this to relatives in the town this very day.

What if... I've been looking in the wrong country
Francis Harris, born Cornwall 1818, had been on my tree for years, but I wasn't convinced I had his story straight.  Living an ordinary life in a Cornish town?  I felt that my Harrises would work up a bit more wanderlust than that.  When I spotted another Francis born in the same year, I was even more suspicious I had mistaken identity.  I got my first wind of a missing uncle, and I was determined to hunt him down!

He flourished in the 1840s and at this time, America was definitely calling.  Not to mention Oz, Mexico and anywhere with ground worth mining.  So what if Francis had come to the States and had a family out there – after all I realised, his sister wouldn't be far away.  How come he had slipped through the records!  And here was the little entry I needed, the 1850 census from FamilySearch for Grant county, Wisconsin, a well known Cornish hang-out:
Even though there's nothing to trace this man to Cornwall, his wife Phillippi Rowe can be directly linked to Crowan, Cornwall, about 2 miles from where Francis was born.  Hmm!  I think this speculative search was successful.  But that wasn't all, dunking his name back into Google's watery index and there is plenty more on our uncle...
His 3x great-grandson Jonah Harris and myself exchanged emails over Christmas last year with snaps of our respective family gatherings and the food we were having (Brits on the left).
"What if?" had worked out for us.

What if... a puzzling initial could lead me to a missing cousin
Percy Creed Bell was born in 1874 at Abersychan, South Wales and disappears from every record available aged 16.  It is very odd to realise that his closest living relative is now my grandmother (and a chap called Alec in Glastonbury).  I found a trace of a plausible fellow out in the western States, name of Percy H. Bell, real estate agent, who sometimes gave Wales as his birthplace.  Could this be him?  I could find nothing at all to link the two men, except that no other record matched either one of them.

I got to thinking about the 'H'.  No offence, but Creed is a terrible middle name and maybe Percy had thrown it overboard along with his British identity. Percibly.

So, what if, he was really the Percy H. Bell all along?  And what then, might the H be?  By the way, this story hasn't even begun.  With Google's search bar waiting, I realised his grandma's maiden name, Hammond, would fit the gap.  And so I entered his name into Google...

Poor Percy Hammond Bell existed alright.  As a dapper young Brit, with soft pale skin (if he was anything like my Great-grandpa), he was learning Cantonese in rough parts of Los Angeles when he witnessed the slaying of Chinese gangland boss Wong Wee Chee, 1896.  The name of the murderer was whispered in his young ear, which sealed his fate.  LA was not going to be a nice place for Percy.  No sir.

SENSATION: KING-PIN WITNESS TESTIFIES IN GANGLAND MURDER TRIAL

The trial papers gave his parents' location as Ipswich, England, which fitted the facts.  Percy never again lived in LA.  His elder son was swept away in the Columbia river, 1920, and he himself was convicted of fraud ten years later in Oregon.  The whole family died out, leaving as mentioned, my grandmother as theoretical next-of-kin.

Just suppose.... the shipping list had a sister on it?
When Doug Jones sailed to Toronto in 1952, his parents came too.  I noted down all the details and very quickly had an email address for his son in Ontario, but nothing more came of that, and the email address no longer works.  Back to the drawing-board, then.

I got to thinking, as Doug's parents had come out with him, what about sister Peggy, just suppose she had come out as well.  She had definitely gone to Canada, according to the nosey-parker relatives back in Wales.

I had no easy way of finding Margaret Jones born 1919 and known as Peggy, but what if she was on that same boat, the Empress of Canada, the same day, with her parents and brother?  That could reveal plenty.  It was worth a search, on Ancestry, surely?

From this:
To this:

 
So, we were correct.  Margaret Jones became Margaret Roberts.  From the most common name in Wales to the sixth most common – progress!  This slender thread was enough to find her grandchildren in the Rocky Mountains, see Riddle of the Timeshare for more.  Without the helpful search of migration records, I'd still be scratching my head at Liverpool Docks.

For more successful speculation (after all, searching is free!) look out for the next article: What if the impossible is possible?

For more blog entries on this theme see: Genealogy Blog Potluck Picnic hosted by Elizabeth O'Neal.

And why not tarry awhile here on my blog: there are some great articles here and some terrible ones too.  Try the Popular Posts as a starting point.

