The Ancestors' Geneameme

Thanks to Jill Ball of Geniaus for starting this geneameme. My list is annotated as follows:

• Things I have already done or found
• Things I would like to have done or found
• Things I haven’t done or found

1. Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents (http://goo.gl/A6rcI)
2. Can name over 50 direct ancestors (214)
3. Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents (6 so far http://goo.gl/A6rcI)
4. Have an ancestor who was married more than three times
5. Have an ancestor who was a bigamist
6. Met all four of my grandparents (1 died before I was born)
7. Met one or more of my great-grandparents (all died before I was born)
8. Named a child after an ancestor (my daughter's second name is Laura after my grandfather, Lawrence George Buchanan Davis http://goo.gl/Nmsw1)
9. Bear an ancestor's given name/s (My middle name is Mary. I have 15 ancestors with that name.)
10. Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland (All except one)
11. Have an ancestor from Asia
12. Have an ancestor from Continental Europe (Julius Wilhelm Fritz from Bahn, Pomerania, Prussia http://goo.gl/B2SUH)
13. Have an ancestor from Africa
14. Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer (6)
15. Have an ancestor who had large land holdings
16. Have an ancestor who was a holy man - minister, priest, rabbi (2 great-grandfathers and 1 great great grandfather were clergymen)
17. Have an ancestor who was a midwife
18. Have an ancestor who was an author
19. Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones (I have three different lines called Smith)
20. Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng
21. Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X
22. Have an ancestor with a forename beginning with Z
23. Have an ancestor born on 25th December
24. Have an ancestor born on New Year's Day
25. Have blue blood in your family lines
26. Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth (My mother was born in Canada http://goo.gl/ewLZj)
27. Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
28. Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century
29. Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier (1555 http://goo.gl/vJrF5)
30. Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents
31. Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X
32. Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university (theological college http://goo.gl/262WU)
33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence (http://goo.gl/aw4Ob)
34. Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime (http://goo.gl/RZ7Dm)
35. Have shared an ancestor's story online or in a magazine (http://cmgurney.blogspot.com)
36. Have published a family history online or in print (http://www.carosfamily.com)
37. Have visited an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries
38. Still have an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family
39. Have a  family bible from the 19th Century
40. Have a pre-19th century family bible

Lost in London - 4: Tracing an ordinary London family

 

 

To illustrate how much can be found about ordinary London families, I am including the following examples relating to my own Bluett and Fritz ancestors. They were poor Irish and German immigrants but the documents I have uncovered show that they actually lived extraordinary lives. The photographs of Mary Ann Bluett and Julius Fritz included in the family tree, above, came to me from hitherto unknown, distant cousins. We only made contact because my tree was online. 

 

 

This article is from the Times of 15 May 1846. There was a family tradition that Thomas Bluett had been shot in London but the details were completely wrong. As a result, I researched without success for 18 years. Yet I found Thomas easily as soon as the Times Digital Archive came online. That one newspaper published nine separate articles about the shooting, arrest, death, autopsy, inquest and trial. There was also a classic thundering Times leader following the acquittal of the perpetrator, John Graham. Many other national and regional papers also published articles. From all this material I discovered that Thomas had been born in Ireland, whereas I had been searching for him in Devon & Cornwall for years!

 

 

This article is from the Times of 11 June 1846. It provides wonderful information about Mary Bluett, née Langley, and her daughter Mary Ann Bluett, later Fritz. The second half of this article refers to Mary's previous residence in Hong Kong and to her having returned home on a ship whose Captain was subsequently tried at the Old Bailey, with Mary Bluett giving evidence. Armed with these clues and in collaboration with a cousin, found via the internet, I researched an amazing story of travels on three continents, confidence tricks, abandonment, mutiny, celebrity and crime.

 

 

Successive censuses showed that Julius Fritz had been born in Prussia but became a British Subject. I found his naturalisation papers in the National Archives and they gave me much valuable information about his origins, family, occupation and residence. They even gave me the name of his father in Prussia - Heinrich.

 

 

Cousins I found via the internet had a tradition that Julius was a Freeman of the City of London. I was initially sceptical as there was no such story in my branch of the family. But it turned out to be true and they were able to supply me with a copy of his application for the Freedom. This also gives the name of Julius' father - but as Ferdinand -and the information that he was dead by September 1876.

 

 

17a Fetter Lane, London was the Fritz family home and the location for Julius' tailoring business and second-hand china shop. Julius also let rooms to lodgers. It was a slum and was demolished in 1887. But it had been the home of the poet John Dryden in the 17th century and so it was sketched by several artists immediately prior to its demolition. A number of these pictures were found on the internet by a cousin, using Google. Members of the family are shown at the windows in this illustration. In another, a shop sign for J Fritz, Old China Dealer, can clearly be seen. 

 

 

This article is from the Times of 28 May 1878. It reports an affray involving one of the lodgers at 17a Fetter Lane, Mrs Amelia Lewis, in which Mary Ann Fritz (nee Bluett) and one of her daughters got caught up. They later gave evidence in court. Ordinary people frequently appear in police reports in this way.

Lost in London - 3: Helpful websites

 

 

Access to Archives. Search by name or place across the catalogues of most London repositories including the London Metropolitan Archives, City of Westminster Archives, Corporation of London Records Office and Guildhall Library.

