To save you some time, Sandra, the life of Thomas S Coulson snr is well mapped out.
Born 1866/67 in South Shields, Durham, England.
Was a painter all of his life, lived in many locations across the UK.
Thomas jnr's daughter who is now approx 90 has told me she never heard of
her father's father ever coming to America, and there is no record of him ever doing so.
Thomas snr died in Edmonton, Middlesex, England in 1937.
The life of Thomas jnr is also well recorded.
Born in South Shields in 1896, he married in 1919, took his wife to Canada
to try a life of farming. He arrived just in time to appear in the 1921 Canada census.
The marriage broke down, as did his career aspirations.
By Nov 1921 he was in Vancouver BC applying to cross over into Washington State.
He made two attempts to do so.
On one form he claims he intended to stay with his mother, in Portland Oregon.
Thomas jnr applied for and gained citizenship 1922-24.
He married in 1924, then again sometime after that (can't remember offhand).
He passed away in Portland, 1972.
He also appears on some 1940 draft registration card.
Like his father, he was a painter, of trucks and railway carriages I think.
He has a number of children and grandchildren.
Thomas jnr's mother (and Elizabeth's mother too) was Florence Mary or Mary Florence Coulson nee Doyle. Her UK census data says that she was born in Scotland although her daughter in 1915 seems to think that she was born in Ireland (first wedding). She is absent from the 1911 UK census which hints at least that she may have been in America by then. However she does not appear in any US census using her proper name. Thomas's daughter told me in email correspondence that she sometimes went by one or more false names, and that she survived at least into the 1950s. She has been an extremely difficult character to trace.
Yes I did try to trace Agnes 'Dayle' (Doyle) some years ago, without much success. I found her in the 1891 UK census with other family members. I pondered the possibility that these Doyle family members might have gone to the US too but could not reach any conclusions from the data.
Your observation that Thomas would have been very young when he first went to Portland is something that escaped my attention until you mentioned it. He would have been 15 years old!
I don't believe he would have gone unaccompanied by an elder so the evidence points towards his mum being that elder (since his father did not go).
If you can turn up anything new on these people I will be delighted.
But there are not many stones left unturned.
-DC
-DC
