I have just noticed a rootschat member referring to an ancestors photo as "the black sheep" and it got me thinking..............what makes a black sheep?
When would you classify a member of your tree as a black sheep? 
That could be me.
Say hello to Aunt Florence everyone
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Florence was someone whose existence my grandparents acknowledged, but if asked would just clam up and say "oh, we don't talk about her. She went to London." They were like a broken record on the subject! But they obviously didn't feel sufficiently disgraced that they threw the photo away.
They did at some stage - and quite bizarrely - scratch out the name of the photographer. I suspect that might actually have nothing to do with Florence, but because the photographer was Henry van der Weyde (Regent St, London), which they might have presumed was German, and they didn't want German names in their family album.
When I joined rootschat, I thought it was an ideal picture to put up, in the very faint hope that it might ring a bell for someone. I've always thought that it's too glamorous for an ordinary photo of an ordinary person and I recently sent the photograph to the experts at the former Theatre Museum (now the V&A). While they couldn't find a likely Florence in their indexed archives, they confirmed that it looked like an actress', rather than a regular portrait. Unfortunately there's not that many of van der Weyde's portraits on the web, to see if it's a style he used for stage performers or whatever.
The only Florence I've so far found in my tree (and she's the right relation too) was born c. 1878 in Bridgenorth in Shropshire (according to the 1901 census) and married into my family by marrying a John Smith (oh joy! He could have been called Theophilus Zachariah Smith, to make things easier 
) probably in Blackpool, Lancs. They had three children between 1900 and 1908. But the photo is dated to between Sep 1877 and 1902 by the address of van der Weyde's Studio in Regent Street, so I'm not convinced this is the right person. (Edit: I was right - it isn't the right person.)
Edit: After lots of blind alleys, I finally found Florence. She's Florence Hampson, born c. 1868 according to her marriage certificate. She married John Noble Stevenson (born 22 Feb 1862, Hulme, Manchester) at the Register Office in Chorlton, Manchester. The marriage certificate gives her father as William Henry Hampson, a town traveller. I've got three possible birth certificates of Florence Hampsons with father William, but there's no way of telling which is the right one, as I cannot for the life of me find Florence on any census to confirm her place of birth. (Her hubby's not easy to find either - I've got him on the 1871 and 1901 censuses only.) My guess is that her marriage to John broke down and they went their separate ways, she to London. Either of leaving her husband or working on the stage (if she did) would have been enough to generate severe disapproval from my grandma. I fear this is one of those things where the only solution will be a time machine.
But in terms of black sheep uncovered so far there are lots of others: I've one chap, Charles GUEST, who was evidently a bit of a chancer: there are at least two illegitimate children identified so far, a fabulous and really quite funny correspondence with the parish clerks of Fornham St Martin in Suffolk about his debts to the parish including one letter written by him while incarcerated in the Fleet Prison, bankruptcy petitions in the London Gazette and so on. Though things turned out well in the end as in his will he leaves what then was a humungous amount of money.
On the WILD side of the family, there was always family legend of a highwayman, but until I find any evidence, I treat that with some doubt.