Ancestry. Currently their catalogue lists 30 London specific databases, including London Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906; London Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921; London Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980; and London Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812.

Black Sheep Index. It's pot luck if you find anyone. I found two young ancestors who got on a train, very drunk, and objected violently to some pious fellow passengers who tried to convert them! I also found the reason for the disappearance of my great-great grandfather, Rev Frederick Davis – he fled abroad to avoid a charge of assaulting a young woman on a train.

British Newspapers, 1800-1900. 49 local and national titles. You may be able to access this collection for free using your library card.

Charles Booth Online Archive. Street by street notebooks and maps, documenting social conditions in London between 1886 and 1903.

City of Westminster Archives Catalogue. WESTCAT contains details of the official records of the City of Westminster and the former Boroughs of Paddington and St Marylebone together with parish registers and other parish records for these areas. The collections also include records deposited by businesses, estates, schools, clubs, societies, charities, institutions and private individuals. There are also images of prints and photographs drawn from the archival and local studies collection.

Cyndi's List. Check Cyndi's pages for London and the surrounding counties for thousands of relevant links.

Deceased Online. Digitised images of burial and cremation records from the London Boroughs of Brent, Camden, Greenwich, Havering, Islington and Merton.

Docklands Ancestors. Indexes to baptisms in dockland parishes, plus resources for researching Thames watermen and lightermen and other dockland ancestors.

Find My Past. The London Collection includes the City of London Burial Index; West Middlesex Marriage Index; London Docklands Baptisms; London and West Kent Probate Indexes and participants in the 1888 Matchworkers' Strike.

GENUKI: London. Don't forget to visit the pages for Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex as well.

Google. To find all instances of a search term on a website, use the search prefix "site" plus your search term, for example: "site:www.blacksheepindex.co.uk gurney". This is very useful for sites such as Black Sheep Ancestors which have multiple databases with no overall search engine.

Google Books. Search for references to ancestral names or places inside old books. Read them online or order the book from your local library on inter-library loan.

Historical Directories. Digital images of 81 London directories from 1808 to 1919.

London Ancestor. A miscellany of London links.

London Gazette. Includes bankruptcies, business failures and closures. I found a direct ancestor imprisoned in Maidstone Gaol as an "insolvent debtor".

London Jews Database. A database of names, addresses and some other information about Jews who lived in London in the first half of the nineteenth century.

London Lives, 1690-1800. A fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.

London Metropolitan Archives. Information about collections, research leaflets and catalogue search.

London Road Name Changes. Indexed lists of the road name changes made by London County Council after 1889.

London Roll of Honour. London war memorials and rolls of honour.

Middlesex Marriage Index. Covers 31 parishes on the outskirts of London.

Old London Maps. Includes views of the city from the 16th to the 19th century.

Principal streets and places in London and its environs, 1856. Produced by the Post office, this directory gives the postal district for every street in London.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Pot luck again. This site has amazing detail about cases, with names, addresses and statements of victims, witnesses and perpetrators.

Society of Genealogists, City of London Resources. Includes information on the City Livery Companies, in addition to the resource categories listed for Middlesex, below.

Society of Genealogists, Middlesex Resources. Includes parish registers, marriage licences, monumental inscriptions, censuses, directories, poll books, periodicals and wills.

Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985. Information on how to gain free access and how to search. The Times is not just a source for "top people". Many ordinary people appeared in its pages, especially in reports of court cases and "human interest" stories.

Topographical Dictionary of London, 1831. "Containing descriptive and critical accounts of all the public and private buildings, offices, docks, squares, streets, lanes, wards, liberties, charitable, scholastic and other establishments, with lists of their officers, patrons, incumbents of livings, &c. in the British metropolis". 

Tower Hamlets BMD. Indexes to registrations of births, marriages and deaths within the Tower Hamlets district from 1837 to date.

Victorian London A to Z Street Index.

Lost in London - 2: Research strategies

 

 

General strategies

These are strategies applicable to all family history research:

• Keep an open mind. Evaluate everything, assume nothing. What you think you know about dates, ages, relationships or places may be wrong and may be preventing you from looking in the right place.
• Use all available sources. Never be content with just the readily available BMD and census information. More sources equal more pieces of the jigsaw.

• Research related lines. Siblings share parents and first cousins share their grandparents. Work backwards through them and then come forwards down the tree again. Find living relatives. Different stories, photos and documents are passed down different lines. Distant cousins may hold vital clues. They may even help you research.
• Use the internet. More and more images of primary sources are online, plus incredibly helpful indexes and search engines. The internet is an amazing tool, which has revolutionised genealogy. Use it!
• Share your research. This combines the last two points. Publish your research online and watch the new cousins roll up and the brick walls tumble.

London strategies

Learn the geography.

"Mr Weller's knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar". Dickens

You need to "do the knowledge” like a London cabbie.

