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Hi all,

Just wanted to see if anyone has any oral history on any of the Ankrah family, probably from Accra, Ghana.

My partner's aunt married Reginald Desmond K'Otti Ankrah in Liverpool in 1933. She died 5 years later, and he then married Adeola Adetunji Joel, with whom he had a number of children (all in Liverpool). Reginald died in Liverpool in 1977 (he was born 17th November 1905 or 1909 - different records vary on age)

One of these sons recalled being told that "Roy" Ankrah (John Theophilus Otoo Ankrah 1925-1995 born & died at Accra), professional boxer, was his uncle.
After Reginald's death, Adeola put a notice in the Liverpool Echo recording the death of Emmanuel Cofie Ankrah (1900-1978) - he was a seaman, born and died Accra.

It seems likely Emmanuel was a brother, and possible that "Roy" was.

Reginald records his father as George Ankrah, Merchant in 1933 and as Joseph Ajabeng Ankrah, deceased, in 1940. There are a few records of a merchant named George W Ankrah, born c1866-1875 sailing into the UK and USA in the early 20thC

I'd love to find anyone who might have some family history to fill in some blanks

Impy

I wonder if it’s while they upload more? (Thinking positively) as they are advertising

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/50-million-newspaper-pages

I do hope so. I need this resource. Took me hours of puzzlement as to why so many reasonably affluent folk weren't in the death notices before I decided it couldn't be so many bad transcripts & ran a test.

Background - last year, FindMyPast changed up their subscriptions, removing UK only premium memberships, meaning if you wanted to keep access to UK newspapers, you had to upgrade to a premium global sub, at a significantly higher price. I had to accept this, as I really wanted to keep access to the newspapers, and there were a few other databases I wanted to keep access to. The upside was that at least I got international newspapers included.

Not long afterwards, the non-UK papers were quietly removed from the database.

I've noticed today, while searching for death notices in the Liverpool papers, that all the results stop at the end of 1957 (with the exception of some returns for an obscure Walton paper for 1988-1989).

I used to be able to access the Liverpool Echo up to late 20thC.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on with this? Is it just the Liverpool Echo? has this happened across the board?

This is very exciting! Are you sure about the ship/captain? The information myself and another researcher found was that she was on a different ship with a different captain (not easy to check from my phone, but I think the ship was the Mary or something similar, with a Captain Johnstone I think). There is another entry suggesting her ship was wrecked, but the captain went on to serve on other voyages, suggesting the information was either incorrect or that not all were lost at sea.

I no longer think I'm directly descended from Anne, but am of course still related (all of us from the old families are related many times over), but I still very much want to find out what happened to her. It's such a tragic, but strangely romantic tale - most men of the time with young children, especially a newborn, would quickly look for a new mother & carer for the brood, but her husband remained single for the rest of his life - I wonder if he hoped that she'd one day find her way home (against the odds for a poor transportee).
Considering they were most certainly illiterate, they didn't even have the comfort of letters.