Help looking for great grandfather. I would very much appreciate any information or ideas on how to pursue my search for Ralph Godfrey my great grandfather and, my mother’s grandfather. To date my research has come up blank. What I do have is (his son’s) my grandfather’s birth certificate and marriage certificate. On my grandfather’s birth certificate it states: his name - Reginald Godfrey; mother’s maiden name - Lilian Moore; father’s name - Ralph Godfrey; address - 27 Walter St, West Bromwich; date - September 19 1916; father’s occupation - machine salesman. I also have Reginald Godfrey’s marriage certificate of 1937 which states that his father Ralph Godfrey’s occupation was an engineer’s salesman and deceased. It appears that the couple also had another child Ethel L. Godfrey in 1918. The background is as follows, as told by my mother. She told me that she used to question her parents about why she didn’t have a grandfather or grandmother like her friends, and her mother told her: Ralph and his wife Lilian were both killed in a car accident. Ralph (and his family?) came from Yorkshire. Ralph’s daughter, (Reginald’s sister) Ethel committed suicide (hung herself) in a barn (in the Bury St. Edmunds area) and Reginald found her. Ethel L. Godfrey’s birth date is in 1918, and date of death (through Ancestry) states September 1934 at age 17. So, Reginald would have been 19 at the time she died. Three years later Reginald was married in 1937 in the Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk area where he raised his family and where I also grew up. All I have so far is Reginald’s birth certificate to confirm his parent’s names, but I can’t find a birth, marriage, or death certificate for Ralph Godfrey. I am wondering whether “Ralph” was his true given name or a middle name that he preferred. Another thought was tax records etc. from his job or home address in West Bromwich, Staffordshire. Any help would be wonderful and greatly appreciated.