• Learn the administrative structure. London consisted of the City of London plus parts of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex. There were different boundaries for registration districts, poor law unions, Church of England parishes and electoral wards. These overlapped in confusing ways. There were also frequent changes. During the 19th century there was repeated sub-division of Church of England parishes and, in 1889, the London County Council was created.
• Study 19th century growth. London was transformed by the coming of the railways in the 1830s, leading for the first time to a divide between the inner city and the suburbs. There was new building on a massive scale, with the development of Islington, Paddington, Belgravia, Holborn, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Southwark and Lambeth.
• Research street name changes. Many streets disappeared as a result of new road construction such as Kingsway in central London. Many had their names changed (sometimes more than once) to remove duplications. To track the changes you need maps. Reproductions of old Ordnance Survey maps and the A to Z of Victorian London are particularly helpful.
• Consider migration routes. Identify possible routes  into London from your ancestors' rural places of origin. For example, the Gurney family moved from Norfolk to Bedfordshire to Hertfordshire to North London. And remember that they didn't just travel by road. You should look at the pattern of rivers and railways as well, when trying to identify where they came from or where they went.

Understand the society

"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained." Conan Doyle

To do this you must read, read, read. Some helpful starting points are:

• Ackroyd, Peter.  London: The Biography
• Dickens, Charles. Any of his London based novels. See Dickensian London: A character in itself.
• Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
• Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor.
• Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People of London. The London School of Economics has put Booth's poverty maps and notebooks online. If you are lucky, you may find a detailed description of your ancestor’s street.

Remember the history

"If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!" Coleridge

• Your ancestors did not live in a vacuum, isolated from the great events of their day. To see the connections, superimpose a timeline of historical and/or local events on a chronological list of events in your ancestor's life. Tools to help you do this can be found in many genealogy software programs.

• Are some of your male ancestors missing from the 1901 census? This baffled people when the 1901 census was first released. They had forgotten about the Boer War.

• Did your ancestors appear in London out of nowhere in the 1840s/1850s? Remember the Irish Potato Famine, 1845-1852 and that Irish people did not necessarily have uniquely Irish surnames. 1848 is known as the Year of Revolution across Europe. Uprisings took place in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland, and their suppression was the trigger for a wave of emigration. Many ended up in London.

Lost in London - 1: Why is London such a problem?

Back in 2008 I gave a talk to the Family History Group of Thornbury U3A on the theme "Lost in London - Breaking down brick walls in London research". As my health no longer allows me to travel to give talks, I've decided to share my presentation on this blog. I've broken it into four parts for ease of reading. I hope you find it helpful.

 

Why is London such a problem?

"Hell is a city much like London - A populous and smoky city." Shelley

• Size. By 1800 London was already the world’s largest city, with a population of 1 million. By the 1851 census, that figure had grown to 2.5 million and was 6.7 million in 1901.
• Scale. The small market town where I live, Chipping Sodbury, consists of one parish and it is possible to search the whole parish register, if necessary, for one event. But there were over 100 parishes in the square mile of the City of London alone. And some of the parishes in the wider city were truly enormous. By mid century, the population of St Marylebone was over 150,000.
• Range of repositories. In addition to the major collections in the London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall Library and Westminster Archives, there are separate record offices in most London boroughs, plus numerous specialist repositories
• Range of sources. The numbers of different churches, charities, directories, newspapers, books, government reports, etc. covering London make it impossible to search everything.
• Difficult research period. During the early 19th century there was a decline in the number of children baptised, especially in poor urban areas, and this was prior to the start of General Registration in 1837 and the first useful census in 1841.

Why are Londoners such a problem?

"There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas." Herman Melville

• Extreme poverty. In "The Condition of the Working Class in England", published in 1845, Friedrich Engels described the abject condition of the London poor:

  On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: She had lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither a bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy.

  On Monday, Jan. 15th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police magistrate because, being in a starving condition, they had stolen and immediately devoured a half-cooked calf's foot from a shop. The magistrate felt called upon to investigate the case further, and received the following details from the policeman: The mother of the two boys was the widow of an ex-soldier, afterwards policeman, and had had a very hard time since the death of her husband, to provide for her nine children. She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place, Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the utmost poverty. When the policeman came to her, he found her with six of her children literally huddled together in a little back room, with no furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone, a small table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish. On the hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as a bed. For bed clothing they had only their scanty day clothing. The poor woman told him that she had been forced to sell her bedstead the year before to buy food. Her bedding she had pawned with the victualler for food. In short, everything had gone for food. The magistrate ordered the woman a considerable provision from the poor-box.

• Extreme mobility. Because so many were leading a hand to mouth existence, with very little money for accommodation, renting rooms by the month, week or even by the night was common. Most poor families gave a different address at the birth registration of each child. It is not uncommon for the address to change in the few weeks between birth and baptism.
• Fragmented families. The Industrial Revolution led to a huge migration of population from the countryside into the towns. People lost their rural roots and the extended family structures which went with them. Family members were scattered over wide areas of the city and children no longer supported their aged parents.
• Social breakdown. People were no longer well known to their neighbours, or to the authorities, as is demonstrated in the cases cited by Engels
• Official anonymity. Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was not compulsory until 1875. There was deliberate evasion of the census takers and it was easy to cover up cohabitation, adultery and illegitimacy. One of my husband's ancestors fathered two illegitimate children whilst he was an apprentice. He and his partner were able to pass themselves off as man and wife when baptising those children in a large London parish. Once his apprenticeship ended, they went several parishes away to tie the knot quietly.

