Riddle of the timeshare: it was the sun wot won it

Prologue: Emigrayshun

One grey June morning as the sun rose over the steelworks, a group of my family left their home in Redhall Avenue, Connah’s Quay on a journey aimed at leaving the UK and its new queen behind forever.

Our story: Vokayshun

 

Grandpa claimed to know nothing about his family.  That was true, but he did remember some cousins.  Tom Jones wasn’t one of them.  When I found Tom Jones listed in his grandpa’s will, I didn’t think I’d be able to trace him.  By splashing cash on birth certificates I’d maybe get his date of birth, getting me as far as the second-class cabins of 1952, but…. I’d still be left hanging.  It wouldn’t be enough.

Dedicayshun

I picked up the blower to cousin Joyce eighteen years ago, thinking I was at journey’s end.  I’d found her mugshot in old family papers and mini-me had gone through tonnes of microfiche to get this far.  She was off to Italy and was putting info about her mother’s family in the post, she said.  She said.  Actually she died before any of that and my main chance submerged again, leaving just one nice clue.  It took me ten years to remember it though.

Joyce’s wedding photo in our family

My one letter from Joyce

 

Big Break #1.

On the phone, Joyce had told me there was a cousin in North Wales, called Rhona.  I dreamt I was in a cafe in Rhyl, and everyone in tight white curls was called Rhona.  Hello Rhona, have you seen Rhona.  No, Rhona, have you?

Time passes, I grow up.  I realise there aren’t that many Rhonas in Rhyl.  In fact, there aren’t any!  I get busy.  I trawl all Rhonas born in Flintshire with a mother’s name of Taylor and moments later zing up her address thanks to 192.com.

Ten years of inactivity followed by a moment of success.  That describes my entire work on this branch.  But Rhona doesn’t ‘get’ my letter.  This whole line of enquiry is on the verge of evaporating.

I place an ad.  An absolute beauty comes on the market and is duly picked up from Highbury Corner in 2011.  If the letter can’t go to the lady, I will, er go to mountainous lengths to…

Big Break #2

If you need to get away from it all may I recommend Gweryd Fishing Lakes high on the hill off Offa’s Dyke.  They gave this weary traveller his last night of freedom before September’s chastening embrace.  Down the Clwydian Mountains I sped, to the town of Mold, and Rhona’s quaint close.

Not expecting much of a particular, I crossed the threshold of number 6, Mold, glad-handing the aged occupier.  Rhona was niece of a farmer from my Grandpa’s childhood and a good ten years older than the deceased Joyce.  Even if this venerable lady could barely whisper a ‘hullo’, I would be extrapolating from this for years to come, so powerful were her genealogical connections.

I tested the waters with the living legend.  I knew I had a lady whose brain was hard-wired to recall facts from the 1930s, her era.  I pressed my first genealogical button.  ‘Chilton’, I said.  ‘Oh, you mean Hughie.’  Good so far.  ‘Cousin Margaret?’  ‘In a bad way, but alive.’  Ok.  Now for the key moment, the testing of the skeleton key, the run past the warder, the ransom-swop, the border-dash, the inhuman leap….. ‘Tom Jones?’ I lightly enquired?  The 1930s brain whirred and checked its hard-drive and back they came, words of gold.  ‘Oh, Tom Jones! Well his kids Peggy and Dougie went out to Canada.’ And there it was: my cup overraneth.  Not only had this lady skewered her way through a slew of Joneses to find my Tom, she neatly sewed his story up so tight I wasn’t going to lose him now.  And all in five seconds.  I drank the proferred tea, thanked the good lady, slumped on a train at Chester, sold the bike – saying ‘hello’ to September and a new year.

Big Break #3

Veterinary advice: First catch and restrain your animal

Our Tom Jones was born in Morriston, Swansea, about 1894.  Him and his common name moved to North Wales around 1905, ahead of a big steelworkers’ strike.  This whole area around John Summers steelworks is massively under threat, April 2016, a century or more of steelmaking in jeopardy.  According to Rhona, Tom’s kids left yonks ago for a new life of similar industry, in Canada.  So what bits of feather was I left gripping on to in the UK?

Tom gets a mention age 24 in his grandpa’s will, where I first heard of him 70 years later in 1992.  A third of that time again has had to elapse before I could catch him once more.

We’re all in the same boat

Big break number 3 was swiftly catching up with Dougie his son on the boat out to Canada (1952) but *not only that*, finding dad Tom on the same boat, and… *not only that*, after my own internal hard-drive warmed up, a thought burst out?  What about the sister Peggy?  Maybe she was on the same boat too?