18 Jun 2016

Great-aunt Mary in Wales: the gift that keeps on giving


Shaking the family grapevine in 1991 caused a whole load of rich fruit to come tumbling down.  I had to run to avoid getting splattered on the head.

One particular branch must not have been ripe, as no amount of shaking the tree was getting me the reward.

It was my Grandpa's Great Aunt Mary.  Such a straight-forward relationship, but born in 1839, she has great-grandchildren who are already great-great-grandparents.  It's my job to keep up with *all* of them, even though they are running three generations deeper than our side.  I needed family history dynamite to get me through the barriers.

Her grandson Tom Jones went to Canada and it took plenty of work for me to find that family. A granddaughter married three counties away from Swansea at the age of 40, and left me several surprises to investigate as well. I knew that another granddaughter lived in North Wales, but it wasn't until 2011 that I met up with this family, even seeing some photos.

One of the branches married a Davies and then an Evans. Only today did I get word I had passed through those choppy waters successfully.  Of the many gurus I met along the way, one was sure she'd had cousins Dolly and Molly, but I can't find trace of them anywhere!

At this point we have had two big reunions on this side of the family - and that's barely scratched the surface!  For sure, Grandpa's Great Aunt Mary and her tricky-to-find brood are truly the gift that keeps on giving!

If you wannabe my cousin

...you've got to know my Grandad.

The baby of the family, with cousins many years older, my Grandpa's infancy was enfolded with lots of skirts.  My Grandpa positioned himself as knowing very little about his family.  He even demonstrated this by writing two and a half sides of A4 of social history, with a couple of snippets about basic relatives, claiming that was all the knowledge he had.  This account mentions grandparents, one aunt, one uncle and his own parents.  Full stop.

However, in conversation there was his dad's cousins, May and Tom.  Then there was aunty Taylor, and there might have been a Rodda, and what about Tom Davies, and Tom Taylor, and Tom's daughter or niece who had the farm at Gorseinon.  All from growing up in 1920s Morriston, south Wales.

That wasn't even the half of it.  Photos clearly showed there was a Great Aunt Maggie, with flashing black eyes, who was grandma of two little girls.  There was Cyril the Methodist minister, a Lily who sent blankets during the war, and 20 years later a recollection about the youngest Taylor boy alongside a vignette from the time of the mid-Victorian goldrush.

Grandpa may have been too young to have everyone on a card index, but for an analytical man he was in fact the perfect vector of that wonderful virus - oral history.  His second cousin Cyril was in touch, it emerged, with their third cousin Ben, who I was able to phone way back in 1994.  Which was two years before Wannabe: that's practically pre-historic.

1 May 2016

1881 census to Facebook: Smiths are easy you know

Prologue
On the run from demon headmistress, I slunk onto the 2pm coach to Wales, July 2011.

A few days later I was in Merthyr Tydfil and this time I was the hunter.  Margaret Jenkins last seen alive with grandma, 1861.  Jennie Newman's wonderful BMD index for Merthyr sitting pretty in the library.  I snatched the data and ran off to the record office, hoping to learn her fate and still stalk the halls of the iron (Crawshay) kings before sunset.

I hopped from one leg to the other playing a verbal dance with the registrar's clerk, elsewhere reported.  Suffice to say I walked away with the name of her husband, Job Smith, and still had time to admire Merthyr's old buildings, pass Trevithick's statue and see Cyfarthfa's mountainous halls.  After a burger in the Wetherspoons of course.

Like the dead swan in the Taff's salmon-run, poor Margaret only flapped her wings once before death beckoned.  And she produced just this:



1881 census to Facebook
My initial vigour waned, as I noted not a single British trace of James Smith after 1881.
His half-brother is on an Ancestry tree as having died in Queensland, and I decided (in 2016) to investigate the siblings by the simple measure of clicking on their names in the census.  It showed at least two of them died in Melbourne.  Time to see if the whole family emigrated.

Yes - they arrived 2 April 1883, in, surprising place alert - Townsville, Queensland.  The older boys are listed separately on the same page.  All except James, that is. But he didn't die in Wales 1881-3, so where did he go?