UK Genealogy News & Views: 12 September 2011

Essex Ancestors Update

The planned launch of Essex Ancestors on 30 August has been put back to 3 October. This means that you have an extra month to view the digital images currently online for free, as explained in my previous post. Don't miss this opportunity whilst it is available.

Genhound - a little known resource

I read a lot of genealogy blogs and follow many genealogists on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. Some sites get mentioned repeatedly but I rarely see any reference to Genhound. That is a pity as it is full of useful content which is growing fast. Records include parish registers, monumental inscriptions, newspapers, obituaries, wills, military records, court records, land records, biographies and much more besides. You can see a complete list of databases here. At the moment there is a little bit of everything, so it's a real lucky dip. As someone who's stuck in late 17th century Scotland, I am particularly keen on the Scottish Deeds Index, which now covers the period 1675-1696. But I've also found relatives in poll books, directories and school records. Genhound is extremely reasonably priced. You can buy 60 Credits for £3 and they have no expiry date. The average record costs just 10 credits (50p) to view. Do give their search engine a try today and let me know how you get on.

New Crew List Records on Find My Past

Find My Past have recently added records from 1881 and 1891 to their database of Crew Lists, 1861-1913. This database is potentially very valuable. It contains indexes to around 33,500 lists of crew members on board British merchant vessels and around 413,500 records of individual crewmen. Information available in the index includes name, age, place of birth, rank, previous ship, current ship, dates of voyage, details of the vessel, details of the owner, master and other crew members and the reference number for the original crew list at the National Archives.

Unfortunately, the usefulness of the index is seriously undermined by the limitations of the search function and the poor quality of the indexing. It is not possible to search by the birth town, only by the birth county (usually not in the original but added by the indexers). You must select from a list of counties which covers England, Wales, two counties in Ireland - Cork and Dublin, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Overseas. The database contains a large number of crew members who were born in one of the other Irish counties, or in Scotland, but it is impossible to search for them by birth county.

Birth towns have also been incorrectly allocated to counties. Whilst ploughing through 28 pages of Andersons to find my Scottish relatives, I came across Falmouth indexed in Cork instead of Cornwall, Ferryden in Overseas instead of Angus and Arundel in Norway! There are five whole pages out of the 28 where the places have not been allocated a county at all. Many of these birth places are blank, abbreviated or obscure, but others are instantly recognisable, such as Morpeth, Tipton, Halifax, Glamis, Kirkcaldy and Pontypridd.

Unlike most of the other Find My Past databases, there is no facility to submit corrections to these indexes.

UK Genealogy News & Views: 23 August 2011

Only a week left to get Essex records for free

Essex Record Office currently have digital images of a number of parish registers available free via the Essex Ancestors section of their SEAX search engine. Coverage varies by date and parish - excellent for Dedham and very poor for Prittlewell, for example. From 30 August they will be offering unlimited access to Essex parish registers and wills on a newly launched Essex Ancestors website but it will be a subscription service. The charges will range from £5 for one day's access to £75 for a year. So if you have Essex ancestors, take a look to see if digital images for their parish are currently free online, before this week's window of opportunity closes.

London Confirmation Records, 1850-1921, on Ancestry

Ancestry usually add new databases quietly, a few days before they announce them publicly. I regularly check the New Collections page to see what they've sneaked in and last week I spotted the addition of London Confirmation Records, 1850-1921. I had high hopes for this collection but they were soon dashed. The new database contains  records from just 25 parishes, some covering very short time periods, such as St John, Kensal Green, 1892-99 and St Jude, South Kensington, 1904-1912. There are less than 23,000 records in total. So don't get your hopes up, fellow London researchers! Oh, and St Martin, Kensal Rise, has been indexed as St John, Kensal Green!

Poor indexing of the 1851 census on Find My Past

British genealogists often complain that Ancestry make a hash of transcribing our records, as in the example above. Yesterday I found equally poor indexing of the 1851 census records on Find My Past. I was looking at the delightfully named Dorset village of Whitchurch Canonicorum and found that over 160 people born in the village had their birthplace mistranscribed as "Whitchurch and Coventry". Other gems of mistranscription included "Whitchurch Lanonicorner" and "Whitchurch Cononicorem". Given that the parish name was clearly written, in full, at the top of the first page, you'd think it would have been fairly easy to get it right! I've suggested to Find My Past that they should review their indexing of this whole section of the census.

Scottish records in English archives

People researching Scottish ancestry naturally gravitate to Scottish repositories and to websites such as Scotland's People. But don't forget that English archives also contain important Scottish records. I have struck lucky in a number of places. In the National Archives at Kew, the TS 11/1082 series of papers relating to the 1745 Jacobite rebellion contains three letters sent to one of my Scottish ancestors. I found deeds for properties in Angus, owned by my 17th century ancestors, in the Sheffield Archives, in the papers of a local aristocratic family of Scots descent. And I have been able to trace the careers of a number of Scottish relatives in the India Office Records at the British Library. The Access to Archives search engine is a good place to start looking for Scottish names and places in English archives and you should also search the National Archives online catalogue.

Identifying & Dating Old Photos: Mystery Photo 1

This evening I participated in an excellent webinar by Maureen Taylor, Photo Detective, on the subject of Identifying and Dating Family Photographs. It has really motivated me to get back to work on an album containing photographs of my Lowe ancestors in Coupar Angus, Scotland, which a cousin shared with me last year. See Every Picture Tells a Story for the background. Of the 96 photographs in the album, only 26 have so far been identified.