Margaret on the same boat as her father and brother, 1952

 

And so it proved to be.  The Empress of Canada gave me emigration notes of imperial quality: my struggling hunt for further records failed to keep pace.  The same address is shown, Redhall Avenue, Connah’s Quay.

Tom had married a Cohen in Eccles, which I’d earlier thought impossible, Margaret (Peggy) being born there in 1919.  Figuring out exactly what happened to Margaret Jones was proving a mite tricky ’til I pored over the Empress-ive records and spotted her as Mrs Robson.  There was date-of-birth, names of kids and all with a matching address in Connah’s Quay…  It was 2012, sixty years post emigration.  Little did I know that Peggy, even older than Rhona and 20 years ahead of Joyce, was still living, a quiet retiree in Canada.

Big Break #4

I stewed on the Robson info a little while, 4 years to be precise, as it remained on the back-burner.  I had brazenly told the cousins in Wales it was game set and match, an email having plonked through for Dougie’s son Col.  That branch weren’t playing ball however, and the contact details fizzled away.  I needed another route in.

Sometime in 2014 I tried again, this time focussing on Peggy (by now, deceased).  It was time to get heavy. I dredged the internet, ripped apart the phonebook and pressed search a bunch of times on Facebook, spraying all my clues in neon to get new life out of them, like tired old curtains.

 

Obvious clue: the name

Several years of obvious clues and several years of missing the obvious: Peggy’s boy’s name.  According to the NorthWalesBMD project, he was born Thomas Peter Robson in Flint, a really good name to search.  When I pressed the keys for ‘T_P_R’ Canada, Google warned me to stand back.  Information of an explosive nature was about to be revealed.

Hmmmm.  Margaret J Robson of Calgary?  probated in Maine. I didn’t think so. This was too confusing.  I had fished out gold, but put it back in the watery internet for another two years.  Glug glug.

Big Break #5

Pushy salesman: “In the absence of a new lead, go back to your old ones.”

It was March 2016 and time to find the Canadian cousins: this was getting embarrassing.  Harder problems had been solved and although this was impossible, with the right alchemy and a splash of oxygen, this can be done.  With my new hard-nosed attitude I brought up the Google search from 2 years before.

The ‘J’ I now dismissed like a nearly-dead fly. It could clearly be Jones, Peg’s maiden name.  No problem.  Exactly how many ladies called Margaret had sons of the right name and age in Canada?  I now suspected not many.  Just the thorny issue of ‘Why Maine?’ to put right.

So I took a longer look at the Maine Probates, nosing around the pages of York county, Maine.  I spied a typical set-up for legal docs: the attorney’s office and their long phone number.  A lemon-eating clerk in a will-free office, and the general message of ‘we are closed – to you anyways’.  I idly combed each of those nondescript blue pages, jonesing for a lead.

Ten white pages

Like Hansel stumbling on a witch-free gingerbread trail, there I beheld ten texty scanned-in pages, white in hue, of the estate of Mrs M Robson.  From the bare bones

to considerably more detail at maineprobate.net:

I had gone behind the surface net into the ‘deep web’ where data lies waiting to be awoken.  Whilst the full addresses were nice to see, they are impossible to capture without the correct file id, so I think are pretty safe.  The cover page was lovely but wasn’t clinching it for me.  I continued through.

And there beheld this battery of clinchers:

• Bang – the name of Jones given as likely maiden name
• Bang – the confirmed, matching, date of birth for Margaret

From the Shipping records

From the Probate

• Bang – the confirmed name as plain Margaret

• Bang – an address in Ontario, the region where Margaret first landed

It turns out the connection with Maine was that affordable way for hardworking folk to get a week of sun: timeshares.  A timeshare in Maine, of lobsters and fishing, was what got us done.

Thank you to Ogunquit, Maine for taking me from this

to this

Footnote:

Never forget your Welsh.  The new cousins in Canada are in fact in touch with their Dad’s family, back in Connah’s Quay.  Hopefully they’ll soon be reaching out to us, too.

European Genealogy across 13 countries – a story starting in the Lakes

  I idly wondered whether Arthur Taylor, living in London age 18, might come back to marry in his native Keswick.  He did!

And on clicking behind the link I spy his wife looked like Isabel Kroll.  This didn’t sound like a lasting marriage.  What was he up to?  But I couldn’t find anything more, so gave up on him.

