Solving a Smith puzzle... using the worst English census!

Let me begin by confirming this was a real puzzle. I had *no* clue where Catherine Smith (born 1785) originated, and judging by her early death, she'd perished long before Victoria had even glanced at her throne.  Her granddaughter another Catherine is given in the above census, but we'll get to that.

I needed to explain the origins of Catherine Smith, as it looked dangerously possible that one of my Welsh fisher-widows could be responsible*, or some other woman in England, Wales or Scotland.

The 1841 census is the worst of the UK censuses, as the image shows, with hardly any detail at all. More often it creates even more questions, that can perhaps never be answered. But I would have been glad for its help today. Sadly, Catherine's early death rules her out from even this most basic of lists.  She lies buried at Cardiff in 1829, far far too early.

Little did I know that there was a nice little trail, a useful path, which if I found it, would take me right to the place and time of her baptism. This Smith had a definite point of origin.

The beginnings of the path lay with her daughter Elizabeth Hogg who seemingly married a Cornishman, Thomas Quick. Thomas and Elizabeth Quick are living together in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in that most terrible of censuses, the 1841.  There it is: above.

I would never have found them there except for a quaint forum concerning Cornish matters, of the name Azazella. My paths first crossed with Azazella some 20 years ago in the dawn of the internet.

Azazella's elves had no clue about the Smiths, but they've sure sewn up poor Thomas Quick. His life was an open book. Although they didn't have the crucial 1841 reference in Newcastle, their notes helped me find it.  They also supplied the news that Elizabeth Hogg had her daughter baptised Catherine Smith Quick...

Listed with the Quicks at Newcastle was plain William Smith with a rough age, useless occupation and no hint of marital status. What it did offer was the initial 'S' standing for Scottish-born.

The path now led me to the very next census where searching for Smith born in Scotland showed only one William still in the town, who had very helpfully just married, a lady who helped him run a pub. The marriage record for the 1840s gives his father's name (Ralph Smith) and so I was arrived at births of all the Smith siblings in Pitlivie, County Angus, including our original Catherine (1785).

Catherine Smith baptised 1785 Pitlivie, daughter of Ralph Smith

Probably the most frustrating Smith enquiry I've dealt with, now solved.  Thanks to compelling circumstantial evidence from several British port towns, linked by a seemingly dull entry from the worst British census. 

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*Catherine Rees born 1753 just outside Neath had a period unaccounted for following the death of a husband, the fisherman W Smith in the 1780s.  Because her son married a Hogg and the above Catherine married a Hogg too (living in the same small parish in Wales!), there was a real danger that my Catherine Rees could have given birth to an illegitimate Catherine in 1785, Wales.  Thankfully her dignity now remains intact.

The X chromosome and its family history surprises

I learn recently that the X chromosome contains no material from a man’s father and none from your father’s father if you are a woman.  This leads to the curiously imbalanced chart below, which you will spot contains a Fibonacci pattern.

Table 1.  This table shows the contribution ancestors make to the total (pair) of X sex-chromosomes for a female: I have italicised the female’s father’s contribution.

In my family, the female (my mother)’s F-M-F-M-F-M (father’s mother’s father’s mother’s father’s mother)and F-M-M-M-F-M, are by complete coincidence, the same person, Elizabeth Cock born 1770 in Gwithian Sands, Cornwall.  Elizabeth accounts for three-eighths of the material on one of my mother’s X chromosomes, and thus three-sixteenths of my X chromosome.  This is either 12 or 24 times what she ‘ought’ to contribute being only 1 out of my 128 5xgreat-grandparents.

My X-chromosome is made up of my mother’s two X-chromosomes combined.  My Y-chromosome has been passed down from father to son, down to myself, so my father did not pass on to me an X chromosome.

My sisters have a second X-chromosome, from their father, which is made up of their paternal grandmother’s two X-chromosomes combined.  A stonking quarter of this comes from one lady, Ann Charlton, born 1785 in Whittonstall, south Northumberland, our 4xgreat-grandmother.  She is their F-M-F-M-F-M.  As there are 64 people in this generation, Ann is oversubscribed by a factor of 16, or of 8 – if you treat this X-chromosome as being strictly on the paternal side.  Were Ann to have other son’s daughter’s son’s daughter’s son’s daughters (which she does, the Embletons), we could in theory identify genes on the chromosome for which she was responsible.
As the pair of sex chromosomes are only 2 out of 46, the fact that some grandparents did or didn’t contribute makes very little difference overall.

