Thanks to Maddys52, Neale1961 and amondg, this is all very helpful. To rephrase my original question: my father-in-law was an Isaac Harris, but whether he is the son of the Jacob Harris mentioned in my first post is uncertain. We know very little of Isaac’s background. He died in 1959 in Liverpool aged between 76 and 82. Different documents and newspaper articles give different ages. He was a heart specialist in Liverpool and even founded a research institute. He gained some notoriety in 1959 for kidnapping 3 of his 4 children after his second and much younger wife died of MS. It was headline news in the Liverpool press and beyond. However this was put down to his increasing senility and there was a lot of sympathy for his predicament. But he was always very evasive about his background.
He claimed in an application to Edinburgh medical school that he was born in Sunderland, but he had a German accent. There are records of an Isaac Harris training at Edinburgh and later in Koenigsberg. Koenigsberg was then part of Prussia, but very close to Lithuania - and Sunderland had at the end of the 19th Century a large Jewish community of Lithuanian Jews as maddys52 reference to Samuel Daiches supports. I have started to use JewishGen but nothing obvious has popped up except Esther Dina Harris’ Sunderland grave - she died in 1894.
When Isaac applied to Edinburgh he said he was born on 5 April 1883 and another form dated 15 March1905 references a Dr Anderson of 1 Ward Terrace, which is only yards from Burlington Road. Then the Medical Directory of 1907 shows an Isaac Harris practising in Liverpool.
Jacob Harris’ naturalization certificate is dated June 1895 and states that his son Isaac is 14 years old, yet Isaac’s application to Edinburgh gives a dob of 5 April 1883 and so he would only be 12 at the time of Jacob’s application
So we have a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to Isaac having strong connections to Sunderland but we don’t have any hard evidence that Jacob was Isaac’s father. Isaac didn’t have any children with his first wife and we can’t find him in any census. He’s a mystery, and I think my best way forward is to try and find clues through JewishGen.
So thanks again to the good people of Rootschat.
