RootsChat.Com

Good morning all

I’m doing a very interesting bit of research for my brother and sister in law on their house in Oxford, which was built in c 1875, to describe its various inhabitants over the years.

As you might guess this was inspired by David Olusoga’s A House Through Time which I’ve been rewatching.

I’ve created an Ancestry tree to research not only the various inhabitants but their families and addresses both before and after their occupation of the house and ensure I’ve got all the sources attached.

This is quite complicated - so that I can quickly highlight the separate families into their years of connection to the house, has anyone any suggestions about making a note on their entry?

I know some people have trees with “John Smith GGF” for example as the profile name header, but is there a better way?

I need to be able to show, for instance, that a person is the sister of the 1881 wife, and it would be very helpful to have a note of the fact somewhere visible on the Ancestry profile page.

If only there were colour highlight options or similar!

Any suggestions very welcome.

Ps I hasten to add I will be “writing up” my research to clarify it all and not just sharing the tree.

Hello all

I know that in older records the term "[relation] in law" in respect of a child could mean step-child.

I am researching an Irish family in the East End of London in the 1861, Limehouse St James.

The father's name is Patrick Donovan, his wife is Catherine (both born Ireland) and the two sons are Denis and John Donovan, both born Middlesex (Ancestry has transcribed them as Donovern)

Source Citation
RG 9/285/15 p32

Also present is Norah Donovan, aged 70, born Ireland, described as mother-in-law.

What are your views, please - could Norah be Catherine's mother, suggesting Catherine's maiden name is Donovan, like her husband's, or could Norah be Patrick's step mother?

I am trying to pin down Catherine's maiden name and have long lists from GRO of the potential births of the two boys in the Limehouse Docklands area of East London to see if I can find matching mothers names.

Thoughts welcomed. I have a number of certificates to buy to make sure I have the correct John Donovan who is the person I'm tracking.

Whilst I've been looking forward to the 1921 to fill in a few gaps, I didn't think I had any real mysteries.

I decided to look up my greatx2 grandmother Eliza (Miller, Cork) Barham (1846 Seal, Kent - 1923 Capel, Kent), as she's always been a favourite of mine, marrying as she did my greatx2 grandfather the very elusive Richard Cork, who remarried bigamously when they split up soon after the birth of my great grandmother.

Eliza then lived with Stephen Barham (they never married), and had many children, and didn't die till 1923. 

I have her funeral notice from the local paper and have spent much time sorting out who is who within those who gave wreaths at the ceremony.  One mystery there was "Granny's little man Cicel" who I could never pin down - a grandchild, I assumed, but whose?

So there I am, in the 1921 (hooray!) looking up Eliza Barham, and she is there, all details for her as expected, with

Violet Barham (aged 32 and 3 months), daughter, widowed, born Capel, Kent, Teacher Assistant Mistress (at the Capel Boys School, Nr Tonbridge, Kent)

and

Cecil Douglas Turner (aged 3, born Berkshire) grandson, born Berkshire.  Surely this is "Granny's little man Cicel" of the funeral notice a couple of years later?


However, the interesting thing(s) are:

Violet Barham is not Eliza's daughter Violet Ethel Barham, as Violet Ethel is married and with her husband Albert Golding and their children elsewhere in Kent.

So I assume Violet Barham must be a daughter in law,the widow of one of her sons, but I don't know which son she married.  There is a possible son, Stephen Barham  - he died in WW1 - but I hadn't found a record of any marriage.

And I can see Cecil Douglas Turner's birth reg in 1918 in Abingdon, Berkshire (and him in the 1939 as an AC2 in the RAF, plus other details about him).  His MMN is Barham, so he must be (surely?) the son of another daughter of the family, but again I don't know which one.

I thought I'd sorted out the family with all their marriages, spouses and offspring, but evidently not.