What a difference a decade makes

Censuses can baffle.  A happy family all living together in 1871 in Kyo, Durham were topsy-turvy in-between times and all squeezed up together with barely any shared constituents in 1881.  The surviving thread was Sarah Ann Southern.

1871 Kyo, Durham
William Southern, wife Ann, child Sarah Ann

1881 County Durham
Ann Southern (widow), daughters Sarah Ann, Elizabeth Ann

It appears the two Anns were the same, but no!  The ages nor the birthplace, neither match.  Ann was the *second* wife of William.  So in the space of ten years - a child had been born, the first wife died, a second wife arrived and the father died.  Whew - good going Southerns!

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In Norfolk, Maria Haythorpe's long-awaited death fails to appear, she marries John Brown moments before her death and he remarries, it seems even as the clock chimes the census enumerator's visit.  Not a clue left of that brief relationship.

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In Cornwall, Elizabeth Davies of Hayle helpfully lived with her aunt Sally the entire time, who had a rare name and made pinning them down pretty easy.  One of her daughters married in Dorset, and we're still hunting the other one (Mary).  Elizabeth herself doesn't reveal her death easily - till we find that she too made a deathbed marriage, and is buried under this name - without passing a census year on the way through.
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Picture my surprise at learning our respected uncle Joseph Carline was at the centre of a bitter custody battle over a deceased infant when he was very definitely a grandfather and a widower - or so I thought! Kindly Joseph was a widower in 1861 and on 1871, but not in-between. He'd raced up the aisle of crooked spire Chesterfield church knowing that any child he produced would inherit the sickly bride's lands, even apparently if it later died. He got to work and by 1871 the whole episode had gone, wife, son, land, Chancery case. Until I hauled the surprising paperwork out from the Cheshire mine some time last year. Curiously, his actual grandson a Ford worker at Dagenham was given the infant heir's name and died fairly recently.
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In Somerset, widow Ann Brown was happily living with her children Frecia and Effie and others in 1871.  Ring - bong - all change.  In 1881 the family have apparently reconstituted as:
1881 Ditcheat: William Stride, wife Rachel, stepchildren Annie and Ellen Brown!

What exactly has happened in between!  Only three events have happened this time 'tween the enumerators' call, though we have apparent name changes to deal with. Can you tell what's gone on?

A day of industry

An extraordinary 24 hours in the world of family history...  I found out a whole bunch of stuff.

* I had a reply from JM in Barrow whose wife was the family historian.  I was pretty sure she was the daughter of John Thompson and Mary Taylor - Mary being the one of a handful of Isabella Barton (1830)'s family to have had issue.  And so this proved to be.

* I had a reply from JD in Sherborne whose mother Ivie was born in Durban, South Africa, the child of Cornish parents.  It turns out Ivie had 5 children in the 1930s, all of whom are still living, and that she passed away in Zimbabwe.  I first heard of Ivie in the will of her grandfather, 1923, Bellevue Terrace, Tuckingmill about 15 years ago.  Only now is there this opportunity to find the family.

* I had a reply from AL in Dronfield, Derbyshire with very good information about my Kiveton Park relatives.  It turns out my Grandpa's grandma Shugg had a first cousin Grace Emmerson who lived at Kiveton Park.  This was not a country house but a mining village in the parish of Wales.  Her husband was not only a miner and preacher but builder too, and a son-in-law I understand became the colliery manager.  A granddaughter moved to the Dales immediately north of Harrogate where there are some large farms.  One of the family married in Jerusalem in 1942 when it was under the British Mandate.  The relative was working in the hospital there - it was wartime.

On the bus yesterday to a dear old cousin in the Mendips, the First Great Western bus wiggled its way past THREE of my relatives in the housing estates of south-west Keynsham.   Broad streets and plenty of bungalows with retired people actually sitting outside ('in their front gardens!').  I think K. Pearce is somewhere on Lytes Cary Road, but he didn't get my letter or so it seems.  Then there was Hutton Close which was home to my Mendip cousin's cousin Barbara, and then the very same bungalow became the property of a Mrs G. Alkins from Halesworth in Suffolk.

