Westchester County Probates

[knort33]

6-20-2015

Please clarify exactly what information you will be looking for from the probate file.  Were you trying to find any surviving family members of her (who lived at that time) and/or names of her heirs/beneficiaries to see if any were or were not directly related to her?  What city and country do you live in?

The New York Times article/obituary is available through many online databases.  Contact the New York Public Library to ask them to look it up for you for a small fee, or if you could contact any local university or any university in the US (the reference department), they could search for this article/obituary in the online databases they subscribe to and it would probably be free or very nominal cost. Since you already knew that she had no children, the obit will probably not be very helpful for your purposes.

Your steps to pursue information from her probate file could be problematic, since many New York Surrogate Courts require a fee paid in advance of as much as $100.00 (US dollars) to even conduct a search to determine if the probate file exists, and the fee is non-refundable if there is no probate file.  Copies would be an additional nominal fee.  Your comment that its difficult to make a long distance phone call from your part of the country is somewhat unusual since long-distance overseas phone calls are done quite easily from the US to other countries now at very inexpensive rates and I would suspect that the same reasoning would apply in your country.

Might you want to consider ordering her death certificate to see what information may be there?

Since her husband was an accomplished artist in Britain, would you want to consider getting his obituary to see if there is someone on his side of the family who could help you find out more family information?

knort33
Genealogical Researcher

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[Debe]

Thank you for your suggestions of which several have been followed.

I live in New Zealand and find your comment on mine "that its difficult to make a long distance phone call from your part of the country is somewhat unusual since long-distance overseas phone calls are done quite easily from the US to other countries now at very inexpensive rates and I would suspect that the same reasoning would apply in your country". It is possibly not the cost but time difference that can be problematic!

I have a subscription to the NY Times and have read several obits on Alison/Alice SKIPWORTH (nee GROOM) and in several it appears she may have embroidered the truth unless there is another Alison SKIPWORTH.

Have Frank Markham  SKIPWORTH's probate/will in which there is no mention of Alison as a beneficiary but the named person in it I am trying to uncover the relationship between her and Frank.

I and other family members are collaborating on this research and I was just trying to discover the whereabouts of any probate that the family could include in our research. In answer to your comment "Please clarify exactly what information you will be looking for from the probate file". I am not sure just exactly why you would need to know the answer to this as I feel you have answered the question yourself.
Deb
 

[shellyesq]

Did the obituaries you saw give any specific detail on where she died or lived beyond just New York? 

[knort33]

6-21-2015

The reason that you need to state specifically what it is you are looking for is so that the people responding to this message board can try to help you find that.

Regarding the time zone difference, if you will make your phone call during the hours of 1:00 am - 8:00 am New Zealand time on Tuesday, that would correspond perfectly to the New York daytime office hours at the court of 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on a Monday.  (Calculated via a Time Zone Converter website.)

[Debe]

Thank you for your suggestions
Deb

[jonsilence]

I am presently researching Alison Skipworth, nee Groom, for a biographical treatise.

Here's what I can tell you:

She appears to have fudged on her age a bit, in one direction or another; on her 1888 marriage license she stated her age as 25, then again stated her age as 25 three years later in the 1891 England census.

By at least 1896 she was in America working as an actress/entertainer, returning to England intermittently. Her husband, English artist Frank Skipworth, does not appear to have accompanied her on her trips to America. In the 1911 England census Frank is listed as married but there is no sign of Alison, who by this time had made America her permanent home and workplace. As early as 1900, Alison stated that she had no intention of returning to England other than for periodic holidays.

Alison is interred in Kenisco Cemetery (Valhalla, Westchester Co.), NY, with someone named Francie Hidden, who was 44 years younger than Alison. The nature of their relationship is not known.

Alison first posed at age 15 in 1874 for artist Frank Skipworth, whom she eventually married in 1888. Given Alison's defacto abandonment of Frank & their marriage, the true nature of their relationship is open to speculation, and it would come as no surprise to find that she was not included in Frank's will. 

By the time Alison passed away in 1952, she had become one of the first generation of Hollywood film stars. The disposition of her estate is not known at this time. 


      Jon Silence
~Silence is Golden~


   
 

[shellyesq]

Hi Jon,

Welcome to Roots Chat.  It looks like a few items have come online since the previous discussion above.  I was able to access the NY Times obit, which indicated she died at her home at 202 Riverside Drive.  So that supports my suspicion from a while back that she died in Manhattan (New York County) rather than Westchester Co.

Usually, I wouldn't be too suspicious of a differing age in the census, because sometimes that info comes from other people.  However, in her Social Security application, she gave her date of birth as 23 Jul. 1873, so I guess it may have bounced around a bit.  I'm a bit surprised she wasn't required to provide proof of that date of birth.

[jonsilence]

Thanks for the response.  You state that Alison's SS app shows a birthdate of 7-25-1873, but all of the biographical citations I find give her birth year as 1863. She married Frank Skipworth in 1888; their marriage certificate gives her age as 25 years. However, in the 1891 England census, her birthdate is once again given as 25 but has been crossed through.  I'm assuming that the 1863 date may have been extracted from her death certificate. 

[jonsilence]

Excerpts from Alison's film-career biography, written by Axel Nissen, state:

"[Alison] Skipworth had a long life behind her by the time she found herself on the opposite side of the world from where it all started in 1863. She was born in North Audley Street  in London on July 25 and given no less than four names--Alison Mary Elliot Margaret --by her parents, Richard Ebenezer [Groom] and Elizabeth Rodgers Groom."

Above from: “Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces From the Thirties to the Fifties” by Axel Nissen [McFarland & Co, 2007]

Nissen provides a detailed and insightful overview of Alison's film career which had its origins in 1920 in the Silent Era comedy "39 East" and was relaunched full-blown in 1930 with Alison's role in the early talkie "Strictly Unconventional."

Nissen appears to be incorrect in stating that Alison's husband, English painter Frank Skipworth (1854-1929), moved to America with Alison; to the contrary, all available evidence (including England census records) indicates that Frank remained in London, where Alison made periodic visits between U.S. theater productions.

Additionally, Nissen states that Alison married Frank Skipworth "...in 1882, when she was only nineteen and he was twenty-eight." While Nissen footnotes his source for this info, I am unable to access it online. I await my hard copy of his book to view this foundational info, which is contradicted by a handwritten England record of marriage that clearly gives the date of Frank and Alison's marriage as 3 Sept 1888, with Frank's age stated as 35 and Alison's as 25. Alison's father is listed as 'Richard Groome (deceased)', while Frank Groome [no relation given--brother?] and James Jebusa Shannon [American expatriate artist] are listed as a witnesses. Note the spelling of 'Groome' with an 'e' for all parties listed.

Somewhere along the way here we may have a case of mistaken identity on the part of biographer Nissen, or possibly a purposeful misstatement of the facts by Frank and Alison; given the nature & history of their relationship and the moral climate of the time, the latter scenario of willful deception would be both plausible and understandable.

More to be revealed.