 Turns out he did come out to Oz as well.  The death record of James Jenkin Smith (1931) with father Job and mother Margaret Jenkin leads inexorably to this, and other, electoral rolls, revealing two findings:
 

1) the house name, Hirwain, after his place of birth, and
2) he had a wife Margaret (which research shows was from the marriage of James Smith in 1893)
3) he worked on the railways, befitting his training working with iron

Later electoral rolls show his son (source BMD indexes) living in the area, as a manufacturing chemist and a granddaughter, who is shown as dying in 2000, according to The Age newspaper.

Great nephews and nieces are listed in the newspaper, but with no surnames how was I to find them on Facebook?  I had a street address but was keen to get an electronic connection - quicker and easier.  By re-googling the names of the great-nevry, 'Sonia, Michaela and Alister' I spy a further reference yielding their paternal grandfather's last name which they, naturally, share.

By plying this new information into Facebook up comes the whole family network, revealing the Smiths had become Hackett-Smiths, no wonder I'd found them hard to find.

Gratifyingly, the upward trajectory had continued.  The chemist had given way to the architect, whose sons are in design, and plastic surgery.

So Margaret, Swan of Aberdare, who flapped so briefly, and whose story we nearly lost, has helped build the City of Lights 10.6 thousand miles away. 
Creative Commons - flickr.com

17 Apr 2016

Never Understimate the Cousinhood

These are the stories of the cousins who kept in contact.  Second and even third cousins, who knew each other in the days of oral history, long before the internet.

Harriet was the niece, the next of kin shown on her uncle's death certificate, despite him having 5 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Nonetheless she was on the spot, as was her daughter Lucy (one of 12) who wrote a diary.  Lucy's daughter, born 1923, may still be living and may recall hearing of old Henry at the pub in Suffolk.  We'll never know.


 The 1911 census for Wymondham, Norfolk shows Edith Blowers living with her grandmother's childless cousin William.  Edith was born in Australia and spent a lot of time with her paternal grandmother in England after losing her mother at an early age.  Three years later, William's widow 'Auntie Bowgie' remarries.  This is recorded in the diary of Lucy as 'Auntie Bowgie marries her toyboy', farmer Robert Read.  They are together nearly thirty years.  Robert Read was I believe also in the house in 1911!
My grandfather (WH) said he knew nothing about his family, but we found snaps of his second cousins Margaret and Jean playing by the seaside.  They were similar in age, but lived in Kingsteignton, quite a long way from my my grandfather in Swansea.  I eventually found one of them living, by crawling the Kingsteignton phone book as a teenager.
 Just one of many branches 'met' over the years, the Balches from Milborne Port.  When I wrote to Mabel's daughter on the south coast, she knew about her great-aunt Julia's family (one had just won the Grand National) and had an address for Mary and information about great-aunt Louisa's three children.
In Salford 1890s, Hannah Garner witnesses the will of Ellen Carline.  I didn't know of a relationship, but they were first cousins.  Their children marry in 1893, Lilla and George, and both come to my grandparents wedding in 1930, London.  My grandmother's notes reveal that she DID know that they were cousins: odd that she never enquired further as she was making notes about record offices and repositories at this time (1960s or 1970s).
When I wrote to Rita (formerly Jacob) in north Dorset, to my surprise she seemed to be telling me that her grandfather Bart (died 1922) had a sister-in-law Belle still living (1990s) and enclosed an address for  Belle's daughter Florence, in Adelaide.  I later met both Florence and Diane at a friend's house in Bracknell, Berkshire (2002).
David Morton, boat-builder of Abercanaid on the Merthyr-Cardiff canal, had a sister Elizabeth who is named in the same breath, in her aunt's will as a cousin Mary Evans, wife of a plumber and glazier of Wind Street, Neath.  Elizabeth the aunt was Elizabeth Pengelly which explains the 'P' in the tree above.  It took some steering through the puzzling at times inadequate records of Cadoxton-juxta-Neath to sort out the relationship, not helped by Mary's missing baptism.
 Another second cousin that my grandfather (WH) knew of in south Wales, Cyril Mitchell, a methodist minister.  Cyril was the only grandson of a long deceased great-aunt (died 1879).  Neither of them had any first cousins (or at least any their age).  The boys were also technically third cousins, too.
This is the Harris tree of south Wales from the perspective of my grandfather (WH), showing all those relatives that he knew.  His father's cousins May and Thomas were childless but familiar figures from his boyhood - one a headmistress, the other family friend and provider of sweets.  He knew David, Rose and Maud (who had a farm) fairly well, and dimly recalled both Archie (quiet) and Tom (thin face).
,
 This is the Harris tree from the perspective of Doris Hanney (at the top of the tree), born in 1902 and living to over a hundred, she easily navigated the generations.  Nan was her mother's first cousin and they were very close, and the two Sues (their granddaughters) stayed in vague contact.  Mildred - Supposedly Doris was meant to go and live with the very rich Mildred in Buffalo USA during WW2, but a ship blew up and her husband forbade it.  WH (my grandfather) - Doris claimed him as a former pupil, and knew of his later teaching career, although my grandfather never remembered her.  May was a big character in the family, being the headmistress and Doris added the name of her niece, Winifred, nurse matron at Acocks Green, Birmingham, her second cousin.  She also knew that Howard Martin was a stained glass expert in Swansea, but didn't know the intervening generations.  Finally she had a vague memory or possibly photograph of John (top of the tree)'s nephew William Reynolds's wife, who lived down in Cornwall.  Great-granddaughter of John Harris born 1808 in Camborne parish, Cornwall.
 Ann lives in Pontlliw, Wales, and next door are her grandmother's cousins Monnie and Molly, granddaughters of John James Taylor born 1864 in Swansea.