The thing is, GA is quite a bit more closely related, being descended from my 3xgreat-grandfather Smith's older sister, of whom he was quite fond.  To make it all worse, Smith died it turns out at the childhood home of GA's mother - who lived to 92 and who would certainly have remembered him.  I decided long ago I would no longer pursue contact with Mrs Alkins (now herself 90) because of advancing age.  It was nonetheless galling for the bus to gaily trip past Hutton Close and know that the only human memory of ggggfather Smith was there for the asking inside that bungalow.

In Bristol the same day, I twice jogged past CreedBet, which information online confirms is run by the son and grandson of my Granny's first cousin L G Creed, described at his father's death as 'turf accountant'.  Who would have thought that the betting gene would run through 2 more generations.

Two other short bits of story resolved themselves in the morning: the father and son both named Peter Hill, of Penzance were found, the father having passed away last year at Praze-an-Beeble.  I find it interesting that it was only the Rodda children who moved away from Crowan that had family there - Mary left in 1841 and Thomas the same year, yet the brother who remained has no family in Cornwall whatsoever (one, in Reading, only, and the rest in Australia).

The other puzzle being the deaths of William and Catherine Bell, Methodist minister and his wife, both of which took place in 1925 as per the Methodist records at John Rylands Library, Manchester.  Catherine's took place first a matter of weeks before her ancient aunt Jane; while William (who'd been ill for at least 15 years) struggled on till the end of the year looked after by their daughter Florence Sloss.  Catherine's early death dispels my fancy that she lived on until the war.  It renders impossible that any of the Sloss family in Bangor, Co. Down, would remember the Bells at all.  Florence's next of kin are none other than the Butler-Slosses of judicial fame.  It seems then that both Catherine and her eldest sister Arundel had, despite producing many children and some grandchildren, no heirs to continue - and that both lines are now extinct.  A most unusual situation.  The only grandson in America said he had no family and was buried by the Veterans' Bureau.  I spoke to 2 of Arundel's granddaughters on the telephone, before the line was extinguished.  But it is Catherine's line I'd really like to have known.

I messaged Yvonne F. in Florence, Massachusetts the granddaughter of Judith Marshall from Bodmin.  Judith was brought up by great-uncles and aunts as her parents had gone up to Ashton-under-Lyne with all the other children.  Judith alone remained down in Cornwall and died aged 97 in or near Newton Abbot.  Yvonne would certainly remember her.  On her Facebook page she had Exeter College listed as a previous place of study.  As I ran past this earlier in the week, I thought Yvonne would like to know.

The biggest mystery of the day to crack was the 3 Rose sisters of Decatur, Illinois.  I've been over the data, that I now have, and don't see how I'd have gotten anywhere without the October 2003 Decatur Herald and Review obituary that I located today.  I was at the British Library, renewing my pass (for another 3 years - hurrah!) and had had some success with the British papers.  I had definitely tracked down US papers from the available databases (ProQuest, Gale &c) and was determined to get something out of them again.

I followed the links to British newspapers from Newsgroup and then backtracked out of UK records to the US and was very surprised to find Decatur's Herald and Review on the list of available papers.  It claimed only to cover the last 10 years, but I found records back to 1992 or more.

My first search (under the Rose girls' father's name) yielded a result straightaway and I quickly went to the page (the above obituary in 2003) so I could capture the information before it could disappear.  The obituary (which was for the eldest Rose girl) gave me sufficient information which coupled with Intelius.com, Facebook.com and the Washington State marriage indexes up to 2004, meant I could construct trees down several generations.  The Rose girls were in a strong position to take forward the mitochondrial DNA of their ancestors the Murrows, though only the middle one is known to have granddaughters, but as these are married, the line may well continue.

Looking back over the resources, I definitely could have found this from GenealogyBank's collection (1990-) but would have had to pay a monthly recurring fee, so am kind of pleased I didn't know they had this article.

That just leaves the British newspapers, which gave my some surprising results, see next entry.