 

 

I have decided to start with this full length portrait of an unknown man because it has details of the photographer on the reverse:

.

 

Here is what I know so far, set out under headings suggested by Maureen's webinar:

Provenance of Photograph

From an album belonging to Dr John Lowe (1849-1925), and his wife, Annie Willie Cowpar. The album was subsequently taken to Canada by their son, Major Robert Lowe (1882-1955). It is now in the possession of one of his daughters, my third cousin, once removed, from whom I obtained a digital copy.

Type of Photograph

Paper print, common in England from 1858 to 1914.

Photographer

Thanks to Photo London, I know that Alexander Lamont Henderson, born in Edinburgh in 1838, had a studio at 49 King William Street, London Bridge, from 1860 until November 1887. His son gave his photographic library to the Guildhall Library in November 1907. Alas, it was destroyed during the Blitz in 1942. Otherwise I could simply have looked up the print number in the library.

Internal Evidence

The painted window, looking out on a country scene, was popular in the late 1860s.

Costume

A number of features suggest the first half of the 1860s:

• Loose fitting suit
• Peg top trousers, wide at the top and tapering to a close fit at the ankle
• Dark jacket worn with light trousers
• Shoes neither square-toed nor pointed

Genealogical Research

Most of the photographs in the album were taken in Scotland. This one suggests someone who was living in London. Between 1863 and 1872, George Lowe (1819-1915), worked in London as an engineer, first at Woolwich Arsenal and later at St Pancras. He was aged 44 to 53 during this period, which fits with the age of the man in the photograph. I have a photograph of George Lowe taken in 1902, when he was 83. Comparing the two photographs, there would seem to be a similarity in the eyes, nose, mouth and ears:

 

 

Add up all the Clues

The evidence so far suggests that this may be a photograph of George Lowe, taken when he was working in London during the 1860s.

Next Steps

George Lowe and his family emigrated first to Canada, in 1872, and then to the USA in 1873. I am in touch with one of his descendants in the USA, my fourth cousin. I shall email him to see if he, or his relatives, have any photographs of George Lowe.

Porter who told porkies had previous

In Porter tells porkies to the police I wrote about how my great-grandfather, John McCarthy, lied about his age in order to join the Metropolitan Police.

Before joining the police, John had been a porter and signalman with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. Yesterday Ancestry released a new database of Railway Employment Records, 1833-1963 and I was very pleased to find John McCarthy's service record amongst them.

 

 

The details can be briefly stated: John joined the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway as a porter at Shadwell Station in March 1880, on a salary of 16 shillings a week (about £400 today). On 13 September 1880 he was promoted to signalman and his pay went up to 22 shillings (about £550). He resigned on 25 November 1881, a month before he started his new career in the Metropolitan Police.

What intrigued me was to see that John had also lied about his age to the railway company. In March 1880 John was 16 but told them he was 19. The reason for the deception is baffling, as the records show other boys taken on as porters on the same salary as John, aged only 15. Whatever his motives, it is clear that he had "previous" when it came to pulling a fast one on the Metropolitan Police.

The staff records also reveal that he was recommended to the railway company by Hyam & Co. They were a large and very well known firm of outfitters, with headquarters in Oxford Street and branches in all the main British cities. In 1851 they advertised themselves in the official catalogue of the Great Exhibition as "the most extensive tailors and clothiers in the world". My assumption is that John McCarthy worked for them before joining the railway. Perhaps it was from them that he acquired his taste for elegant clothes, which led to his nickname: The Beau Brummell of the Yard.

 

SNGF: 10 Signs you have summer holiday GOCD

For tonight's SNGF challenge, Randy Seaver has invited us to add to Michael John Neill's list of 10 Signs You Have Genealogy OCD.

As we are in the middle of the summer holidays, I decided to base my list on that theme:

 

 

1. You book your holiday accommodation in a former ancestral hometown - if possible, in a former ancestral home.
   
   
2. You pack your laptop, notebook and pencils but forget your swimsuit and sunblock.
   
   
3. You take three days to get there because of all the genealogy related stops along the way.
   
   
4. You spend your days in the archives / cemetery whilst your family go to the beach.
   
   
5. You spend one evening at the local genealogy society meeting.
   
   
6. You spend your other evenings researching online whilst your family watch TV.
   
   
7. You send reproductions of old postcards to your friends and family back home.
   
   
8. You buy local maps and histories as souvenirs.
   
   
9. You are Facebook friends with all the local genealogists by the time you leave.
   
   
10. All your holiday snaps are of gravestones.

SNGF: A Genealogy Scavenger Hunt

The Challenge

Tonight's challenge from Randy Seaver is:

1. For each person listed below, provide the name of the mother of the person and the genea-blogger to whom they are related.

a) Lois Velleda Dreher

b) Mary Philomene Laurent

c) Ernest Francis Sheern

d) Cecelia Jost

e) Mary Jane Sovereen

f) Bethiah Brigham

2. Tell us how you conducted this search, and what you may have learned from your searches.

The Answers

1. The mother / genea-blogger in each case is:

a) Irene Caroline Banet / Cyndi Beane Henry Mountain Genealogists

b) Olivine Marie St. Louis / Brian Zalewski Zalewski Family Genealogy

c) Ann Emily Leseure / Sheri Fenley The Educated Genealogist

d) Cecilia Kurta / Amy Coffin The We Tree Genealogy Blog

e) Eliza Putman / Randy Seaver Genea-Musings

f) Ann Richardson / Elyse Doerflinger Elyse's Genealogy Blog

2.  I used Google. I have to be honest and say that I'm afraid I didn't learn anything. It was all very mechanistic - just search, copy and paste. Not my favourite challenge.