As a first step I've ordered Cecil Douglas's Birth cert PDF to see who his parents are.
I haven't found a likely Turner/Barham marriage as yet, but with the full details of the parents, perhaps I can sort that out.

And with regard to the mysterious widowed Ethel Barham, born in March 1889 in Capel, I must have another detailed look again to see who she married, and when.

Not really asking for help here, but it's just a warning - if anyone here ever needed one - that just when you think you've sorted everything out, a new record throws everything you thought you knew into disarray.   

I've just been fiddling about - as you do - on my A**y tree with my Barlow family in the very East End of London in the mid 19th century. 

They have featured here previously with several searches by kind RC helpers, and set about being complex by not necessarily either marrying or registering the births of their children, and managing to be on bits of the census which are lost even though I know where they must have been, by baptism records.

Anyway, I finally decided tonight that the Mary Ann Ruth Barlow, born 16th August 1846 in Whitechapel MUST be my great grandmother Mary Ann Barlow, or at least I should say that they were strong contenders for being the same person, given all the other clues I'd managed to find, even though my great grandmother said she'd been born in 1850, without any documentary evidence to prove it.

So I thought I'd merge them on the tree, with suitable warning notes.

And I looked again at Mary Ann Ruth's birth certificate (yes, she actually had one) and her place of birth at 31 Wentworth Street, Whitechapel, and I thought I'd look at Google StreetView to see what the road looks like today - although many of the streets where my family lived in the East End were bombed and rebuilt after WWII.

And the view was very familiar - which is because when my son and I walked round the East End in August 2020 (when you were first allowed to venture out), we had explored all round Tower Bridge and looked at the towers of The City from the rather poorer bits of Limehouse, Shadwell and Whitechapel. 

I had taken a picture of the gleaming towers - shown below.

And where had I been standing to take it - completelyl unknowing?  Outside 31 Wentworth Street.

I'm just about to move house (if the contracts ever get signed) and this means I have to finally sort out all my books. 

They have been stored for some years in floor to ceiling bookcases covering two complete walls in a room which has been used by my stepson as his art studio.  This means that he more or less completely blocked access to them by stacking canvases many layers deep against them, erecting easels, setting up a trestle table covered with art equipment etc etc etc.

I could see the top couple of shelves but couldn't get to them.....

Anyhow, his detritus, sorry, equipment has now been taken into storage and I have now been given access to the books I've not seen since c 2013 (when the ceiling fell down in the room and I had to carry them somewhere else for the duration, though that's another story.  Nobody injured I should add, perhaps).

And how many books and other memorabilia have I found!

Lots of history books, unread for years, OH's chess books, sheet music of every genre, postcards, photographs, concert programmes, a certificate recording my climb of the Great Wall of China and - just now - the book I knew existed which records my Gx3 Grandfather's death at sea off Brightlingsea in 1823 when he was on his way home from a rescue.

This has of course taken me back to my tree, and thence to all the information I'd attached to him, and thence to my email files where I discover all the remote relatives on this line I have been in touch with over - now - 20 years  . 

And links to old RC queries where helpful people, many of whom are still here, researching and posting, whose answers I'm amazed to read - because I can't even remember posting the queries.

Somewhat of a long story to share that, in this particular 'hobby', years fly by and you can't believe it's been 8 years/10 years and more since you were last in touch with cousins who you feel a vague affinity/fondness for, even though you've not thought about them or written for aeons.

And some of them don't reply to your mails and you fear that sadly they may now be no longer with us, and you can't share that exciting discovery you've just made on a line you had loads of mails about way back when.  Which you KNOW they'll be interested in.

It never ends, does it?

Thanks to all of you who've helped over the years.  I've not finished yet, either 


PS added:  and I was able to find, and share with my son, more details about my Gx3 Grandfather's experience as a Private in the Royal Marines on HMS Belleisle at the Battle of Trafalgar, and wonder yet again at the miracle of the resilience and chance of survival in desperate circumstances of our ancestor which enabled me and him to actually even be here.