Smiths Saga: Let's don't hide let's seek

What a year! I have to look back and think, did I just do all that? I'm referring to my Smiths, George, William, Arthur, Ellen and all the others. They've all been sewn up.

That's right. All the Smiths coming down from Robert Smith, born 1790 in Wymondham, Norfolk are gathered up, spotted on the map and thoroughly accounted for. James Robert, present sir! Mabel Flo, here mister! William. William? Speak up I can't hear you very well across the Atlantic.

There's Tel who works for Virgin Media, George the gardener in Carshalton, George the coachman in Islington, George the labourer in rural Norfolk. Edward who saw the war through, bombs and all, in Bethnal Green.

How is this even possible? Isn't Smith supposed to be *the* most ornery name to research. Folk shudder at the work involved, I'm told. It's not a good name, say others.

Well I think Smith is a fantastic name. Not only were their crisps good in the 80s, square and crunchy, but the genealogical challenge has nearly been maxxed. One wrong turn and you're heading for the wall. A brick wall. Oh.

There is just one of those: Laura. Laura, Laura. Have you not heard us calling? Why are you still playing hide and seek in the woods 140 years later. Dinner is definitely ready. You've totally got the best hiding place, so congrats. Now come out!

I absolutely love when people say, oh that's now become so long ago that you'll never solve that one. Errrr. I'm not going to lie, I enjoy proving that's false. I loved finding William Smith born in England, 1851. Easy! And Charlotte Smith born in 1880, harder! But Laura needs to appear, or we'll just cheat and use DNA to sort her out. Yes your story is obviously *too boring*, I'm turning you over to the science guys.

Charlotte rocks. Ok, turns out she wasn't exactly a nice person, but her family are just so delightful. I met up with them earlier this month for a barbie, after one last effort to find them proved successful.

I have to say that thanks to all these cousins (except one!), I'm proud to be a Smith researcher and I'd consider printing this on a t-shirt for all to see.

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.

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

The battle of the Smith men

 

The battle of the Smith men

The 1851 census records Henry (left) and Mary Smith and absolutely no kids having arrived.  This might look suspicious as the bride is 32, but actually she'd only been married 3 months.  Three babies would come along within two winters and all five children would be baptised at Mulbarton parish church, Norfolk, but we lacked a single census entry that showed them all.

It will be seen that by 1871, only one child is at home; and in fact, the husband has remarried.  Were there any other children?

 

So where can this census be found showing all the happy Smiths together?  Right here, at High Common, South Lopham in 1861. 

William Smith (the son) appears only in this census.  In 1869, the mother died and a stepmother (Ann) arrives the following year.  In 1871, the four eldest children (all under 20) have left home; William is a carpenter in a nearby village.  William marries age 21 and uses his £180 inheritance (minus tax) to begin a new life in Jamestown, New York.

A few genealogical researchers, including myself, linked him to Norfolk, as his bride's uncle was a noted early settled of Chautauqua county.  I pinned William down to Jamestown by the simple expedient of looking for all the Williams with a wife named Anna in the entire censused world, noting only the one in Jamestown.

It all seemed most preposterously unlikely, until I found the photo (top right) which was embossed by a studio in Jamestown, and which turned up among the effects of his British niece.  William's father, Henry Smith, was less well-loved, his photograph nonetheless hanging in a frame reserved for forebears at my grandparents' home.

It is worth noting that neither photo indicated a name; but it was possibly to identify the subjects from the manner in which the photo was stored or found.

(Henry had great-grandchildren in Jamestown by the time he came to die, age 78, full of years at his niece's pub, the Greyhound Inn at Ilkesthall St Margaret.  He was lucky to find a home - his children sadly never forgiving him for removing himself so fully from their beautiful childhood at Mulbarton Old Hall.)

Henry was the first forebear to disappoint by leaving no will - more on wills is here.

Would woods yield wood connection?

The Kentish Weald is heavily wooded, with coppiced hazel, wild cherry, ash and oak formed in a series of 'shaws' no matter the approach you are at once shielded and navigating around one of Britain's superior natural resources.

It was wonderful passing through in a taxi, as I headed, but little did I know, closer and closer to the man in the family who knew more about wood than any other.  My great-great-great-uncle William Smith (1851-1921).  Long dead, his likeness was preserved at the rendezvous in Kent where I was to learn more about the family archive.

To reprise William's story, earlier given, he took his £180 (minus tax) on the nose at 21 and was getting married a matter of days later.  His only remaining relative, his father, was not in a position to refuse him.  He took the money from Mr Riches who ironically had booted the family out of their birthplace, Mulbarton Hall, just ten years earlier.  His trade was carpentry and the village of Jamestown, USA, population 5,336, and not yet a city was eventually to become 'furniture capital of the world' with one in six people working at its furniture factories.  His wife's uncle Jonathan Crick had arrived forty years earlier and was living in the tiny village of Gerry, NY, just nine miles away.

