free wi-fi, very tasty loose ends, but too much beach glare

It couldn't be more perfect.  It's November, and I have a paid job which effectively means I am the only person anywhere near the beach in this wonderful Eurasian seaside location.  It's hot, the waves are moving in synchrony with the palm trees and the white-washed walls of a carefully preserved hotel are easing my lower back as I pen these words.
I owe various Wi-Fi hotspots a great debt of gratitude for allowing me to plumb the wonderful new databases now online these past few months.  I have interesting lines of family history enquiries in the States, Australia, Cornwall, Devon, Ireland and elsewhere to mine.  I am only a few clicks away from my preferred action point - sticking a letter in the mail.
But I cannot summon up the will to 'finish the business'.
Some examples of the juicy loose ends I've not tracked:
* Frances Louise Dixon, who died at Crossville Tennesee a farmer's widow in 1931 and whose death certificate not only names the mother (born 1814 England) but it's all been indexed as well.  Will I find a country singer or two among her descendants I wonder.
* Mary Rapson, the much ignored half-aunt of my ancestors (one of whose samplers we have), who predeceased both her parents, but not before she took over the linen works at Trannack Mills, Sithney, Cornwall.  And whose grandson rebirthed himself as a successful Devon farmer, yards away from the Crediton smallholding where I first learnt the magic of the farming cycle, some years later...
* Robert Harding, who slips through all the cracks but turns up in 1911 with a birthplace of Oughterard, Galway.  You can only find him on the familysearch database if you are searching for 'born Ireland'.  He has to be one of my tribe and his Brixton-reared offspring have me on the run.  Also his brother Edward, whose family hopscotched around the marriage records here and in Eire.
* E D Scott, who supplied uniform to the Yankees in the Civil War of 1862.  His diaries are at Duke University, in one of the Carolinas.  And the 1940 census shows his only grandchild in tornado-strewn Ladysmith Wisconsin.  I bet there's some stories there for the asking.
* RWF, my relative who left his wife and family in Illinois for a new life with a very different partner in Anchorage Alaska.  His daughter appears in the 1940 census for Washington state, and thanks to findagrave, I can easily spot her grandchildren in the telephone directory.  What's holding me back....

Somehow the prevalence of sunshine is keeping me away from family history.  But like all great addictions, it's going to come back in full force, most probably when I get back in England.  As Mary Queen of Scots said when she landed at Leith to a cold Scottish people in 1561, 'the best is yet to come'.

And I have a great project for the new year, assuming there'll be any time at all...

Percy Hammond-Bell

Finally Percy Creed Bell born 1873 Abersychan Monmouthshire run to ground as Percy Hammond-Bell, acting as best man to a fancy wedding in Hollywood June 1896 and then witnessing gangland Chinese murder the next month, July 1896 and having to undergo long trial which seems to have culminated in October.See Californian Digital Newspaper Collection.  Not surprisingly, Percy vacated the area and pops up in Omaha NE, Washington State and finally Salem, Oregon, near where his brother is also recorded as living in the 1930 census.  He survived the trial over sixty years, dying about age 85 in 1958.  I wonder if his family in Somerset followed the news.  He was described as a gentlemanly looking Englishman, and occasionally wavered over testimony due to the pressure.  He was a 'kingpin witness'.  His father was a Methodist minister, then of Ipswich (per newspaper and Hill's Arrangement which lists ministers).

The science part? I saw Percy H Bell in the US censuses. I pondered on (a) if he was ours, then (b) what would the H stand for. I had earlier found that his sister's middle name of Hammond was actually their grandmother's maiden name (source: probate indexes, familysearch) and concluded that searching the internet for 'Percy Hammond Bell' might just be worthy of my time. It took me straight to our Chinese gangland moment.

Further updates? Percy lost his elder son in the Columbia River, 1919, and lost his reputation a matter of years later. His younger son was much engaged but seemingly the last of the line, passing in 1977.

James Creed b 1809 West Pennard, Som

Unclear yet if he was
1841 West London Union with wife Sarah, (stepson?) Henry, daughter Martha and future children Angeline (?) and Sarah Mary Ann (1842).
There is a John Creed and wife Ann Gilbertson in the area at the same time, who also baptise children including Angeline at St Andrew Holborn.

James Creed married April 1837, before civil registration, to Sarah Harrison at St Lawrence Jewry/Mary Magdalene, Milk Street, City.

They live Hamilton Twp, Ontario 1851, 1871 and must be there 1881 as James and Sarah's deaths are recorded in the province and certificates may give more information.

Martha Eliza Creed 1839 married Charles Robert Hunt and died 1909 giving father's name as JC - a photograph of her is apparently currently live at www.ancientfaces.comwww.ancientfaces.com/research/photo/360071/martha-eliza-creed-hunt-family-photo

Not sure where descendant Ann Hunt Zindler is - posted information about her ten years ago, 2002.