Miscellaneous marriage thoughts - Wales in Yorkshire

From the miscellaneous marriages listed on Ancestry:

I also found my lass from Wales, Kiveton Park, marrying in Jerusalem where she was working as a nurse in World War Two.  Yes the name Wales, Kiveton Park is probably the most confusing ever; even more so as it's often written Wales, nr. Sheffield, or Wales, Nottinghamshire or Waleswood.  Most county boundaries skirt neatly between towns, but Kiveton Park was a colliery that happened to sit on a border I'd never heard of - Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.  So it was able to flout the carefully planned registration districts, poor law unions and electoral constituencies.  It's heart and soul seem to belong with Sheffield, not Worksop (its notional mother town), but I could be wrong about that.

See Kiveton Park and Wales history for more.  I only stumbled on all this by accident, yesterday.  I was about to wrap up a letter for a South African cousin (now in Dorset) when I noticed at the top of the tree the string of SHUGG siblings, from Gwinear, who'd multiplied considerably through to the present day.  I noticed I'd never found marriages for Jane (1821) or Mary (1823).  Could modern research tools help me locate them?

I was embarrassed to find this:

Clearly showing that there were not exactly many of the name anywhere.  This was a great surprise.  I'd a notion there were legions of Jane Shuggs in St Ives all with the father's name of John and thoroughly muddying the picture.  The bad old days had you scrabbling with heavy volumes at St Catherine's House and locating one-off entries such as the one below, and having really no idea who they'd married, who they were (a widow, perhaps) or where they were going next.

The excellent Cornwall Online Parish Clerk database was actually my first port-of-call.  Confirming that Mary Shugg had died age 12, and that Jane was the only one of her generation, I was then launched into her modest-sized Trevaskus family who'd left Hayle, Cornwall for Devonport.

Missing from the censuses was their pint-sized daughter Grace who I eventually surmised had gone with husband Emmerson up to Kiveton Park shortly after her marriage.  The mines there were some ten years old: her sister had had an earlier spell at Harthill, 3 miles away, but the sisters only overlapped for a year as the elder one decided to go back to Devonport after she was widowed.

Their daughter married a mining engineer and it was their girl who worked as a nurse in Jerusalem during World War Two, coming back to England for the birth of her daughter who still lives in the wider area.

Some clarification about the counties from Wikipedia:

Kiveton Park lays claim to being in Rotherham Borough Council, has a Sheffield postcode, a Worksop telephone code, and has [Derbyshire's] Chesterfield Canal running through it, it also lays claim to being the smallest place in Europe with two railway stations.

Ends.

Tidal wave

Whoomph - the wave comes in and smashes into the defences.  Soak!  The deluge from Cornwall hits us on the chin and we stagger back.  Bash!  Another wave comes in from Wales.

This has been the last week of news from the Western portions of my tree.  Cousin Ray wrote in with surprising news - that distant uncle David Francis (1805) who was known to have gone to New York with his family from Wales, had sired a child by his second marriage aged around 70.  It took him about a moment to find that line, kinda thriving, in San Diego, California.  This is somewhat poignant for us - as months earlier Ray had found the last of the original line (from first marriage) dying with no known relatives in that exact same neighbourhood.

When Thomas Hitchens married Miss Thomas at St Blazey in 1838 we could see his sister was witnessing the marriage under her married name.  Three more sisters appeared out of the rubble, marrying at Blazey or in Tywardreath.  The last time we'd seen this family was in 1820 at Gwennap.  One of the sisters left a will, in 1879, naming a bunch of relatives and identifying for certain sure, that Sarah Hitchens wife of Martin Verran was Thomas's sister.  The whole lot are now the family, reunited, of my Sarah Hunter of Redruth (1782) by her first marriage to miner Hitchens.  It was only by sitting down and looking at this tree, that I got it sorted.  Somewhat embarrassing that it took me 15 years to get around to it.  So far we've only found family from the Verrans, in Shiraz- and olive- growing Clare, South Australia.

I've been lucky enough to hear from the Verran's great-great-grandson John Symonds in New South Wales, now 90, with one or two stories and photographs to help bridge that gap since 1820.

Then came a surprise email out of the blue from Henry Hunter, of the Goldrush towns out in British Columbia.  He left Cornwall age 12 in 1837 and for a while we thought he might be a missing sibling who would just slot right in to the tree.  Not to mention explaining the rumour of the uncle who disappeared and never said where he'd been.  But it's now thought he's the son of Henry senior a mariner from Mylor, near Falmouth, which would have given him plenty more opportunity to jump on a ship.