But then I found a reference to a lady living in Italy, who just had to be Arthur’s daughter, and the game was on.  Arthur turns out to be the International YMCA’s ‘man in Italy‘ while Mussolini is at the helm.

It takes me a good year to recover from these Italian revelations before I finally get the will of Arthur Taylor’s daughter, Signora Barone.  I certainly expected that the dalliance with Isabel Kroll would long have past, but concluding Alice’s long and passionate will comes the note from the clerk…

And then, buried in the text, Isabella’s mother is listed with a very English-looking name, Rosalie Stuart-Cowen!  I already knew about Scots in Poland, but Scots and Germans (?) seemed to hold an interesting tale to explore.  Considering I lacked both Isabella’s birth, death and previous marriage, it was remarkable what I eventually crowbarred out of the internet.

Here is Isabella’s first marriage, which I did not find by idle Googling, but only by the specific search indicated.

Here is Isabella’s tree now.

The following countries are covered on the map below
England – where Isabel married in 1907
Denmark – where Isabel’s first husband was born (place given as father’s birthplace in 1920 census for her elder children)
Sweden – where her daughter Anna’s son Hans was a citizen in 1954, likely as an adopted child, and believed to be his final home
Poland – where Isabel’s second husband worked in the 1920s after WW1
Netherlands – where Isabel’s sister Georgina was living until about 1900 (at The Hague)
France – where Isabel’s two elder children (and grandson Hans) were born (Paris, Vaux-sur-Mer)
Italy – where Isabel’s second husband worked in the 1930s and where her younger daughter (Alice) settled (in Sicily)
Switzerland – where Isabel’s mother died in 1890 (unsubstantiated) and where her sister Rosalie died in 1927 and where her sister Georgina married (in Lausanne)
Germany – where Isabel’s sister Rosalie married in 1883 (at Stuttgart), and where she herself was born (source 1920 census), and where her father was born (ibid)
Greece – where her first husband went to live, presumably after separating from Isabel
Canada – where Isabel’s youngest child was born in 1908
USA – where Isabel was living in the 1920 census (Washington DC), while her second husband performed his YMCA duties, and where her two elder children settled, and where her mother was actually born
Brazil – where her grandson Hans (John) came to reside or work in the 1950s

What a surprise to tumble out of a marriage in the Lakes.  Lastly a picture of gorgeous Giarrattana in Sicily:

 This was the second Sicilian connection to emerge.  As well as Il Dottore Barone from Noto, I have Signor Leone from Naro a century before.  Agreeably close to Montalbano’s fictional Vigata, which I watched sorrowfully in the denouement to this Sicilian episode.  But as Sicily recedes, step forward Malta – even further south, as new home for a descendant of Annabella Airey.

Emmerdale Farm and a wife-swap: the 1939 Register

I was very sceptical that the 1939 Register would deliver anything new for me.  I have been studying family history for over 20 years, and if I needed information about the 20th century, I could mostly look at freebmd.  And then jump straight into the electoral roll, to get an address of a living relative.  I have done this countless times, so what good would sniffing around a 75 year-old summary do for my tree?

Child baptisms of around the year 1900 often gave the infant’s exact date of birth – and assuming they lived another 69 years, you can then use this information to find their death record, particularly useful if they married overseas, had a common name or moved around unpredictably.

Child baptisms of around the year 1880 occasionally gave an exact date of birth, but the infant concerned is very unlikely to have lived another 89 years to produce such a record…

Believe me, I homed in on Catherine Jones (born 1881) pretty instantly, scouring the new 1939 Register for any evidence of a Catherine, but she eluded me.  I was pretty sure she had survived and was living in Manchester, but she was proving a mite tricky to locate.

I knew that she’d had a massive bust-up with her sister Florence – the only family member to produce a will.  And Florence goes to great lengths not to mention Catherine, so her archival betrayal means that Cath is utterly missing from our official family record.

Of course, I found her – and on the 1939 Register, too, but not by my own endeavour.  Who should I spy living with Florence Jones in Manchester, 1939, but Katherine Bateman.  Katherine!  My fingers quiver as I double-check the birth-date.  Yes, Katherine was born in March, and yes, she was born on 6 March 1881.  And yes, there was a marriage (one of 23 possibles) in Liverpool 1905.

So, I was looking at the 1939 household before the barney.  Katherine’s two grandchildren lived nearby, and thirty years later, old Florence’s heart softened and she added them to her will.  Stupidly I had never checked out this reference, as the name Bateman had no resonance for me then.

