watson family in essex?

[DeannaB]

Thanks Sarah for helping me get in touch with Jonson1.  Thanks queencorgi1. 

[queencorgi1]

Hi Sarah, sorry about that, my bad. I had not taken in that she was a new member. Thank you so much for making it possible for Deanna to contact Jonson1 should she wish to.

Once again also super thanks to all those who moderate and everyone who puts so much work into this wonderful website. Not only have members' contributions been invaluable to me but often very funny too.

Very best wishes
Queencorgi

[Jonson1]

Hi DeannaB and queencorgi1
Thanks too from me to all who make these contacts possible.

Strangely I am working on this bit of the family at the moment and have been transcribing a couple of letters to and from Alexander Cobham Watson, and his son George.  I assume from family trees drawn up by John Watson, another descendant of A C Watson, that you are the Deanna born in 1955.  John used to come and stay with us in England while working on his history of the Watsons.  Unfortunately I don't think I can help with the photos of A C Cobham, although he refers to photos that he is sending to our branch of the family.  I can't identify them even though I have some old albums, which is annoying.

Alexander Cobham Watson had a great number of descendants as you will be aware and I am in touch with one or two of them, and hope that one will visit in June when in England. We are as you may have worked out descended from his youngest sister Ellen Emma Cobham Watson, born NSW in 1841, and are a much smaller family as there are descendants from only one of her grandchildren.

I am writing a piece on one of Alexander Cobham Watson's grandsons at this very moment, John Mervyn Hancock, son of Albert Hancock and Clara Margaret Watson. He was a mechanic, born c1894 in Australia, and enlisted in 1915 to come over to Europe. In 1917 he joined the Royal Flying Corps, later the RAF, and became a pilot, eventually being attached to the Training squadron at Northolt, near London.  He spent time with my family while in England and obviously got on well with my grandmother and great aunt, second cousins.  I have the centre of a 1914 plane prop that he gave my great aunt, which obviously inspired her as she got her pilot's license in 1930. On Saturday Feb 2nd 1919, he took my grandmother to the Northolt dance where they were until 3.00am and the following day:-

"Didn't get to bed until 4.30. Stayed in bed all morning. Jack rang up and I went out to Northolt with him and his brother and FLEW!! Too glorious - I simply loved every minute and wasn't a bit frightened, and we looped four times and did all sorts of things and it was too heavenly. All snowy everywhere. Motored back with a friend of Jack's, so it was all splendid. So sleepy tonight"

The tragedy is that a month later he was dead.  On the 1st March 1919, his plane caught fire over Richmond Park, London, and he bailed out, it is thought to try and drop into the pond there or the Thames.  He was buried a week later at Ruislip, with his uncle George there and my great grandmother, grandmother and other English relatives there. I have the newspaper cutting about the accident and funeral and a photo of the grave.  It is exactly a hundred years since these events and it is perhaps the moment to remember him. He would have been a first cousin of your grandfathers I think.

Sorry I can't help you about the photos.

Best wishes
Jonson1

[queencorgi1]

Hi Jonson1

Thank you for a fascinating post and particularly for the interesting account of the young pilot. Very tragic.

The Watson family has clearly got many interesting individuals amongst its members. Since I first posted this thread my husband (who was of course the Watson descendant for whom I was compiling information) died of cancer after a very short illness. You may like to know that he was a leading designer of radar for satellites, working for the European Space Agency.

Very best wishes
Queencorgi

[DeannaB]

Hi Jonson1 & queencorgi1,
John Watson came to visit my father when he was writing his history of the Watson family and I also have a copy of it.  I was only about 13 when he came to our house, but I remember his visit.  Maybe he sparked my interest in ancestry.  Unfortunately now my parents have departed and I wish I had sat down with them and found out more information and looked at the old photos with them.  Now there are so many mysteries and unnamed photos I can't identify.
 
It is fascinating to think there are many distant relatives also interested in our family history. 
I get a bit bamboozled with it all though as they all had so many children in those days.  It must have been so hard for them.

As I have visited the grave of my gg grandparents Alexander Cobham Watson and Alice Hetherington and my great grandfather William Stanley Watson, I am eager to find out more about them and other ancestors.  My father's father fought with the A.I.F. in France in World War 1 and I have transcribed all his letters to his mother, but there is no mention at all of his father William Stanley Watson.   I would appreciate any information you could give me.  I'm not sure how private messaging works here, but if it's possible I would welcome your information.
 
My mother's family history is also intriguing and my nephew is currently making a film about her and her family. 
Best wishes for your research.
Kind regards,
Deanna

[queencorgi1]

Wishing you every success with your research, Deanna!

[DeannaB]

Thanks queencorgi1.  All the best to you too.

[Jonson1]

Hi DeannaB and Queencorgi1
Thanks for your replies. Like you Deanna, I am sometimes mesmerised by the number of children that the Watson clan had in Australia and have to study John's family trees very carefully to work out who belonged to who.  We, who are descended from Ellen Emma Cobham Watson, are a small family by comparison.  What is surprising is how many of them kept in touch after so long.  Our family have always been in touch with descendants of Alexander Cobham Martyr (1808-1902), who had to change his surname to Cobham on inheriting Shinfield in Berkshire.

John Watson, who didn't have the benefit of the internet, did very well, but he got a few things wrong.  One of them was that my great great grandmother, Ellen Emma Cobham Watson, was in fact born on the Manning River, New South Wales in 1841 (certificate) and her mother, Ann Percival Watson, died there in 1843 (newspaper announcement).  This changes the whole dynamic of the family and a few of us are trying to understand how George Watson seems to have started a second family with Ann's sister, Mary, before Ann had died. He married Mary Martyr in Sydney in 1844 (certificate), but their eldest daughter is shown as having been born on the 1st January 1840 (entry in family bible). The 1st January 1840 is perhaps a convenient round figure and I wonder whether an innocent explanation could be that an error in the year of birth was made many years  later without realising the implications.  All very intriguing!

In something of a desultory way, I am trying to update John Watson's history for my family should they show a flicker of interest.  I too am not sure how private messaging works, but it might be the way forward. Some of the pieces I have written in the past have gone online in a general way and I have been a little disappointed to find them then absorbed into other people's histories verbatim, and with assumptions made about facts that I have been careful to qualify.

Good luck with your research and best wishes.
Jonson1   

[DeannaB]

Hi Jonson1,
On the far left top corner of each post is a tiny little symbol like a little page with a corner turned down. It is next to another symbol to see the person's profile.  If you put the pointer on that little page symbol it says "Message", so I have tried to send you a private message.  At the top tabs there is one for "My Messages".  Click there to see your Inbox.  I've just worked this out for myself by exploring the symbols and various tabs in this website.  I hope you see my message. 
kind regards,
Deanna