RootsChat.Com

I've had a message from an Ancestry user in which she says "Please feel free to view my tree although I do not know how to do it myself!".  When I click her user name it doesn't show any trees, but I can search public trees for a couple of key people in it and find it that way.  I'm guessing my contact has some setting or other set wrongly, but all I can come up with is "try Ancestry chat, they might be able to help".

The tree is definitely maintained by the same person who's messaged me, joining date and last active date match each other and user name is the same.  There is only one user by that name in the member search.  I'm stumped, any ideas here?

Jane :-)

Trying to work back a tree, I've found a potential distant rellie in the FindMyPast "Britain, Merchant Seamen, 1835-1857" dataset, series BT113/240 folio 98 and BT114/2 folios 94 & 95.  His name was Frederick BENTLEY and his birthplace was given as Lambeth.  I've never needed to look at these records before but my interpretation of his BT113 records is that he first went to sea as an apprentice in 1839 and the ticket number 4787769 was issued in 1850, apparently updated for 1851, 1852 and 1853.  There's a word in the remarks column, can someone who understands these records tell me what it says please?

His DoB is given as 2 Apr 1824.  How accurate is this likely to be?  I've found a possible bap at Streatham for an illegitimate child with the right name, and middle names that might point to a father, born 2 Apr 1829 to Amelia BENTLEY.  I don't know what became of his mother Amelia.  Might young Fred have gone to sea as an apprentice age 10?  If that was too young, is there anywhere I can check online to see if the date he first went to sea might have been later?

If I've joined the dots correctly, in 1850 he was a married man with at least three children.  If that would have exempted him from call-up then he's probably not my man.

Another point against it being my man is that the ticket was issued in London, whereas children's births suggest the family were in North Shields.  Connected by water of course.  And normal residence left blank might suggest the authorities ticketed him when he was away from home, in port.

I can't find Fred, wife Ann or children Ann, Amelia or Robert in the 1851 census.

There's also another Frederick BENTLEY born London with ticket number 92776, could this be the same man or did they definitely only ever get given one ticket number?  I've tried fiddling with the url but there doesn't seem to be any way to page forward or back through BT113 to track down the personal details of this man, so I've sent FindMyPast an email.  According to TNA this ticket number should be in BT113/47.  Any ideas anyone?

Jane :-)

This photo looks to me to be of someone related to the woman who I think is probably my GGGM Eliza.  As with Eliza, can the photo be roughly dated please and an age given to the sitter?

I scanned this photo a long time ago, since which time it has gone awol.  I think I know where it might be, so I could hopefully scan the back and perhaps get a better image of the photo itself, but not today, it's already too hot to be shifting boxes around 

Thanks in anticipation
Jane :-)

The family I'm interested in were at 8 Great Church Lane for the 1901 census.  Unfortunately one of the images on both FindMyPast and Ancestry is missing.  Three Bass children are at the top of RG13 0052 fol 15 p 21, their parents and probably older sister will be on RG13 0052 fol 15 p 20 but paging back on FindMyPast and Ancestry takes you to fol 14 p 19.  Editing the Ancestry URL to take me to the page it should be gives an error page (temporarily unavailable).

I'm hoping that the discs available from S&N Genealogy were produced from different source data and that the page didn't escape being filmed in the first place.  I've just placed an order with them but they're taking a break now till 4th Jan.  In the meantime is anyone who already has these discs able to put me out of my misery and let me have a transcript of the missing data please?

Best wishes
Jane :-)