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After researching several DNA matches that all led back to a man named William J. Dempsey, several forum users managed to discover he was actually identical to William Foster, born 30 June 1900 in Liverpool (discussion here https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=879949.0).

The only time he was truthful about where he was born was on his WWII draft card; in all US censuses he stated he was from Ireland. However, try as I (and others) may, there seem to be no records of either his naturalization, immigration and/or surname change. Additionally, William apparently was still married when he left the UK and possibly did not want to be found..

Here are the facts.

30 June 1900 - born as William Foster to Thomas Foster & Agnes Prince in Liverpool, Lancashire
1901 & 1911 UK census - living with parents at 7 Robertson Str, L'pool
03 Mar 1919 - as William Foster arriving in New York on board the 'Belgic'; address 7 Robertson Str, L'pool
11 Jan 1921 - as William Foster, marriage to Elizabeth Howard of 38 Robertson Str, L'pool
1921 UK census - with wife Elizabeth & son Thomas living with in-laws at 38 Robertson Str, L'pool
1925 NY state census - as William Dempsey with wife-to-be Adeline A. Sanders living with in-laws, Hampstead, Nassau, NY; alien, born Ireland
06 Sep 1925 - as William Dempsey, marriage to Adeline A. Sanders, Roosevelt, NY
01 Sep 1928 - as William J. Dempsey, marriage to Alma Denton, Freeport, NY
1930 US Federal census - as William Dempsey, with wife Alma living with in-laws; status unknown, born Ireland
(1931 - marriage Elizabeth Howard-Foster to Gerard J. Burke; divorce?)
1940 US Federal census - as William Dempsey, Hempstead, Nassau, NY; citizen, born NY
1950 US Federal census - as William J. Dempsey, Hempstead, Nassau, NY; citizen, born Ireland

I suspect William became a US citizen sometime between 1931 and 1940, but I cannot seem to find proof for both that and his immigration. So any help with slotting this final piece of the puzzle in place would be very much appreciated!

I have asked this question nearly 20 (!) years ago already (see https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=203367.msg1032080#msg1032080) but unfortunately this ancestor remains as elusive now as he was then.

Christian Godfrey mariner marries Mary Jones by license on 17 Sep 1801. Also mentioned on the (badly damaged and partially illegible) license dated 16 Sep 1801 is William Jones, shoemaker. Her father?

Their children:

1. Frederick b. 13 Sep / bap. 13 Oct 1803; abode Toxteth Park
2. William b. 4 Oct / 16 Oct 1807; abode Toxteth Park
3. Caroline b. 27 Aug / bap. 30 Sep 1810; abode Crow Street, Harrington

On 21 Aug 1818 a man named Christian Gadfrit or Godfreid mariner marries Mary Stocker, a widow.

Nearly a year later on 18 Aug 1819, a child named Anne Godfrey was buried after having died at 11 days old. Abode: Lower Harrington Street, right around the corner from Crow Street. Unfortunately the child was too young to be baptized, so the names of the parents are unknown, but I'm fairly certain she's Christian's. Daughter Caroline marries in 1827, and after having named her first daughter Mary, in 1833 the second daughter is named Ann. This is before brother Frederick marries an Ann in 1836, so she could've been named after a deceased sister.

Going back in time, a mariner on board the ship Thomas at Liverpool named Christian Gottfried - by all appearances from Dantzig or Gdansk, Poland -  drafts a will on 30 June 1800, bequeathing all his worldly goods to "my beloved friend Elizabeth Burrows." However, on 30 April 1801 Elizabeth is sworn in as executrix, which basically means Christian has died.. right?

But what are the chances of two men with a very unusual name and an identical profession roaming about Liverpool at exactly the same time?! Furthermore, another coincidence shows up in the previously mentioned first post..

Christian's granddaughter by his son Frederick - Margaret Ann Godfrey (1840) - pops up in the 1861 census as a 21yo servant at the house of a 30yo 'Missionary and Writer in Biblical Essays'. From Poland. Named Christian Ginsberg.

Now, I know genealogy is literally rife with coincidences and people who seem to be identical, and how easy it is to fall into the trap of confusing one for the other. But this? Doesn't feel like a coincidence. So who is willing to help me and embark on yet another voyage of digging up the roots of (sigh) yet another of my ancestors who refuses to be found?

Please, and thank you!

TD

Hi all,

Not sure whether to post this under USA, UK/Ireland, England/Lancashire or even Military, so I'll start here. In a quest to fit as many 'close' DNA matches into my tree as possible (and hopefully help others who can't see their tree for the woods), I've come across two that continue to elude me. Both are grandchildren of William John Dempsey (1900-1961) and his second wife Alma Denton (1905-1965), and though one match is a mere 27cM, their 1st cousin matches me with 132cM, indicating a familial link within the past 4 generations. And the only logical conclusion after tracing back Alma Denton's family is that the Dempsey line is the common denominator.

However, William seems loath to give up his origins, and so far none of the relatives I've contacted has gotten back to me.

In every US census for Freeport/Roosevelt in Hampstead, NY William states he was born in Ireland. However, on his WW-II draft card he very clearly states he was born 30 June 1900 in Liverpool, England. Also of note is that he has a bayonet scar underneath his heart, and one of his children has told a story on a genealogy forum about their father having numerous vaccination scars from his 'service in the British army during WW-I'.