Postcard from the Past

From time to time I buy old postcards of ancestral places on eBay. They are usually very cheap and provide windows into a vanished world.

 

 

My latest purchase is a postcard of Coupar Angus, Perthshire, dating from 1917. My family has had a long association with the town, from the 17th century to the 1950s. Some of the names I am researching there are Clark, Fife, Gibb, Haliburton, Hay, Hood, Lowe, Malcolm and Smyth.

When my postcard arrived I turned it over, expecting to see the usual few lines, scrawled by a holidaymaker. Imagine my surprise at finding the following information instead:

 

 

I'm a genealogist so, naturally, I started to research R Bingham Adams. So far I've been able to piece together the following facts:

Richard Bingham Adams was born in Portsmouth in 1873 and married Violet Plater there in 1897. They had two children - Violet Plater Adams, born in 1898, and Dorothy Plater Adams, born in 1901. Richard appears in the 1891 census as a solicitor's clerk in Portsmouth. In the 1901 and 1911 censuses he was working for an insurance company, first in Horsham, then back in Portsmouth. During the First World War he served in five different units, including the Labour Corps. After the war he continued to serve in the Territorial Army, which awarded him the Territorial Efficiency Medal in 1928. His Medal Card gives the details of his previous service:

 

 

Richard died in Portsmouth in 1956, aged 82. His elder daughter, Violet, married Alfred Tree in Portsmouth in 1922. They had a son, Kenneth, who was born and died in 1924, and a daughter, Olive Violet, born in 1925. According to a well-sourced family tree on Ancestry, she is still alive.

I also did some research on Richard Bingham Adams' ancestry. His father, James Lewis Adams, was a pilot who worked for the Colonial Service in Port Louis, Mauritius, and all of Richard's siblings were born there. James himself was born in the then new town of Anglesey in the parish of Alverstoke, now part of Gosport, in 1833. His father was the wonderfully named Balthazar Bowman Adams, who was a ship's carpenter in the Royal Navy.

Balthazar's father, also Balthazar, was the son of Henry Adams, the Master Shipbuilder at Bucklers Hard, who built many famous ships of the Royal Navy. These included Nelson's favourite, HMS Agamemnon, and two other ships which saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Balthazar Adams senior and his brother, Edward, inherited the thriving business when their father died that same year, but they over-extended themselves and by 1811 they were bankrupt.

Waitangi Day - Thomas Bluett, Wellington, 1841

February 6th is Waitangi Day, New Zealand's national day, which commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840. To mark the day, the Auckland Research Centre have issued an invitation to blog about New Zealand ancestors.

 

 

My 3x great grandfather, Thomas Bluett, was born around 1819. On 4 December 1836 he married Mary Langley at St Mary, Lambeth, Surrey. Mary had been born in Ireland around 1813, the daughter of Thomas Langley. Thomas and Mary had two known children. Their first child was a son, Thomas, whose birth has not yet been traced. Their second was a daughter, Mary Ann, who was born at 34 Little Pulteney Street, Westminster, on 3 March 1839. It is through her that I am descended. Mary Ann's birth certificate states that Thomas was a printer and we know from other sources that, at this time, he was employed as a lithographic printer by Day and Haghe of London, the country's leading lithographic printing firm.

 

 

On 17 September 1840, Thomas Bluett's name was entered in the New Zealand Company's register of emigrant labourers applying for free passage to New Zealand. He gave his age as 21 and his occupation as smith and bellhanger. Thomas was said to be married, with a wife aged 25, boy aged three and a girl aged eleven months, and the family were living at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand, London.

On 27 September 1840, there was another Bluett application. Adam Bluett was registered as a smith, living at 18 Union Place, Sloane Square, Chelsea. He was aged 30, with a wife aged 29, boy aged 12 and girl aged 10. On 20 October 1840, there were two further applications. Another Adam Bluett, differentiated from the first by the designation senior, was a locksmith and bell hanger, resident at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand. He was married, aged 40, with a wife aged 38. Immediately after him in the register came an application from Peter Langley, an unmarried labourer, aged 21 and also resident at 50 St Clement's Lane.

 

 

After seven years' research, the relationship between these various groups of people is still unclear but, from the coincidence of names, occupations and addresses, it can hardly be doubted that there is one. Some of the information given in the applications is false - Thomas' occupation and Mary Ann's age were probably altered in order to qualify for free passage - but much has been proved accurate from other sources.