These Western districts of the UK sure have the capacity to surprise, and laugh at our supposed grip of events from the 1800s era.

Additional surprises came in the form of William Rapson Oates's life story (from a researcher who I spotted on my website) and in contact from the family of the centenarian on my Pearce side, Elizabeth Moss Bray.  (And on the same branch, Arthur Gordon Bartlett's wife finally becoming known - grew up, possibly on Robben Island and daughter settled in Zimbabwe.)  And how could I forget - finding my missing John Rodda, not in Africa or America, but in a pub on the Acton road.

mysterious Roskilly twins

why do these apparent twins have different places of birth? or are they ‘Irish’ twins?

using the Death Duty records at Kew

Harvey's will is disappointing, a very old dog.  It doesn't mention his accident caused by powder explosion, causing him blindness.  Nor does it give any clue to any of his nine children, including three and later a fourth, who would make their home in Australia.  The IR26 record, which I thought to get at least ten years later, is like a capricious Capuchin monkey in comparison.  Harvey's legal heir is named as Martin Harvey of Woolwanga, Fountain Head, Port Darwin.  At this time, land at Trevorgan, St Buryan, not mentioned in the will! is sold and his sister Mrs W Halpin, wrongly recorded as Wm, appears to have acted as attorney, i.e. next of kin.  The first step in finding these records, which run from 1796-1903, is to search the Death Duty index at findmypast.  You will need to know the year of death.

three countries and a Surrey phone book

Although this database proved very easy to search, it was not my first choice. Perhaps this and certain other good datasets, such as NSW deaths, should be a first port of call for missing 20th century relatives. However, I prefer to follow the line of enquiry as it comes. The first mention of Reg was in the Ancestry Immigration records showing him visiting the UK from India with his father, a goldminer. Second I found Reg's death in Surrey many years later. Third I checked for a will and drew a blank. Fourth I checked the BT phone books for 1984 and found an address which seemed to fit. Fifth I checked the current and also historical electoral rolls (the latter at the British Library), which gave me his widow and daughter's names. All three initials match the passenger list record below.  No wonder I couldn't find them in England!

The Tuckingmill Hotel and the Return of Eliza

The Tucking Mill Hotel, March 1851

A new arrival
At the hotel in 1851, someone is about to arrive, my great-great-grandfather, who will be a bouncing baby boy, the only one to survive the depressing wet, cold and stony damp. Cursed from birth with the Hunter need to travel, and travel far, it's fitting that in these waiting months, a visitor should emerge bedraggled at the young publicans' door.

Enter Eliza
Eliza Hunter, the publican's sister. She is one of the great unsolved threads in our tapestry.  Even here she is casually tripped over, listed most unhelpfully as Elizabeth Richards, widow, age 25, but seemingly on hard times, and not expected to survive, I would imagine.

A dangerous hotel
We see her here as a widow, stopping over with her brother who had the Tuckingmill Hotel, presumably not long for this world. She coughed and sneezed, it was a lot colder than she had been used to. This same hotel would I'm afraid kill the next 2 Hunter children, and the family would quit its ornery ways by the end of the decade for Bogota, Columbia, to let their travel genes run free. Maybe Lady Luck will be kinder there (ha ha ha).  Eliza we must leave with her widowed weed's tramping her way to the workhouse. Perhaps.

Many years later, in a mining town far away
Twenty years later one of the family was finding his feet in the gold mining boom-town of Bendigo. A young lad called John Hunter. Having lost his father in Columbia (a trip that hadn't worked out so good), John was now doing quite well thank you very much, being on his way to management in a factory. The factory made fuses to help blast rock away in the mines. A young girl caught his eye, Miss P, a Cornishwoman. Wise move, as it was the mysterious Mrs P who got John up the ladder in the factory. It is now 1870, twenty years after the stranger arrives in the Hotel.