EMMERDALE?  Katherine’s grandchildren both have large Irish-Manchester families.  A great-great-grandson plays a cleaner living in the village of Eccup, just outside Leeds, in the soap Emmerdale.

WIFE-SWAP? Missed the wife-swap story.  It’s here.

Tom’s Wills – the index to British wills

 

Announcing the presenting online of Tom’s Wills – an index to British wills currently running from 1933 to 1935. Tom Chatley was arguably the first person to conceive of an index to the list of probates held around the country. These were in book form for many years. He began writing out the entries on a card index in the 1930s, and these finally made it to the printed internet page in 2015. It was his ambition to collect together the interesting addresses and info about the personal representatives. Now that can be shared so that you too can find your relatives. Tom had a particular soft spot for people in Wales who were otherwise completely stuffed. As looking for Joneses in Wales is really tough without an address, perhaps Tom’s Wills can help you? It’s online at Tom’s Wills.

Will: ‘You still need me’

Some wills are great.  And some don’t tell you anything at all.

I had been waiting for the Norris will for a while – safe in the knowledge it’d fix a few mysteries for me.  Nope.  We still have no idea what happened to the nephew that had the papermill in Australia.

This week at exactly midnight – eleven wills dropped into my inbox.  I was already asleep (brownie points there), but at 7am you bet I woke up fast.  A whole bunch of them were frustrating or just plain brief, but the Edith Taylor will was surely the best of the bunch.

The last known of three siblings – my question was ‘who is going to get your money?’  Not only does she start me on a hunt for her globe-trotting twin brother, but she throws me a nice chewy bone naming some of her cousins’ kids as well.

Of course the price has changed.  What I spent in those precious dawn seconds, was what it cost me to get 2 years’ worth of wills at one a week, back in the old days.  Well, my old copies aren’t going anywhere, and aren’t telling me much of anything new either.

When it comes to solving tricky family puzzles: ‘Will’, I definitely still need you.

Disclaimer: I didn’t actually go to Italy.

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.

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.

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.

On being, irrr, 26, and facing death duty indexes

Oh what fun we had.  This is the sort of totally gemsmithery you can yield from a day digging at TNA’s luscious IR26 reserves.  You don gloves, foam pads and reader-ticket, and then the page-turning records are all yours.

Check out this beauty: next of kin are named as the legatee died in the testatrix’s sister’s lifetime, before the money could be shared out to her.  This name’s Frances Buck’s daughter as Mary Lane, which we knew, but not for certain – it also confirms that there were no other surprise children for Frances.

You would look up the testatrix on http://www.findmypast.co.uk‘s Death Duty Indexes (IR27) which you can do if you know the year the will was proved and the last name of the deceased.  Here is the entry for Rosamond Lane of Wymondham, confirming probate happened in Norwich in 1844 with the magic folio number (241) being given at the end of the line.

You can now go to the new IR26 catalogue at http://haine.org.uk/wills/IR26_catalogue.htm where you can thus identify IR26/1680 as being the one you need – see this snippet as an example.

I had about a dozen IR26 records I wanted to check at Kew and couldn’t believe how difficult it was to get the appropriate references.  One had to guess one’s way around TNA catalogue by putting in what reference you THOUGHT might cover the required year and surnames.  A few other people had had problems, or had considered making a separate trip to Kew purely to consult the printed catalogue.  I spent two solid days in the heat making it my mission to extract the catalogue entries relating to IR26, which I was successfully able to do.  At one point I was on a train from Doncaster to Newark Northgate, where I knew I had only 3 minutes to change trains.  I shouldn’t have even been in Doncaster but I guess I missed my stop.  On this leg of my journey I was standing up, holding the laptop as I used the 20mins and fading battery for yet more valuable processing time.  At one point I was struggling with four 200 MB files, with just my MS-DOS friend ‘ssr’ for company.

I did get to Kew last week with my reference numbers and a bill (not a phone bill – though it doesn’t say so on TNA’s site) and saw some pretty awesome records.  My favourite is will of 4xgreat-grandpa Lancelot Gibson who leaves £50 to the representatives of his brother William Gibson, legacy to be paid after the death of his widow.  These are named in the estate duty records as being: Mary Tate, Ann Gibson and two male Gibsons.  I was able to find the marriage of Mary Gibson, Q3 1860 Carlisle RD, to Thomas Tait and corresponding entries in the censuses thereafter which seemed highly likely.  For a long time I thought the 1860 marriage was too late as Lance was dead by then, but in fact though he was dead his estate carried on recording pertinent facts which are completely missing from the will.  I could never have positively identified Mary Gibson were it not for this document, nor would I have known about the Tait connection, as the Carlisle marriage was nowhere near the Gibson heartland.

