I registered with RootsChat only last week and sent in a rather lengthy introductory post. I have already received three posts in return and am amazed at the speedy and detailed replies. My grateful thanks. I would like now to respond, and can only hope I am following correct procedures.
To begin with perhaps I should assure you that I am indeed the Peter Joseph Watson mentioned fairly frequently in the commentaries. The middle name ‘Joseph’ does not appear on my Birth Certificate, but that name I acquired as of right later. In addition, I am also quite certain that I am a son of Joseph/Ralph/Beverley Watson (or what you will), and a grandson of Joseph Frederick Watson (the great eloper). I was also born on 29th June 1928 and am not yet dead.
May I start with a comment by Woody 16 that he/she is in possession of a family tree written by me. A little story here. I did some ancestry research some 50 years ago while living and working in London, very pre-internet, but I had access to all the main archives and did a family tree.
Later, all my records were unfortunately lost. However, I had sent a copy of the tree to a Watson relative living in Tockwith, west of York suggesting a correspondence. I received no reply. Could this be the sole surviving copy of my efforts back then? If so, would it be possible for me to have a copy. It is likely to be reliable, as far as it went.
Beyond that, on to the questions outstanding
1. Joseph Frederick Watson (JFW) my grandfather. People seem quite certain he was the great eloper, but was he? The evidence seems mostly circumstantial. Was Alice Hood known in the Beverley area? Is there any confirmation of their sea passage to Canada? Perhaps everyone locally ‘just knew’ without formal evidence, or perhaps the local press may have considered it newsworthy?
2. My father’s names. A bit of a mystery, but he did use them, even when I knew him.
3. The actual composition of the Watson family in the time of JFW and Lavinia. As well as my father, there was Dorothy E and Harold. Other possibilities are Cyril Douglas and Enid Lavinia Julia. And mention is made of half-brothers. Of Harold, my father told me he was wounded in the neck in France and repatriated to Aldershot Military Hospital in the UK, where he died. My father, with the Canadians in France, managed to visit him there. A further point of interest on Harold is that in Beverley Minster there is or was a plaque listing the boys of Pocklington School who died in WW1. Harold is mentioned, with his name seemingly added later. Pocklington was a private boarding school my father also went to, since absorbed into the state system.
4. There is a comment somewhere that (Harold) may have changed his name ‘like his siblings did’. Can anyone expand on this?
5. Fawcett Pudsey, Dolly’s husband was an official in the Colonial Office . I looked him up in the Colonial Office records. He once served as Director of Public Works for Palestine. I also asked about him in (British) Guiana when I was there myself on official business. A local employee remembered him.
6. Photographs. I have one of Lavinia with Dolly and Joey, and I know there are others, including a gravestone for JFW and Alice in Canada. I would like to obtain copies of any or all. How?
7. My mother’s marriages. Marriage to Ralph Turnbull in March1917 looks possible. I think she mentioned to me at some point that she had had a miscarriage. Also, I believe Turnbull died in a fire. I even had a newspaper report on it, but not now. Marriage to my father was delayed until after a family unification, which occurred in 1940 in Shrewsbury, where my father died in 1957, two weeks before my marriage to Beryl Mary Harper of Liverpool. My mother died in a nursing home in Oswestry Shropshire in July 1981, and my wife in Chester in 2001. We had two children, one living in Hull and the other in Australia.
I have of course only just resumed these researches after the long interval and may not be able to take things much further. However, perhaps these notes may be of some use to others.
With best wishes
Peter Joseph Watson
