What is the biggest mystery in your tree?

[XPhile2868]

There seems to have been a lot of missing persons.

My mystery surrounds Agnes Margaretta Heaney, my grandfather's sister.
Aggie went Christmas shopping 22 December 1922 in Chatham, Ontario. She never returned to her home in Thamesville & hadn't been seen or heard from after that.
Kent police conducted a full investigation & went so far as to send a detective to Ireland to question relatives if she had returned. Family & friends were shocked & all replied they had not heard from her.

You can imagine the pain & confusion suffered by her children. I think it wouldn't have been so bad if a body had been recovered as you heal over time at a death, but to never know definitely what happened still weighs heavily on the family.

J.A.M.

I have my own MySpace for missing people and am in touch with someone whos sister has been missing since the early 1990s and there are some people who are still looking now for people who went missing as long ago as the 1940s and 1950s. Noone I've known personally has gone missing, but its very sad to read some of the stories of missing people.

Stephen

[MarieC]

That's really sad, J.A.M.!  I can just imagine how that would have weighed on the family down the generations!

MarieC

[luas]

Our biggest mystery is Bill Robinson from Manitoba.  We know plenty about his career as a hockey player, coach and manager, but absolutely nothing about how he might be connected to the branch of the Robinson family which emigrated from Lancashire before the Great War.  We've emailed all sorts of hockey websites which might have information, had his photo published in newspapers, etc., and a number of people have promised to make enquiries, then nothing more is heard.  Intriguingly, I found a reference to him recently with a date of birth only, so it appears he may still be hale and hearty somewhere out West.  Problem is, Bill Robinson is not an uncommon name.

[DudleyWinchurch]

My biggest mystery is my GGG Grandad John Edey.

The censuses of 1851/61 have him born in 1783, in Shropley and Tapley,  Hampshire.

There is neither a Shropley or Tapley in Hampshire !   

Pilgarlic

But don't give up Pilgarlic, I searched high and low for a Chusbury in Gloucestershire.  Eventually came across  a jokes page on G**gle and the light dawned.  It was Tewkesbury.   

[DudleyWinchurch]

Hi again Pilgarlic,

Just found a Sopley, north of Christchurch ... and a Shripney just over the West Sussex border, close to Bognor Regis.  Can't remember what the local accent is like there but would have thought Sopley the most likely one to give the possibility of the two notations that you have.

Have you already investigated that?

[Just Kia]

One of my biggest mysteries is my great grandfather - Stanley Charles SCALES.
Why and where did he go after ~1925.
Why did his older sister refuse to have anyone speak of him.
Why did she add a year onto her niece (my grandmother)'s age?
Why can't I find a death or even remarriage for him?

The other is another great grandfather, thus far known only by his surname DEVOS. Who was he, where did he come from and ...?

[MarieC]

Could Stanley Scales have emigrated somewhere, JustKia?  Done a flit, to the great annoyance of his family?  Have you checked the emigration records on Find My Past?

MarieC

[Just Kia]

Anything is possible.
There is a Mr, Mrs and Mstr SCALES (no forenames) leaving on the Bloemfontein Castle 15 Oct 1953 - London to East Africa.
The last UK residence is a Cambridge address (Stanley is believed to have lived in Cambridge at some point).
I have no way of telling if that might be him. I haven't found another marriage for him, but that doesn't mean he didn't remarry.

[MarieC]

Don't you just love it when the shipping lists are so uninformative?  Very very frustrating!

MarieC