 When I contacted Sandra in Macclesfield, she surprised me by giving details of second cousin Marjorie and showing me a letter from another second cousin, Ruth in USA. These are the great-grandchildren of Elizabeth Fox, born 1850, Starkholmes, Matlock.
Ernest Taudevin from Guernsey is visiting his mother's cousin Rebecca Buggins, proprietress of Buggins's Bath-house, Brunswick, Hove in the 1891 census.  Unfortunately he goes off to Queensland and dies age 22.  His name isn't really legible, but decipherable with care.  Great-grandson of Mary Speed born 1770, Ansford, Somerset.
My aunt Jane has always known a lot about the family but I can only think of one second cousin that she independently identified, Marjorie.  Great-granddaughters of John Airey born 1828 in Cartmel, Lancashire.

Every time I contacted someone on this branch, the name came up again 'Tom Golledge'.  Tom was an unmarried farmer in Hornblotton, Somerset, who passed away nearly 20 years ago.  Several members of this disparate branch had heard of him and even attended the farm auction held at his passing.  Great-grandchildren of Joseph Padfield, born posthumously 1835 in Holcombe, Somerset.


 Norah passed away in 2015, 135 years after her grandfather.  That must be some kind of record.  She knew her second cousin Joan well as children, as their homes of Southall and Egham were not that far apart and just four years separated them.  By coincidence these cousins retired to Dorset a similar distance apart, and did meet one last time before their passings.  Great-grandfather Joseph (whose grammar book I have) born 1811 in Somerset.
 Edward 'Ned' Dyke's mother's cousin Grace was also his older half-sister.  He would surely have known her children, particularly given his trade as a carrier, and they would be his second cousins.  Great-grandchildren of Edward Murrow born about 1660 in Wiltshire.
 When I struggled to find Mary's family in South Africa, I contacted her great-niece Serena hoping for a break.  I was not disappointed.  Serena had to-hand an address for her second cousin Natalie's daughter Pat in Durban, South Africa.  Great-granddaughters of Jacob Grist, born 1828 and settling at Poulshot in Wiltshire.
Cousin Richard in Gloucestershire well knew of the family link between the Haine and Corry families.  His father had worked at the company with his second cousin Leslie, who ties together a lot of people in the tree.
Norah and her brother were readily able to recall their second cousins Joan and Mary, who both grew up at Egham in Surrey.  Great-grandchildren of Joseph (born 1811 in Somersetshire), whose grammar book I have.
Florrie Jones quarrelled with her sister and moved in with her cousin's granddaughter.  She names Richard Davies in her will and Richard's daughter kindly explained the relationship.  Descendants of Enoch Jones (born about 1810) of Hendre, Llanelidan, Denbighshire.
This tree is intended to show the significant family connections of Cyril Mitchell (1918-1991), a Methodist minister from south Wales.  His really are the best-attested verbal cousin contacts all in a tight network which I found in 1995, long before the days of the internet.  Cyril's widow passed me on to his 3rd cousin Ben James in Plymouth.  Ben introduced me to his cousin Barbara, the family expert, who it later emerged had actually been married by Cyril.  Barbara also recalls Cyril's aunt Lylie, her mother's second cousin.  None of them knew WH, my grandfather, but he was the one who first mentioned Cyril - the Methodist Archives in Westminster had found an address for his widow.  Embarrassing to recall but I was actually disappointed when Ben James made it clear his Shuggs were TOO distantly related to be anything to do with my grandfather's missing great-uncles in the US.  Great-great-grandchildren of Edward Bowden born 1792 in Hayle, Cornwall.
