I've asked before for a bit of info about an ancestor and with your help have managed to get a generation further back but now I'm stuck. I'm trying the route of researching siblings or potential wider family members but I can't decide if I'm just picking out random names or if this would be a sensible link.
I'm reasearching a chap called Henry Travers.
He first appears aged 3 in Neilston living with a pauper nurse in the 1851 census. By 1861 he's in the poorhouse in Neilston. The spelling of his name varies depending on where I research, it changes from year to year, but it settles on Travers when he's an adult. He's Turvies or something in the 1851 census. Family stories tell us he was an orphan and was in a workhouse in the Neilston or Barrhead area so he is likely to be the right person.
Anyway, there are very few Travers/Trevis/Travis/Turvis type families around Neilston at that time.
There are 3 kids in the poorhouse in 1851 with the spelling Trevise, they are aged around 5, 7 and 10 at the age that my Henry is 3. It seems likely to me that these 3 could be siblings of Henry, would it be likely that the 3 older kids would go straight into the Poorhouse and the youngest would be with a carer in the local community then moves into the Poorhouse when he's a bit older? I don't know when they went into care, Henry could have been any age up to 3.
I don't know how to prove the link though. Of the three kids with the spelling Trevise I think I can trace 2 of their death certificates and they are also both using Travers as a spelling as adults. One of their death certificates gives me parents names but I have no way of proving they are the same family.
My Henry has blanks on his marriage ceritificate for parents names but does list a James Travers as his father on his death certificate, blank for the mother. This ties up with one of the potential siblings above. But every third man in Scotland was called James at the time so it feels a bit like pulling any old James Travers out of the pile to get a generation further back.
But the link between Henry and these 3 kids in the poorhouse seems pretty solid to me with the similar names and ages and the common parent name on death certificates (even though it's a common name), or am I just being naive?
I've asked the Mitchell and other local authorities, no-one has poor relief records going that far back so I think I'm stuck.
It's annoying, I think the Travers families most likely came from Ireland the generation before and my gran would love to prove this Irish link. She's 97 so I'm running out of time. I don't know how I would prove such a common name anyway. In my sentimental 21st century head it would be nice to know for sure that our Henry had brothers and sisters and wasn't completley alone but in reality he probably wouldn't have known them anyway. I'm too soft for all this family hardship!
Thanks for reading
