Hi onemcfamily,
Have just seen your post ... sorry for the 4 year delay! Lovely photo of your ancestor, Florence Sarah Smith. How have you got on with discovering her ancestry? You say her brother may have been Simon Smith (a son of Bartholomew Smith) and that she was a niece of Gipsy Rodney Smith's ... but for her to have had Rodney as an uncle her father would have to be Ezekiel Smith, Rodney's only brother, who married Eliza Shaw. Unfortunately, having tracked Ezekiel's family through the census returns, there is no sign of a Florence; his only daughter seems to have been a Matilda. Have you discovered an alternative connection between Florence and Rodney, other than that of niece?
If, as you were told, she might have been a sister of Simon, then Gipsy Rodney Smith would have been a 1st cousin, not an uncle (Simon's father Bartholomew and Rodney's father Cornelius were brothers) ... but I've yet to discover a sister of Simon's with the name Florence. Family legend - passed on by Gipsy Rodney Smith - has it that Bartholomew gave all his children biblical names ... though I've already discovered an exception to the rule with his 1883 son, Bertie! However, in 1911 Bartholomew's wife is listed as having had 13 live births, whereas I have only found 11 children to date, so I'm not ruling anything out.
- Sarah