Barbara was very knowledgeable about the family and able to provide me with names for her second cousin Phyllis's daughter and granddaughter, even knowing that Kathryn was in London.  She didn't know the intermediate generations but did recall another great-aunt Lylie (Eliza).  Kathryn's daughter in London is called Eliza after all these Cornish connections.  Great-granddaughters of David Shugg born 1827 in Deveral, Cornwall
Both Sues were at school with each other in Cardiff, I believe.  Their grandmothers had been, and still were, very good friends.  When I wrote to Sue (daughter of my grandfather's cousin Douglas) in 1991, she immediately put me on to the other Sue.  Third cousins, great-great-grandchildren of John Harris in south Wales, born 1809, Camborne, Cornwall.
 More third cousin connections.  Jimmy recalled once playing tennis with Margaret Green at South Cary in the 1930s.  This connection had stood the test of the generations.  Jimmy's grandfather Cornelius lived to 95 and for many years was close neighbour of Margaret's aunt Ethel in Castle Cary.  He would certainly have known of the family connection and took an interest in history, writing of his memories of the Crimean War nearly 90 years later in the 1940s.
 Nora James of Holcombe was the maven who knew everything.  She was once in a hall where my great-aunt Lowry, a retired headmaster, was speaking.  She was too shy to approach him.  I don't believe he knew of her existence, actually, but would certainly have enjoyed speaking with her.  He compiled a list of the 50-odd cousins of his father that he could remember, but missed out Nora's mother, not quite recalling her name.  Great-grandchildren of Benjamin, born 1808 in Holcombe.
 This tree shows the knowledge of Nora James, late of Holcombe.  She had a first cousin called Jack (who at one time taught the young John Lennon in Liverpool).  Now Jack's aunt was named Betty Jackson (born 1901 at Durslade Farm, Bruton).  As you can see there was a connection with the family, and Nora James knew this.  She was quoted as saying 'two brothers had married two sisters', Betty coming down from one side and her brother-in-law Jim from the other.  Great-great-grandchildren of Joseph Padfield, born 1761 at Holcombe in Somerset.
 In an old address book of James Brown (died 1930s, Bexhill, Sussex) was the name and address of his cousin Daisy Skinner, a hotel proprietress in the town.  James's granddaughter somehow divined that Daisy was indeed a cousin and google her, coming across my website and thus contacting me.  How otherwise would we have known of the continued contact in the family.  James was born in Somerset, parents married in London and grew up in Belfast.  Great-grandchildren of Samuel Flowers born 1786 in Deopham, Norfolk.

Rosa Lane left a decent will in the 1830s.  She was a draper, a Quaker, operating successfully in Wymondham, Norfolk, naming her cousins Samuel and Frances among her heirs.  Her information also led us to another cousin (long ago deceased), named Charles Squire, who was a printer at Furnivals Inn Yard in Holborn and who retired to Limehouse.  Her death duty records name all four of Frances's children as they were now the heirs of Rosa.


 This tree is designed to illustrate a postcard received by Ann in Salford in 1911.  The writer described herself as 'cousin Emma' in Sheffield but the address was not helpful and only family history gave me the answers, in time.  Emma Turner (by name) was keen to have an address for Martha and Florrie in Manchester.  History does not recall if an address was provided, but we suspect it was.  Emma passed away a year or two later.  In the previous generation contact was maintained with Hannah, youngest of the cousins by forty years, who passed away at her medieval cottage, Holly Cottage, in Eyam just after the war (WW2).  Great-granddaughters of William Bagshaw, born 1771 in Eyam, Derbyshire, a hundred years after the plague afflicted this village.