What a delight to find his smiling countenance on good quality black card with the name of the photographer 'Black', likely taken around 1900.  He looks very similar to his nephew Frank Lowry, himself about to emigrate - to farm in South Africa.  These gentlemen, together with Smith's great-uncle and benefactor, John Lain, all share my mitochondrial DNA.

If anyone has a high-speed internet, perhaps they could check if the Black photographic studio is listed in this 1903 Jamestown directory.  Found the reference: T. Henry Black, studio over 12 E 3rd, house over 20 Derby.

There was a William Smith who was a plasterer in Jamestown and returned to England 1886 with a woman named Sarah, to Barnsley Yorkshire.  Coming back to Jamestown their ship the SS Oregon sunk off the coast of Fire Island.  I am not yet convinced this was our William.  The 1880s directories should provide an answer.

William's obituary of 1921 correctly recalls he had one brother and three sisters, an unusual combination.  But it is the survival in our family of his photograph that proves it all.  I had independently figured out the Jamestown connection some while ago, and as we earlier saw, it is pretty water-tight.  It remains to be seen if his family in Florida and upstate NY will want to know more about his origins in England.

Best photographer in town:
Joyce, Pauline Lopus tells the story in Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie, and in her autobiography Lucy (Lucille Ball 1911-89) herself writes, "...DeDe [her mother] sent me to the best photographer in Jamestown, T. Henry Black. It was Mr. Black who was quoted as saying, 'It's very difficult to get a satisfactory picture of Miss Ball because the lady is just not photogenic!'" (p. 30) The pictures Lucy references are from when she was in the Miss Celoron bathing beauty contest as a teenager.

A Lain less Wandered. Diss-Connection

It never rains, but it pours.  Sheets and sheets of it.  How the buckets poured down, and the wearer became the sluice-gates.  They say there's no such thing as bad weather: only poor clothing.

My genealogical clothing was meagre: I wrapped the thin scarf of conceit around me further, my belt of certainty slipped away, and my hat of pride was knocked off in the deluge.

The archival discovery in question was that of Miss Daisy, who had died in 1972 aged 96.  As well as outliving any member of the family past or present, and surviving all but one of her younger sister's family into the bargain - she had known a generous selection of the women who cascaded down from her castrator great-grandfather Samuel Flowers.

Flowers had had eight daughters, none of them needing castration, but unfortunately, only two of them produced daughters.  These were just the kind of family members that interested Miss Daisy.

~~
The staggering finding was the photograph of John Lain 1787-1867, brother-in-law of the castrator.  Interesting as he is both genealogically remote (my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's brother), and sharing my mitochondrial DNA, and also that the family he called his own, I would barely recognise.  He listed as nephews and nieces people who I would consider pretty peripheral to my tree.  We have no idea who his grandparents were and can readily classify him as pre-Victorian, as he was 50 when the future empress ascended the throne and had wrapped up his life and affairs long before Disraeli had Victoria's realm declared an empire.

His large photograph is taken in Diss, a town I'd never really heard of.  So tiny, it easily became a member of Cittaslow.  Rather amusingly, May, Lain's great-nephew's granddaughter came to Diss a few years ago from Bethnal Green, believing it to be the birthplace of her father - in fact born at Deopham.  Diss was the nearby market town where Lain's land was sold in 1867, and checking a map, it really was the logical place for the folk of South Lopham to come for their weekly shop, market, catch-up and to catch the train if needed for Norwich or Ipswich.

It was thanks to Lain that my Smiths ended up being born at Mulbarton Hall, and he effectively provided a home for Smith's pregnant bride and luckless partner around the time of their marriage, Christmas 1850.  So it was that one pregnant sister dodged disgrace and became chatelaine of an old country manorhouse in Norfolk, while her older sister (who survived her 20 years), had to wait until her mid-forties to shake off her first husband and cash in her hard-won property in Macclesfield Street, Soho, for the protection of a businessman in nearby Horse and Dolphin Yard.  Quite a difference in pattern.

Lopham Fen: last remaining fen river valley in England

So, we thank the mapping folk for making it apparent that Diss is the connection, and Miss Daisy for hanging onto a photo her mother (married at 18) must nearly have lost.

And Mr Lain for emerging from the centuries, not too battered at all, clearly a force to be reckoned with, and a reminder of life a very long time ago.

1787 - year of his birth.  Events in this year: the US constitutuion was signed and three states joined the union.  Doomed Captain Bligh sets sail on a two-year voyage from Spithead on the HMS Bounty with his motley mutinous crew.   Mozart opened one of his first symphonies in Vienna.

they'll always be Smiths

I love my Smiths.  However hard to find they are, at least the name's always spelt right.  Although Edward's marriage at the LMA archives gave the wrong name for his father, the occupation fitted, and this census entry proves he was my man.  I didn't linger long on the entry: by moving quickly I was able to find his daughter in Romford, and to establish what happened to all the children, though his sister still ranks as one of my big unsolved puzzles, along with his uncle.