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.

Yorkshire short-arse nails Chinatown gunslinger

Son of West Pennard, Somerset and Reeth, Yorkshire delivers a thunderclap to Chinatown

The witness to the prosecturion of 'Big Jim' (Chew Wing Gow) was born at Abersychan, Monmouthshire in 1874 the eldest child of the mythical 'third sister' of my great-grandpa Bert Creed's father William, that I had hitherto not known about.  The Creeds were tall, and this man being a short-arse, is surely testimony to his Yorkshire father?

 

"It was after 4 oclock when the name of Percy Hammond-Bell was called by the attorneys for the prosecution, and a short, slender young Englishman, wearing eyeglasses and having a very decided accent took the stand. Mr. Hammond-Bell said that he had come to Southern California from England last January, and is at present stopping with an English family named Sheldon, at 616 West Sixth street. He is not employed at any profession or calling, but is a medical student and journalist. In this city he was devoting his time to acquiring the Chinese language and studying their customs and life, with a view to writing a series of magazine articles when he went back to England. He had been employing a Chinese tutor at No. 220 Marchessault street, and was often in and about Chinatown. On the night of the shooting of Wong Chee he left his residence about 8 oclock and walked to Chinatown, stopping at one or two places on the way. He was on his way to the Marchessault street store and was crossing Alameda on the former thoronghfare when Chee was shot, not thirty feet from him. The witness said he had not yet reached the railroad tracks in crossing the street, when he heard the report of the revolver and immediately turned to see whence it had come. He saw the murderers run away, three men in all, and followed two of them with his eyes. They both ran across Alameda street diagonally to the; corner of Marchessault, one to one side of the street and the second to the other.

"Asked as to the size of the three men, Mr. Hammond-Bell said they were all different, that is, three heights. One was very large, one medium and one small. He did not see what became of the third man, but noticed the other two particularly. Confronted with Big Jim. the witness unhesitatingly pronounced him to be one of the men—the big one —whom he had seen running away from Chee's body, and the one who did the shooting. When the three murderers had escaped from sight, Mr. Hammond-Bell ran to where Chee had fallen, being the first one to reach his side. He bent down and placed his hand to Chee's face and felt the terrible wounds made by the ball. Having a considerable knowledge of medicine and being desirous of rendering such assistance as possible, Mr. Bell made a quick examination of Chee's wound, but saw that he could do nothing. Just as he laid the wounded man's head down. Officer Lennon came running up, and immediately a crowd closed in upon the body. He asked Lennon If he could do anything to assist him, but the officer said no, to wait for the arrival of the patrol wagon. When it came he saw the body placed in it and then mingled with the crowd for a time, finally going home. The testimony given by the witness came like a thunderclap to the defense, as they had no intimation that such a person existed, much less had seen the whole affair. Messrs. Appel and Phibbs, for the prosecution, were almost equally surprised, as the witness had been found by Detective Bradish and been served with a subpoena, being merely called in the regular routine, They knew nothing of what he would testify to before he took his place in the chair. For the defense Mr. Ling took the crossexamination of the witness, and began with a snap. He had not proceeded far, however, when the hour for adjournment arrived and the hearing was continued, to be taken up again Monday morning at 9:30."

(Los Angeles Herald, 1896)

 

I had to make a cranial leap to conclude that Percy H Bell (shown in the US censuses) was the Percy Creed Bell on my tree.  His sister I'd found was known as Alys Hammond Bell, so when I substituted 'Hammond' for 'H', I got the full story.

(Whilst Percy was pretending to be a doctor, his brother Lee was pretending to be a Methodist minister in Edgewater, Denver among the Rockies.  That didn't last long.  Their sister Alys was a Baptist missionary and nurse from age 27 in Gombe Lutete, at the foot of the Congo's Livingstone Falls, living out a boring retirement in Worthing).

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.