Thomas Bluett and his family were originally booked to sail on the Lady Nugent, which left England on 21 October 1840, but they delayed their departure, presumably in order to travel on the same ship as the others. At some point Adam Bluett junior and his family decided not to travel. He and his wife, Catherine (nee Sweeney), plus Adam's two children from a previous marriage, William and Betsy, can be found in the 1841 census living in Henrietta Street, Marylebone. So it was a party of seven which finally set sail on the barque Olympus from Gravesend on 9 December 1840, as steerage passengers bound for New Zealand. The passenger list notes that Thomas Bluett acted as cook for the voyage.

The Olympus arrived at Port Nicholson (the harbour of Wellington) on 20 April 1841. Thomas Bluett lost no time in getting to work but not as a smith and bellhanger. For he had brought with him in the hold of the Olympus the first lithographic printing press to reach New Zealand. Moreover, one of the cabin passengers on the Olympus was a lithographic artist, Jacob William Jones. It seems highly improbable that this was a coincidence. On 1 May 1841, the New Zealand Gazette announced:

 

 

On 29 May, Jones and Bluett produced a chart of Port Nicholson, the first printed map in New Zealand:

 

 

By 12 June they had added a plan of Wadestown and a view of Lambton Harbour & Mount Victoria from Tinakore:

 

 

By 17 July the Gazette was selling their plans of the town:

 

 

But then it all began to go wrong. 16 September 1841 saw the publication in Wellington of the first, and only surviving, edition of an extraordinary newspaper, the Victoria Times. It was a lithographic print of a handwritten original and the publisher was Thomas Bluett, whose address was given as the Lithographic Printing Office, Wellington Terrace.

 

 

As was the custom, the first page consisted of advertisements, including one promoting Thomas Bluett's lithographic services on "very moderate" terms and another seeking "a steady and respectable lad as an apprentice to the lithographic business". The second and third pages were devoted to an editorial in the form of an extended diatribe against the Gazette. The fourth page reprinted the Jones and Bluett plan of Wellington:

 

 

From the plan, it can be seen that the Lithographic Printing Office was situated on land owned by Jacob William Jones. But, having alienated the Gazette, which had previously sold - and praised - his lithographic prints, Thomas now went on to alienate his collaborator and patron. The last mention of Thomas in New Zealand is an advertisement which appeared in the Gazette on 10 and 13 November 1841:

 

 

By the end of the year, Thomas Bluett and his family had left New Zealand for Australia. Their many adventures thereafter, culminating in Thomas' headline-making death back in London in 1846, must be the subject of future blog posts.

As for their travelling companions on the Olympus, I can find no reference at all to them in New Zealand following their arrival. Peter Langley simply vanishes without trace but Adam Bluett senior and his wife, another Catherine, reappear in England. On 16 August 1849 they were convicted at the Wiltshire County Assizes of uttering counterfeit coin and each sentenced to one year's imprisonment. Adam died in the Workhouse in the parish of St Giles, London, and was buried in Victoria Park Cemetery, Hackney, on 27 December 1858, aged 59.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Date I Was Born

Another Saturday night, another fun challenge from Randy Seaver:

1) What day of the week were you born? Tell us how you found out.

I was born on a Tuesday. My Mum told me that when I was very small. She used to quote from the old rhyme, "Tuesday's child is full of grace". Just to make sure I hadn't got it wrong, I checked my birthdate in the calendar in The Master Genealogist (TMG). It agrees that I was born on a Tuesday.

 

 

2) What has happened in recorded history on your birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

I Googled "on this day 6 July" which produced 393 million results. Forced to choose only five events, I decided on:

• 6 July 1189: Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) became King of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, on the death of his father, Henry II. I saw Richard's beautifully decorated tomb when I visited the Abbey of Fontevraud in France in 2008. (Source: Wikipedia)

• July 1535: Sir Thomas More was executed for treason, having refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging Henry VIII as Supreme Governor of the Church in England. On the scaffold he declared that he died, "The King's good servant, but God's first". (Source: Wikipedia)

• 6 July 1785: The United States Congress unanimously: "Resolved, That the money unit of the United States be one dollar.” (Source: The Freeman)

• 6 July 1942: Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the "Secret Annexe", a sealed-off area above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse. The day before, Anne's older sister, Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp." Anne was 13 when they went into hiding. (Source: History Channel & Wikipedia)

• 6 July 1964: The Beatles' first film, "A Hard Day's Night," premiered in London. Perhaps they chose the day because it was exactly seven years after John Lennon and Paul McCartney were first introduced to each other, on 6 July 1957. (Source: On This Day).

 

3)  What famous people have been born on your birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

As for (2) above, I Googled "on this day 6 July" and found:

• 6 July 1747: John Paul Jones, American naval commander. On 23 April 1778, Jones attacked the port of Whitehaven in Cumberland. Today there is a pub named after him in the town, which I visited in 2009. (Source: Wikipedia).

• 6 July 1781: Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. I lived in Singapore from 1965 to 1968. (Source: Wikipedia).

• 6 July 1939: Jet Harris, bassist with Cliff Richard's backing group, The Shadows. As a child I had a huge crush on Jet and his quiff! (Source: Jet Harris)

• 6 July 1946: George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States - and Sylvester Stallone on the same day. (Source: Wikipedia)

• 6 July 1907: Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter. I love her naive, folk art style paintings. (Source: Frida Kahlo).

Hey, kids, look what I've just found out about Grandad!