What's the story?
Wanting to lay Eliza to rest, I rummaged around to find how Eliza had became a widow in the first place. She had gone out to Adelaide at 22 and returned two years later. She had lost both husband and son out there in Oz. This was not fair. Her cousins Amelia and Cecilia, born the same year, had followed Eliza out to the the great continent under the sea.  These girls had over 95 grandchildren between them, scattered around the gold fields. Eliza did not. She was sent home early. Back to the Hotel. Rain had stopped play.

The End of Eliza?
Was Eliza really ready for the long walk to the workhouse age 25? Was life finished with her? Tin and copper were at rock-bottom prices. But even Thomas Hardy wouldn't send her to the chop. I'm not so sure she dies, does she?

Eliza's Decision
We look back at that census from 1851 with the dingy old hotel holding the family together. The brother was ready for Colombia. Eliza could watch her brother sail and then offer to house-keep for their grumpy father. She did not. She did not sit on her laurels and mope! She married again.

The moment the 1851 enumerator left the Hotel with a 'kerchief over his nose, Eliza made her approaches to the tin miner Perry. She needs to marry him immediately. Timing is very tight. Two girls are born here, Eliza (now Mrs Perry) gets back on the boat for Australia and is out of the country leaving no ripples by the time the 1861 census rolls around. Vanished! No trace!

Clues lying dormant for decades
I say no trace... but I was missing a clue. Someone had been watching me. It was in fact Eliza who turns out to be the mysterious Mrs P, John Hunter's benefactor in Bendigo. As Mrs Perry, she had produced Catherine Perry barely a year after the census. They sailed together to Australia in Eliza's second trip out there. When her nephew John Hunter came out, it was ELIZA who proved his fairy godmother. She knew he would be gladly gifted the factory to own and run, provided he had a wife, Kate Perry say?, a niece of the currently elderly owner.

Grrrr
Because Kate Perry had been born in England but after the census years, rather than in Victoria itself (where parents names are publically online), I had no idea she was the child of a Hunter.

What we missed
The Return of Eliza, a woman not to be written-off, was there in the records all along. But so hard to piece together, it took myself and great-great-grandson Brett Pierce to put our two halves of the story together. We worked out this incredible woman emigrated TWICE, to different states/territories of Australia to become one of its matriarches: like her two cousins Amelia and Cecilia, fellow women of 1825.

By match-making her daughter to a trusted individual, the in-law's factory would come to him (her own sons being too darn young to succeed), thus looking after her own old age. She was not getting dumped in Australia twice!

Just one example of a hardworking Cornish woman destined for Australia who would not give up until she had got the better life, and would not settle until her future and her family's, was provided for.

THE END
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Further notes: Eliza's later children were born in Australia, with her maiden name of Hunter clearly announced. But what Brett in Australia didn't know, was where Eliza came from, as of course details of her first marriage never reared their head second time around. He definitely didn't know she'd come out before.And what I didn't know in England, was that Eliza had had this second marriage at all, as guessing the name of a new man, and then further guessing that they had gone BACK to Australia, were all beyond my powers of imagination.  I was just sure she'd passed away, in England, leaving no trace, and no family. Eliza had eleven children all told and many descendants who are just learning of her double emigration.  Her fertility is not quite in the same league as her fellow 1825 cousins, whose descendants recently tipped the 1000 mark; but still quite respectable and matriarchal.  She was now based in Victoria and it was through her brother-in-law Charles Perry that our young orphan hero got the work in Perry's Fuse Factory, Bendigo. The main mystery left is where her mother, Mary Richards of Wendron came from and grandfather Hunter. Perhaps we can solve it someday. You can read more about the Fuse Factory here. I have downloaded a copy in case the link disappears over time, like a lot of mining ghost towns.

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This article appeared in November 2011.  The following month, a few weeks before his passing, my grandfather remembered something of the Tuckingmill Hotel from his own grandfather, born there in 1852 just a beat too late to know Eliza. I found myself travelling back 160 years to the clattering streets of Tuckingmill, and my grandfather and I across the table from each other as he described the room. At least I think he did, but tea was served and we moved on.

