You asked me if I had checked Mary's death certificate in your previous message.
No he didn't
Actually, I did ask that too, and
tazzy has not answered that question.
What year and is she shown as a widow?
Forfarian has asked the same question twice but we still have not had a reply. We are not interested in when William's mother died etc etc - it is his wife
JANET's death cert that will say whether she was a widow[/quote]Indeed.
But I also asked if
tazzy has the death certificate of William's mother Mary Muirhead or Somerville, so that we can see if William was the informant, and if so perhaps give us another date when he was known to be alive and an address where he was living.
William's Mother was Mary Muirhead who he was living with on the 1881 census in Carmyle.
He also had a stepdaughter called Mary Muirhead who was Janets daughter to James Muirhead.
Yes I read and understood that from further up the thread.
I'm beginning to think that they maybe split up if he was staying with his Mother as Head of the house.
Several messages ago, I asked the question, "
So you are saying that William and his wife were living apart in 1881?".
Have you found William in the 1891 census? And have you looked at Janet in the 1891 census to see who else was living with her?Anyway, we now know that William was known or believed to be alive in 1897 when his wife Janet died. SP indexes 12 deaths of w*m s*m*r*v*l* born 1835-1839. Two of them (the ones who died in Edinburgh and in Carstairs) can be discounted because the census index shows them in those places in 1881, 1891 and 1901. That leaves ten.
Did William's daughter Mary Somerville get married after 1897? If so, her marriage certificate will say if William was deceased, which might help to eliminate some of the other ten. (It would have been easier if it had been Ebenezer, but it looks as if he died in Cambuslang in 1893.)