In the event I found out lots about ‘Mary Tate’, including obtaining a recipe book written by her granddaughter at the time of World War One.

John Lain’s IR26 record listed the children of his niece, who, being a woman was given only a life interest in his residuary estate – the children are certainly not listed in the will

William Whittock’s IR26 record shows the children of his late brother, who had died in Philadelphia.  In the will the wording is terse – we certainly don’t get the full married names provided here.

So, should anyone ask, YES, it is worth exploring IR26 records, but do make use of finding aids and get organised so that your day at Kew with the old books is a profitable one.

I believe in free wills

In double-quick time I got nearly 100 transcripts of wills proven between 1858 and 1925.

These were obtained *for free* at London LDS family history centre, 20 on the afternoon of Tuesday 11 August 2009.  Who says you have to pay for family history – this would have been £90 in wills had I bought them (which I never would).

It’s amusing that the biggest leads came from the references to ‘Jane Williams’ and ‘Mary Price’.  Ok Mary had a massive telltale middlename of ‘Orledge’ which made it impossible *not* to find her.

(Curiously there is an ‘Ordnance connection’ – Jane’s sons-in-law worked for Ordnance Survey in Southampton.  Mary lived in Ordnance Road, Enfield Wash.)

Jane Williams was a bit less of a cheat.  I knew from the context that this Jane must have been born a Hambly in Gwinear, Cornwall, 1826 so using some of this information helped me find her marriage in freebmd (Jane to  Samuel Williams, 1847 Cornwall) and this led me to find her in the 1861 census (Jane Williams born about 1826 Gwinear, wife of Samuel) and then with the family details listed to find her in the 1881 census where she is just Jane Williams born about 1826 ‘in Cornwall’.  But there are very few Williamses in Hampshire, and fewer Cornish ones, so I was actually able to find not only Jane but all bar one of her children’s marriages (to William Tawse, John White, Betty Stoneley, Richard Jones, Rosa Burden, Charles Morris, Frederick Lewington).

Mary Price’s own helpful will gives the full names of her seven children which again made misidentification really tricky – particularly as there just weren’t many Welsh Prices still less English ones in English Enfield Lock.

I wrote a little program to help people find wills like how I did – http://haine.org.uk/wills/willsearch.php

Willed away

Somewhat cheaper than my foray into propping up the government with my certificate order (£210), the 14 wills I lately purchased weighed in at ‘only’ £70.

In fact one of them wasn’t even a will but a single sheet grant of administration, purchased to learn the address of the intestate lady’s nephew Arthur Ward in Peterborough.

This was one of the seven wills (and grant) which I would class as very useful, the remainder letting me down as follows
1) no relatives were named
2) no mention of the testator’s sister or her family
3) very cryptic with no relationships given and no clue as to where people fitted into the tree, if at all
4) everything was left to a known individual

BUT on the whole the seven that were very useful led me to major family history breakthroughs
1) to living descendants of Emily Padfield (Hemmings) who have photos, stories to tell and an interest in family history
2) to the only known descendant of Sergeant Stephen Read by his Cornish wife, through Quebec, Glasgow, Liverpool, Clevedon and now Denmark
3) finally a lead to the family of Henry Young of Andover and his wife Lucy, whose 15-odd children born in the late 1800s had proved surprisingly difficult to bring down to the present day
4) closing the door on the ‘spinster’ daughters of my Charles Warren of Maperton, two of whom had taken husbands late in life in locations I would not have expected and could not have traced
5) a small step forward in finding Tom Garner’s family.  I could have got their address way back in 1993 when I first learnt about the Garners from Dad’s cousin Tom, however I had no idea then, that they were related.  Still this will moves me slightly closer to regaining this lost address
6) the wonderful will of Rowena Homily, three-times married and of uncertain parentage.  No clue who many of the recipients are, but I’m sure we’ll find out as we zone in on the records.
7) the address of Arthur Ward as above

Most of the 400 wills I’ve bought (and seen many more) were acquired at least ten years ago when they were practically free, but I’m confident I’ll be using this great resource again soon, adding as they do so much colour to our family trees.  (And no-one really knows much about how to use them, yet!)