Thomas MacEntee recently suggested on Facebook that we should talk to our children about genealogy. I've been talking to my children about genealogy since 1985. Their eyes glaze over at the mere mention of the word. They believe compulsory childhood tours of graveyards were a form of child abuse. I may soon be arrested!

My husband shows his love by recognising my need to share family history stories and accepting that he will be the main audience. But even when the stories are about his own ancestors he sets firm time limits. Exceed ten minutes and he adopts the strategy of the 1950s People reporter: "I made my excuses and left". On our very first journey together I took him to Tipton, of all places. Whilst I photographed a gravestone, he made the unwelcome acquaintance of an old man in a ginger wig. He is still traumatised by the experience.

 

 

My husband and son also speak bitterly of the time I booked a holiday in Scotland and forgot to tell them it was an old ancestral stamping ground. They didn't seem to appreciate that the holiday cottage was on an estate once owned by my family. Surely that made up for the owner being a control freak, personally trained by the Stasi? And I truly believe that, in amongst all the touristy stuff, one teeny graveyard visit a day was not excessive. The two hours I spent in the graveyard in Broughty Ferry were an aberration. They didn't have to wait lunch for me. And in any case they were in a pub. Since when did British men complain about spending two hours in a pub?

 

 

The family member with the most interest in genealogy is my dear mother. She implanted my love of history when I was tiny. She told me all the family stories over tea time toast and honey. In the early days we even shared research trips to London. But now, aged 91, even she has her limits. If I witter on too much after Sunday lunch, I can see she is thinking longingly about her nap.

Which is where the distant cousins come in, bless them. Those wonderful souls who have also inherited the recessive genealogical gene. Those co-addicts who would rather spend their days with a microfilm reader than visit the sights of London or Edinburgh. We email each other with discoveries in the middle of the night. We compete to follow up on a new research lead. We argue over possible ancestral motivation and bond over shared ancestral secrets. And, when we finally meet, we always have something to talk about.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Last November a cousin in Canada emailed me with exciting news – her sister had found an old photo album containing photographs of our Lowe ancestors in Coupar Angus, Scotland, dating from the 19th century.

My cousin sent me a copy of a picture from that album showing five young girls – the daughters of my 2x great grandfather John Lowe, a Coupar Angus solicitor, and his wife Cecilia, nee Malcolm. The girls were Georgina (my great grandmother) b. 1853, Marjory b. 1855, Cecilia Anne (Annie) b. 1857, Catherine (Kate) b. 1860 and Maria b. 1863.

I was thrilled to have this photograph. Georgina died in May 1890, one week after giving birth to my grandfather, Lawrence, and his twin sister, Georgina. Only one photograph of her had passed down to us, dating from the time of her marriage in 1876. I had never seen any photographs of her sisters.

Judging by the girls’ apparent ages in the photograph, I guessed it was probably taken in the second half of the 1860s. Looking more closely, I realised that all the girls were dressed entirely in black and had black ribbons in their hair. They were also wearing crosses on black ribbons or necklaces round their necks. Clearly they were in mourning.

That sent me scurrying back to the family tree to try and identify a family death in the late 1860s. The one that seemed most likely was the death of the girls’ older brother, John James Lowe, in September 1867. I had his death date from a gravestone in the Kirkyard of the Abbey Church, Coupar Angus, so had never bothered to purchase his death certificate. Now I decided it was time to do so.

I quickly found the death certificate for John James Lowe on the Scotland’s People website. Reading it pulled me up with a start.

John James died at 4.10 pm on the afternoon of 9 September 1867 at the General Railway Station in Perth. His death was certified by Dr George W Absolom who had entered the cause of death as “Probably Heart Disease?”. It looked like John James had dropped dead from a heart attack or heart failure in the railway station.

My next stop was the family's local newspaper, the Dundee Courier. Fortunately for family historians, the British Library has put a large number of 19th century newspapers online, including several from Scotland. And I am one of the lucky people who has free access to this database from home, courtesy of my library’s subscription.

I found a death notice, published on 11 September 1867, which confirmed that John James had died suddenly. Sadly, there was no other report - probably because, as the death certificate shows, there was no inquest. There certainly would be today, if an apparently healthy 16 year old dropped down dead in a railway station. The death also took place at a time when a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was taking place in Dundee. The columns of the Dundee Courier were so full of the doings of the eminent visiting scientists that there was little space for anything else.

However, the Dundee Courier did provide me with an unexpected bonus in the shape of a railway timetable for September 1867. This shows that the Highland Railway train from Dundee arrived at Perth Station at 4.10 pm - the time of death given on the death certificate. It would seem that poor John James died as he got out of the train.

The informant on the death certificate was John James' 17 year old cousin, Henry James Lowe, who registered the death at Perth on 11 September. Since he gave his place of residence as Coupar Angus, I can think of no reason for him to be in Perth, registering the death, other than that he was John James' travelling companion on the ill-fated train journey. He must have been in a state of shock, as he could not remember his aunt's first name.

The moral of this tale is, of course, that one should always purchase the death certificate - particularly for deaths in Scotland, where the certificates are so informative. Had I not done so, John James would have remained just a name on a gravestone.

A footnote for those familiar with Scottish research - Henry James Lowe went on to work as a clerk in the Register House in Edinburgh, up until his own untimely death in 1886. Now that's another certificate I must buy.