Young Charlie Carr was keen not to follow in his father's (four-times-married) footsteps.  Although Joe did find lasting love with his final wife, Charlie just married the once, picking one of Joe's cousins for the honour.  He lived and raised his family in Salford, staying in close contact with Tom Garner, his cousin, who had the successful motor business in town.
 When I met Alison the day after running the Marathon, in Canary Wharf, in 2011, she knew (of course) of her father's cousin Bronwen, but also of her second cousin Eiddion, though was unsure of the exact relationship.  Great-grandchildren of John James, born Morriston Swansea 1864.
It is nearly 100 years since Richard Martin mis-navigated the bend on the road at Arthur's Bridge in 1917, not far from Castle Cary station, on his motorbike.  I attempted to find the site earlier this week.  His surviving son (then an infant) spent a lot of time with grandfather Cornelius and also Cornelius's cousins once-removed Amy and Ethel.  Amy came to live with Richard's mother (now remarried and no relation) for a while, and Ethel and her husband were key characters in the town in the 1920s.
Second cousins marry.  In this case, Annie Edwin and James marry their second cousins William Arundel and Ellen.  We assume they did know of the family connection, as all were still in Somerset and both parents were living and would have known they were cousins.  Annie's son Leonard was given the middle name 'Scott' which was passed on to his daughter in South Africa.  Great-grandchildren of James Scott born 1752 at Chewton Mendip, Somerset.  Sadly, no contact was retained with the third sister Sarah and her family, the Boyces, meat salesmen at Smithfields London.
 Second cousins marry.  Elizabeth and William Creed were second cousins and again must have known of the connection.  They marry at Shepton Mallet in 1840, likely at the Methodist chapel there.
Second cousins marry.  Mary and Stephen Symes marry at East Pennard in 1832 and emigrate to Bloomfield, Ohio, very shortly thereafter.  They are the first of the family out there, but Stephen was reportedly not friendly to his other cousins (also migrants).  He also allegedly survived to fight in the American Civil War aged fifty-plus.  His family by Mary are now mostly in Texas,  though he did remarry, having further offspring in Ohio.
When George Maidment died at Plot Street Farm, Glastonbury in 2005 or so, his farming equipment was immediately given to the Somerset Museum of Country Life nearby.  Neither he nor his sister had ever married and in fact his closest heir was the great-granddaughter of his cousin Gus Maidment, who had emigrated to South Africa over a hundred years earlier.  Way back in 1868, when his father Fred was a boy, Fred's grandmother had apparently died falling down the stairs at Plot Street Farm.  I would at some stage like to see these stairs - morbid perhaps.
 Over a glass of wine I was given a reading from the family journal of Thomas in the above tree.  Written in Irish, it names in its pages cousins in America, including Miss Loretta Brodie and her brother at an address in South Boston, USA.  Diligent family history research later established that Loretta and Thomas were second cousins.  When visiting Boston I did my best to 'reach' Loretta's family through phone, doorstepping and Facebook, but was not successful this time.  But I did get to South Boston before it was de-Irished completely, thank goodness.
 Adrian told me he admired his cousin Rosemarie when she was a teenager, similar in age.  They were second cousins.  Great-grandchildren of Edward Harris, born 1851 in Swansea.
 When I 'phoned Joanna at home in 1992, she gave me details of her second cousin's daughter Rosemary later sending me a lovely postcard of her village with news that Ann had passed away in Holland (daughter of another second cousin).  Rosemary sent me a marvellous letter later that year, detailing her meeting with Gladys, her grandmother's cousin, in Cornwall.  'Tiny, dynamic and a very great talker' was how she described my great-grandmother.  Great-(great-)grandchildren of Henry Lowry, born 1810 in Truro, Cornwall.
 My father (DP) met his second cousin Miha on the beach at Enniscaul in 1950.
 To keep all of this in order.  I wrote to Hilda and Dick in 1992.  Hilda gave me up-to-date details for her second cousin's son Roger, then a canon at Winchester Cathedral.  She also had information (and a photograph) for second cousin Gladys, who had been a nurse in Weston-super-Mare.  Roger himself gave me an address for his mother's cousin Ernest.  I was somehow able to put second cousins Victor and Paddy in touch with each other, they had known each other as children and were both born 1909.  Their mothers, touchingly, were in the same household in the 1891 census!  Kingsley was ultimately Hilda's executor and know of to Dick (both being farmers), while Kingsley recalled his father's cousin Margaret coming to visit him in Kent some years ago.  Great-grandchildren of Benjamin, born 1808 in Holcombe, Somerset.