Pearce sorrow

Lots has happened since the last blog.  Most of it in the last day.  Two bits of information came fluttering in from Australia, the land of surprises.  #2 first: browsing a highly unlikely tree on Ancestry with much of its information from the remarkable Australian Cemeteries Index, see the attached photo.  Piecing together the information, I found that Edward Pearce 1819-1860, farmer of Musquito Creek, Gwydir district left five children, when he died.  Did the mosquitoes have a hand in his death?  His widow remarried.  His only son was shot by Jack Brady in 1884, named Gwydir after the district.  One daughter died following the birth of twins, aged 26, another (the only one named in family wills) lived to be 54 a spinster.  That just leaves one of the twins plus her aunt Jessie Pearce to continue the line.  The tree online, the cemeteries index, the New South Wales vital records, helped make up for the usual problem: how do you find a child born AFTER the census, but before the emigration overseas?  It was this very child Jessie who is the matriarch, even when it appeared there were none left of this side.  I googled 'Musquito Creek' like crazy, but had I searched for Pearce and Gwydir, the story would have come out that much sooner.  For the boy cut down in his prime, is carved in stone: 'he cut me down in my strength and shortened my days'.  Whether this is a reference to God or to Brady depends on your reading of this piece of family sorrow.

Mines of Solomon

for years clues have been waiting for me to run and catch up. Rev'd Thomas Martin my ancestor left no trace of his family but did write a fat load of poetry. In his 1833 book, the Stranger at Home he writes about his brother Edward now passed away - at sea - and Mr Solomon Martin is one of the subscribers who promised to buy a volume. I fretted over these details for a decade or two but the answers have just broken through the cloud of poor deduction. Solomon lived in Devonport near Thomas and gave his two daughters exactly the same fanciful names as Thomas's: Maria Thanetta Martin, Caroline Matilda Martin.  He also confessed to being born in Penryn which is just a splash from the mouth of the Fal and Thomas's declared natal place. This data is being mined further. As a fan of Ned Kelly, the Australian Irish outlaw and scourge of law enforcers, or at least the Carey version, I was appalled to learn that Solomon's grandson Edward Castidine Martin of the Age newspaper had elbowed his way to Kelly's execution and thus an exclusive for his paper. He witnesses the death as do a lot of happy lawmen and compounds the ghoulishness by putting on a sellout play. But I'm glad this long pending mystery is now resolved thanks to the mines of data about Solomon.

Celtic connections

I have the following connections with Scotland:
1. Stephen and Ann Read, a soldier who worked at Stirling Castle and retired to Glasgow.  Their son-in-law was Postmaster General of Straits Settlements about 1910 and then at Glasgow.
2. John Wood of Hamilton, who married in Surrey to Theodora and whose children were born in Hamilton.  Only one decided to come back and live there.
3. Dr William Lyall of Edinburgh who married in Bromyard Worcs to Marion and had several children.
4. Robert Park of Edinburgh who married in Dorset to Augusta and whose children all married in Scotland though two moved on, one to Cheltenham, one to Nyborg Denmark having married a corn merchant.

I have the following connections with Ireland:

1. Rev'd William Lea, born in England, married Burton-on-Trent to Elizabeth and who came to Ireland to be the clergyman of Foxhall, Co Longford. Source: googlesearch, Irish census
2. My grandfather, born in Stockwell, descends from Walsh, Dawson, Cleary, Carroll of Co Limerick, Co Cork, Co Tipperary in no real known order.
3. Edwin Brown of Poole, engineer for the Belfast tramway, married in Bath - still there in 1926, but hard to get more information as Northern Ireland has own records from 1922. Source: familysearch
4. Thomas Richards, jeweller, Wexford Town, married in Dublin to Annie, from Somerset, his second wife.  They had an only child Sylvia. Source: 1890 Wells Journal
5. Sarah Urch, printer's daughter from Wells, who married in Galway 1857 to Michael Harding.  Her younger brother must have followed her to Ireland.  He had arrived in Dublin and found a wife, by 1870.  Robert Urch became supervisor of the Inland Revenue in Dublin and is buried at Mount Jerome. Source: will of Lucas Urch, familysearch
6. Moira Kelly, daughter of an Irishman, returns to Ireland in the 1950s living happily in County Meath.  Her father was a clerk in Crouch End in 1911, and from his birthplace I found him living in 1901 in Meath.  His grandchildren are still living at the same place today, their stint in England being over. Source: cousin

Two-thirds of these connections are from my Somerset line: they had names sufficiently rare for me to track them around very easily.