The last grandchild

I rarely get to do much on my Scotts, the family of James Scott and of Miriam Bond.  We know so little James, though his name was given to several grandchildren and beyond.  A descendant in South Africa, Rev'd L S Creed, baptising his daughter with middle name Scott, 1918, the same one he had.

Then came his will in 1995.  The pitiful estate duty extract on poor-contrast microfilm gives us a wealth of genealogical data.  He names three daughters Betty Haine, Sarah Boyce and Martha Crud.  In addition he names a grandson, and also Francis Scott.  Francis was nominated executor, and revealed as a brother on this tiny scrap of film.

I'd never heard of the Boyces, but the name Crud.  I looked again, could that be.... it was CREED, in fact the name of the main family I was researching!  Betty's granddaughter married Martha's grandson sixty years later, and I am their descendant, so this document explains the connection very nicely.

I tracked the Boyces to London, their most prominent son having left an administration.  A trip to Guildhall Library gave me his address, and then, oh joy the 1871 census which led me to descendant Celia with whom I had many years of happy correspondence.

1. Betty had: James, Frances, Miriam (dy); William, Sarah, Mary Ann, Ann, Elizabeth (dsp); Martha, Susanna, Jane (issue). All discovered 1992 and traced, except Elizabeth whose fate, in Port Antonio, Jamaica, I did not learn till 2002.  The clue here being an old newspaper article about William:  ‘As brother-in-law of a West Indian missionary, he fittingly occupied the chair.’  I leapt to the, correct, conclusion that Elizabeth had married a Methodist minister, and found that his movements matched an 1881 census entry for his third wife and issue.  Solved.

2. Martha had Elizabeth (dy); James (?), Ann (dsp); Mary, Thomas, William, Sarah, John (all with issue).  Three were identified prior to 1992 by cousins.  Thomas raised his head later, and was not inked in till 1998, when a census finds him a very old man in Kent.  The final three of Mary, John and Ann were the result of searching for 'born West Pennard' on the Ancestry database.  Ann resisted capture until 1901, when she is found living with Sarah's children as their housekeeper.  Because the original 1901 census production was so dreadful, I missed a lot of clues, it being too expensive to look at the actual records.  Solved bar James.

3. Sarah had Martha, Hannah, Miriam (d in their 20s/30s); Sarah, Elizabeth, Stephen (dsp); James, Francis (issue). All discovered 1995 bar two.  We found Sarah's marriage in the Ancestry/LMA index, but Elizabeth’s marriage has so far only been indexed at the GRO.  I solved her only in 2012.  So it Sarah and her surviving children went to London in about 1830.  We do not have records for her husband in the capital but I think he was there.  Two nephews plus a niece, later came to London.  Now solved.