Sarah Mary Ann Creed is recorded as Mary Ann in 1851, and marriage record not found, nor what became of Henry.

1856 and all that

In 1856, George Nuttall died and his executor subsequently found (or wrote) two codicils, amending the will in his favour.  Surprisingly it took 38 years and 3 court cases for the truth to out; the witnesses having been probably bribed and lying most inconsistently.

As a naive young family historian in the 1990s I had no idea that what I held in my hand was a document from exactly the same year and town, and every bit as suspicious as the Nuttall codicil.

Joseph Carline had made his will in 1852: a grand old document, running to several pages, and sparing no detail.  He names several properties, including the meadow, the Willow Piece, which I found through tithe maps, and was able to visit, and photograph.

On the day of his death, we're invited to believe he reached for his pen again and wrote another will; without revoking the earlier document.  The date was December 1856.

From 1 January 1858, would-be forgers had to stand up in a civil court and were perhaps more thoroughly examined in matters probate - it no longer being a matter for the Bishop's officers.

Joseph had genuine grounds for changing his will - his daughter had died at Easter, but a simple codicil would have sufficed.  The second, badly drafted will, hints it being made by family members, perhaps at his direction.  He may have forgotten, on the day of his death, that matters were already resolved, and that is why the second document was passed down to me - when if valid, it should have been the one in the Bishop of Lichfield's hands, April 1857.

It was a big shock when I ordered Joseph's will, expecting a carbon copy of the later document, only to find this impressive earlier screed from 1852 being the one kept on file.  I personally think it's genuine, the later document, just ill-advised.  I particularly like the reference to a new house, clearly built in the last four years.  But he would have left four houses to a foppish 19 year-old distant grandson and nothing to family close by: certainly a mistake.

We only know about the document because its transcriber finally learnt to read and write in his twenties, because I wrote to ask him about it, and because I did so in the nineties - the thing having more lately got lost.  It's probable it won't turn up again, though I should dearly like to see it.

Not so fertile

Thomas Henry Craig Stevenson in 1909 postulated that working-class women would have large families than those higher up the income chart.  In 1911, he and Sir Bernard Mallett, the Registrar-General, included the famous fertility question in the census, which now makes us consider the number of Victorian infant deaths (10 or more years earlier) rather than there being 'too many living children' from the poor.

However, as someone for whom those details have been most revealing in conducting my research, I was of course surprised to find Stevenson among my cousins.  Or rather, I wasn't.

As soon as I found my relative had married Miss Catherine De Boudry in Bristol, I was pretty sure we'd be surfing a genteel wave for at least a couple of generations, Stevenson in fact was going to marry Miss De Boudry's grandddaughter.

Just a week ago I despaired of finding out the stories of the 6 Scott children baptised at Ditcheat and environs in the 1780s.  Their cousins set off for Monmouthshire and all sent for each other: though as butchers and factory workers, Chepstow was an odd choice to say the least.  But the 6 Scotts in question didn't go to Chepstow, they went to Britain's second city around the corner, Bristol.  I have no idea why Bristol got routinely ignored by my Somerset farming families.  They were happy to retire to regency, tasteful, Bath; but for a farmer, the true county town of Bristol seemed to offer nothing.

To inhabit Bristol with the same style as a yeoman farmer you needed a much higher income.  When I examined the PCC wills more closely I saw that Benjamin and William Scott were corn factors (as was an unmarried sister), while youngest sister Susanna had married an accountant, Henry Northcote.  William's father-in-law had kept a school at Kingsdown, personally approved by John Wesley.

Northcote stole £10,000 in 1839 and was transported on the Barossa, begging to be given Sunday school duties as he commenced his long sentence.  I haven't checked to see if he survived, but his wife died of shame.  There's a clue in her will 'wife of Henry, LATE of the City of Bristol': she having been given a house in Sidney Place through a marriage settlement, which did not form part of her husband's debts.

Benjamin Scott sailed for America after his mother-in-law had died, leaving his eldest child behind with brother William, presumably to claim her inheritance; and also as his poor wife still had no children.  Matilda rejoined the others 18 years later and was still alive age 90, unmarried, according to my reading of US tax records.  (And in 1880 living with E D Scott, Minneapolis.)

That just leaves William and Miss De Boudry to continue the line in England, and as Stevenson might have guessed (with 3 children and no heirs himself) we are shortly and swiftly led to the single descendant - a fundraising expert in Cheshire.

Small wonder I've not been besieged by enquiries about these Bristolians.  It's yet possible that the oldest sister, Grace Scott, had surviving children by her husband James Hill, but I'm not hopeful!  They just had too much money to be fertile.