Finally, several relatives mention his parents (without sources, so presumably based on family stories) in their online family trees: Thomas J. Dempsey and Agnis Prince. And even though the above mentioned family trees state Agnis was born in Scotland (I can't trace either her or her husband) that last name ties directly into the mutual matches with William's grandchildren, i.e. my Liverpool Prince relatives & ancestors.

My great-grandmother Frances Prince (1868-1959) had a sister named Agnes Prince (1872-1940) who married Thomas Foster (1867-1918) and had a son named William (1898-1988) who happened to emigrate to the USA. However, this is not the same individual, and there are a total of 7 half-/siblings to choose from as William's parents. I suspect William either changed his name in the US (arriving there ca. 1923 according to the 1925 NY census) or was a 'whoops' baby and given up for adoption. Remarkably his daughter's name (Carol Ann, d. 2010) closely resembles that of both Frances and Agnes' grandmother, Caroline Godfrey.

It's quite possible the coincidences render me unable to cast a wider net in finding William, but the DNA clearly states one of his grandchildren is my (half) 2nd or 3rd cousin. And I would love to find out whether William Dempsey does, indeed, belong to the Prince family.

TD

First I'd like to apologize for my last flurry of erratic & chaotic posting. My DNA tests really threw up more questions than answers, and apparently I'm a hot mess of mutations as well. I should've stayed well away from the keyboard while sorting that out.

On to George Haycock.

As so many of you have helped in trying to shed light on George's origins, It's only fair I now present you with the answer to that riddle wrapped in an enigma. George was, indeed, a bastard.

As a last resort to break through that brick wall, I took a final DNA test with Ancestry. Among the hundreds (!) of matches, two caught my eye. Both were linked to a family called Whitehouse from Wolverhampton, and as some of you may remember, the story within the family was that George's mother was a woman named Maria Whitehouse.

I started to flesh out the Whitehouse tree which connected these individuals, in the hope of finding a suitable match, and soon found myself neck deep into a Gordian Knot of families named Whitehouse, Millington, Beddows and Martin. After uncovering the parentage of a Beddows-Martin son (connecting more DNA matches), who apparently tried escaping his illegitimate origins by changing his last name, fudging his father's name on his marriage certificate, and moving away from Wolverhampton, I got some ideas on how George's origins could have been obscured (including lying about his DoB on his naval papers). So I took a closer look at the Martin sister who was Agnes Millington-Whitehouse's mother.

Her name was Maria.

She married William Millington, and with every child I uncovered, he was listed as their father. Yet little details started to give me the nagging feeling that I was, in fact, looking at George's mother. Especially because the names of Agnes Whitehouse's daughters were all eerily similar to those of George and his Haycock half-siblings.

And then I found George Millington, baptized in June 1862 as the son of William Millington and Maria Martin. That really, really coincided with George Haycock's birth in May 1862! I gathered all the small DNA matches connecting several branches of the families, and set up a tree on DNA Painter's WATO (What Are The Odds) tool to see whether my hypothesis that George fit within the family was viable. It was.

Then I discovered a fact that blew me away. On the index for Wolverhampton parishes I discovered William Millington buried at Merridale cemetery at the age of 26 in September 1856. Logically, no children born after June 1857 could be his. Except he supposedly had six more, including George!

I cannot begin to describe the sense of elation when realizing I was about to crack a decades old mystery. But a theory is just that, and I needed proof, so I began to track all of the Millington children through the censuses in the hope I'd find a Millington-Martin-Haycock connection.

One son named Luke (1868) kept eluding me in the 1901 census. By then I had the first name of his wife and several daughters mentioned in the 1911 and 1939 census. But nothing I tried revealed the whereabouts of the family in 1901. So as a last shot I entered the wife's first name (Minnie), her DoB and PoB (1873 in Limerick, Ireland) and looked for her in Wolverhampton in 1901. Immediately the whole family popped up.

Under the name Haycocks.

That to me not only confirmed that George Millington was, indeed, John Haycock's son, but it also provided me with the near-certainty that at least Luke Millington, and possibly more or all of the children born after 1856, were also John's.

Agnes Whitehouse named one of her sons after both her and husband John's father John, and one presumably after John's brother James, but she named two after her brothers by John Haycock; George and Luke. None of them were named after either William Millington or his sons Samuel and Zachariah, her half-brothers.

I have no clue why Maria Martin-Millington was known within the family as Maria Whitehouse, though I suspect that George's sister Agnes being pretty close to the Haycock side of her family may have contributed to the name Whitehouse becoming 'stuck'. I also don't know how Maria met John, and maybe I never will. George becoming part of John Haycock's family sometime between 1862 and 1871 may have to do with Maria giving birth to twins in 1868 (Luke and his brother John, the latter dying at 5mo) and being overwhelmed. Who knows.

What really gets me the most is the fact that it only took me a week (!) of furious research, tweaking family trees and throwing several hypotheses at the wall to see which one would stick to solve a 25yo mystery.

Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of you who've helped me try to find George over the past decade or so. I'm not sure whether George Millington ever came across our keyboards, but it's fair to say the solution to this puzzle was somewhat unexpected.

All that matters now is that George has been found.