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Hi all,

It's been a good few months since I've posted anything on here but I have a little mystery which I'm currently trying to solve but I'm not getting very far!

I was searching for a record of a Samuel Lever (b. abt 1845) which I'd guess is a rare name and whilst digging I found the most curious record for a man named Sir Samuel Hardman Lever. Now although he was born in 1869, I'm very excited about this as the Samuel I'm looking for is the son of Alice 'Hardman' and Samuel Lever. Although the dates don't correspond I'm almost certain there's a link there somewhere, but I'm struggling to find a birth record for Samuel Hardman Lever (b. 1869) or find out who his parents are.

According to his Wikipedia page, he was born in Bootle, Lancashire and a probate record for him shows he died in Winchester in 1947. My Lever and Hardman family in Lancashire are all based around Liverpool, Bootle and West Derby so this has got me quite excited...

I didn't post this in the Lancashire board because I think this will cover more than one county, but feel free to move it if I have made a mistake!

Hi everybody

Thank you so much for your replies and kind words, they really do mean a lot.

I've changed the layout over time to best suit what I want to get out of it. I can recommend Wordpress to others wishing to create similar style websites as it's quite easy to use and has a huge 3GB of storage. But where I believe it has the advantage over other platforms is the presentation. It has 177 themes to choose from which all make it look much more modern. (I'm starting to sound like a salesperson now!)

@Bob I really like your site, especially the pages with different occupational interests. I seem to have every tobacconist in south London in my family tree so I might have a go at compiling a list of them too! I tried to use a Google Map to pin point places in my family tree too but I wasn't sure how it would look so I didn't go ahead with it. After seeing yours I've definitely changed my mind. I made a places page too, hope you don't mind. I also like your family name write-ups on the introduction page. I tried to do this as well in a similar style but as soon as I'd write about a branch of my family, I ended up finding something else out and it would be out of date as soon as I'd published it.

@Darren I chose Wordpress after playing around with a few of the other sites such as Blogger and Tribalpages. The amount of storage won me over. I think Tribalpages has 10MB of storage and Blogger has 1GB. The design was a bonus too.

@Milly Thank you for your kind comments. I didn't think of using the blog as a separate part of the site until a few months ago when I split the pages and blog posts up, but I think it's worked quite well. Let me know if you do take up giving Wordpress a go. I look forward to reading it soon! Let me know if you want any help too

@Igor Thanks for reading them! When I looked back recently at some of my first blog posts, I had to go back and edit them as my writing was not so good even though it was not too long ago. I'm glad to see that my writing style has changed over the short space of time.

@Dee Thank you for your encouraging words, I think sometimes everybody needs a push and I've never had feedback on my site before so it really it appreciated.

Miles

Hi Tati & Dawn!

Very sorry for the late reply - just wanted to thank you for deciphering and translating the birth certificate for me. I'm so pleased to have it in my possession after hearing how hard it is to obtain birth certificates from around Europe!

One thing I am unsure of is the 'section A' after the road where Octavie was born.

If I were to visit Binche, would 'chemin de Namur section A' be specific enough to find the exact location of their house or would I have to do a little more research to find that?

Again - thank you so much.

Miles

Hi Ann,

Thought I'd just give you a tip before you contact the cemetery, in case you haven't done so already.

I contacted New Southgate Cemetery after buying my great great grandfather's death certificate to find out when and where in the cemetery he was buried.

I don't think they could have been MORE helpful towards me - I did have have slightly unusual circumstances though, as my gt gt grandfather was buried there in a common grave as he was being detained in a intern camp during the First World War.

They checked the record books whilst I was on the phone to them. They told me that there was a memorial placed by the German government which his name should be on and asked me if I would like to have somebody go down to the memorial and take a photograph of it and e-mail it to me. I received the photos within the hour.

About a month or two after this (I contacted them around August of this year), me and my family went up to the cemetery to see the memorial for ourselves. The staff there asked if we would like to see the original record books and they took us into a room to see them.

Anyway, I'm not guaranteeing that you will get the same treatment, but I would definitely buy the death certificate with the GRO before contacting them. Then you will have a death date to give them and they will have a lot less work to find your relative. I always find having the exact date of death gets a much more positive response from cemeteries when asking for burial information.

If you just say 'he/she died in this quarter of the year' that can widen the search from around a week after the date of death to sometimes looking through a whole record book full of burials. They're a commercial business and this all takes up time.

I hope you find what you're looking for!

That's fantastic, thanks a lot for your help! I didn't even notice the teddy bear!!

I had a thought after I posted this that it might have been a police uniform as his father, brother and grandfather were all in the Metropolitan Police service.

Can it definitely be ruled out as a police uniform??

The man wearing the uniform is my great great uncle but I am not sure which one yet. The girl is my great great aunt but it could be one of two girls born to Elizabeth and Albert Brown (the parents who are sitting).

They had six children, the youngest and oldest children were both girls with all four children in between were boys.

Their children were:

Elizabeth (b. 1886)
Albert Edward (b. 1887) - my great grandfather
Frederick William (b. 1889)
Thomas Henry (b. 1891) - was a police officer
Charles (b. 1895)
Alice Matilda (b. 1899)

I think I could work out which daughter is in the photograph providing I can get an accurate year which it was taken as there's a 13 year gap between the two girls.

I think I'll have to do a bit of research on TNA to find the other boys listed in the Royal Marine Artillery but being Browns I think I'll have a struggle!