The Stapleford dilemma

We've proved it.  Now I need to wonder whether I like it.  John Barton from Matlock moved to Stapleford aged 22 or thereabouts in 1792.  Considering that he was a farmer's son, most probably a carpenter, it's pretty neat to pin him down so firmly.  The evidence is fairly easily acquired: his father's will of 1822 shows he was living then at Stapleford, being the executor.  Further, a John Barton of Matlock marries in 1792 in Kirk Ireton, and that couple's children are certainly born, and stayed, in Stapleford.  Pretty compelling.

Stapleford must have been an attractive village recalled as being in the Broxtowe hundred, with country roads reminiscent of A R Quinton.  The lace industry operated there, and it seems a river ran through it.  My modern AA map makes it impossible to imagine the area before roads, and it's far too dang close to Nottingham.  Mr Woodward kindly tells us two hundred people were thrown out of work 1881 when a large lace factory in the village was burnt to the ground.

Folk of Matlock had several options when the industrial era came, and for unskilled workers, the cotton mills to the west exerted a big pull.  Carpenters could work anywhere, and shopkeepers or publicans could also take advantage of the larger towns to settle there.

In a world where all our big towns look the same (not the smaller Cheadles, Petsworths), and former industrial communities look greenest of them all, I offer three cheers for the Matlock folk who moved to beautiful Bollington; and two cheers for those who went to Gotham, still a small village.  But only one cheer for the Stapleford move.

I am glad to see a picture of the Warren Arms, the Barton home, with the sheep being driven to market.  1792 may seem early enough to be part of rural Broxtowe goings-on, but all too soon it's 1881 and the grandchildren are heading to labouring jobs in Nottingham and Manchester, leaving their heritage behind.  In addition, they'd already lost the extended family back in Matlock by moving twice.

One brave family, the Stapleford Greasleys, rejected the big Midlands towns on offer and went straight to Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, in 1850.

Types of relationship

A researcher in Basingstoke found a few years ago that many stated male parents were not actual the fathers of their children.  Probably the men knew this.  A Maori woman might have children with several men before her family approve of her marrying one.  In England the pressures are different.   Here is a perfectly ordinary looking woman with a very sensible name gambling so she can have her 'big day' which Englishwoman see as their birthright (according to advertisers, at least).  There is less societal pressure for weddings, and many more opportunities to meet men unchaperoned.

People always ask 'how do you know the husband of a married woman is the father?'  The answer, at least before 1900, is that there were few chances for women to have encounters with anyone else.   This wasn't Victorian morals, as much as a Victorian awareness of how immoral we really were.

But here are two, perhaps related, screenshots of a modern age (the second is from GenoPro).

Staying power in our contacts, and more of them, please

A former editor of the Greenwood Tree met his wife while doing family history;  I once had a box of chocolates sent me from Kansas City - see 'choc or bloc' which I'll post some time.  My longest-running family history partnership goes back to 1994 and has seen us through changes in life circumstances, several trips to the States, and many a curry.  One gets dozens of contacts from people all the time, through Ancestry or Genes Reunited.  How on earth do you decide 'how far to go'.  I'm not suggested a church, but a marriage of ideas can prove pretty compelling.

I guess I'm looking for staying power.  I like to include enough information in my first message (or first reply) to get the other person interested, if they are a family historian; and to encourage them to open up a bit, if they are not.  But I hold back.  Those contacts who demand 'all my information' I dismiss as one-night emailers, and probably our relationship isn't going anywhere.

I'm also looking for eye contact: very hard through email.  The closest I can get is a touch of honesty, something you wouldn't tell the mailman: 'I'm away for two weeks; I'm at O'Hare; my daughter was very excited to hear about your message;  I wish you could have met my father'.  In contrast, worrying signs are easily elicited over your second date, or message: 'I found all the data online and have no information beyond that; I'm not related to these people they are just on my tree; I'm confused they had the same name could a brother marry a sister?'

Most of the time, the second message never comes, and we know it was a fleeting moment.  Peter Calver at LostCousins won't allow you to exchange information unless the recipient has the courtesy to acknowledge your first enquiry.

It's worth being patient with newbies, or to borrow from the dating world, 'fresh meat'.  They may bungle the facts, but with your experience you should be able to set them straight.  A lady asked if her grandmother's relatives were related to her?  Another had incorrect baptismal records for our John Purton, but was happy to acknowledge she might be wrong, a charming touch and so rarely seen.

The more people adding good data to sites like Ancestry, the fewer brickwalls we'll have in our research, particularly going 'downhill' from the past to the present.  Oftentimes, it is newer researchers who are able to add this information. (I have written earlier about the strength of weak connections.)