Somehow my great-uncle Lowry knew details of most of his second cousins and their offspring, at least on his mother's side.  On the family tree which he or his mother wrote, Peggy's married name is given, though not Una's, which slowed me down a bit finding Peggy's family.  Great-grandchildren of Henry Smith, born 1827 in Silfield, Norfolk.
Audrey (born in Walthamstow) was very knowledgeable about the family, and added in great-aunt Rosebud to my tree.  As Rose was away from home in two censuses I would otherwise have never known of her existence!  She knew the name of Rose's son and granddaughter, though sadly Janet has passed away some years ago now.  Great-grandchildren of Oscar Chappell, born 1857 in Evercreech, Somerset, married at 21 at St Leonards Shoreditch, and ranaway to Illinois USA where he died.
 In her will Doris Bishop names cousin Betty.  Eileen wrote back to me mentioning Doris and also I believe mentioning cousin Betty.  They were all second cousins of each other and great-granddaughters of Jane Chappell (1830-1925) who saw in the generation after these ladies before passing on age 95 in Somerton, England.
Margaret Pearce an accomplished artist kept some drawings she'd received as a girl from India signed off 'Nunky Charlie'.  I eventually established this was Charles Geddes a lawyer in Calcutta whose son Guy later sketched the landings on the Gallopoli beaches.  Charles confined himself to scenes more sutiable for his young niece, an umbrella blowing inside out, all his sketches being in and around the letter no wonder she was amazed.  Guy would be her second cousin and does I believe get a brief mention.  Great-grandchildren of William Pearce born 1770 in St Austell, Cornwall.
 Connie Brothers in North Carolina passed me so much good material about the family.   She was in contact with her third cousin Joy who like her was a great-great-granddaughter of Jane Pearce, born 1817 or so in Polruan, Cornwall.
My great-uncle Lowry was in touch with each of these ladies listed, his second cousins, and correspondence continued into the 1980s.  He may not have written to Joanna directly, but the other ladies did.  Great-grandchildren, a strong network of cousins, of Henry Lowry, born 1810 in Truro, Cornwall.
Leslie Haine is the anchor point here.  He had corresponded with his cousins Reverend Cuthbert Haine (in Pittsburgh) and Eva Haine (in Toronto) about the family tree.  He worked with another cousin, Maurice.  They were second cousins, great-grandchildren of George Haine of Over, Gloucestershire, born 1812.
In the family file collated by Leslie Haine, there is a letter from William Haine of Hartford Connecticut to Eva Haine in Toronto, then in hospital and not expected to live (1970).  Second cousins, great-grandchildren of Joseph Haine born 1782 in Somerset, England.
 Margaret Haine wrote a detailed letter (for Leslie Haine) in 1950 from her home in Limington, near Yeovil.  It is hard for me to believe, considering she was then a noted spinster, that I actually met her first cousin about fifty years later in Gloucestershire.  Margaret's uncle had married Frances and she was able to tell of Frances's father William Haine, met at the door of the church (on his second marriage) by creditors in the 1860s.  Her uncle and Frances were second cousins, great-grandchildren of William Haine born about 1752 in Somerset, England.
 When Florrie Jones had a quarrel with her sister, she was lucky to find a new home with her cousin's granddaughter Edna some time later (1950s).  Sadly I missed contacting Edna directly, though was in contact with her brother (my father's second cousin).  The sisters did make up in the end, by the way, and an actor in the series Emmerdale comes down through that line.  Descendants of Ann Bagshaw born 1810 in Eyam, Derbyshire.

This shows the connections of Rhoda and Joyce cousins growing up in north and south Wales respectively.  Joyce knew her grandfather's cousin William, writing of the house they had.  She also knew her second cousin Gwen, who moved onto property near her parents' old farm at Pencefnarda, Gorseinon.  Rhoda, being in north Wales, was not privy to this, but did know her second cousin Douglas Jones, born 1925 in Queensferry, who later (sadly) emigrated to Canada.