Completely distracted

Hello, I'm here; it's just that I've been all over the place. Not literally, alas. In genealogical terms I've spent some time in the beautiful county of Durham and then went, with the family I was looking at, across the pond to Salt Lake City (as you do).

I was looking into the "Sherry Glass Puzzle" . . . trying to discover the owner of the said glass and his/her relationship to the friend who set the problem. Fortunately it was a reasonably unusual name and it wasn't too difficult (if you have the right subscriptions).

What made it even more interesting was finding that the Sherry Glass owner's father had enrolled the entire family (himself, wife & seven children) with the Mormons in 1847 and then, in 1867 set off, with wife and two youngest, to Utah.

Alas, he caught something unpleasant on the ship and only survived for six months in his promised land but the rest of the family appeared to thrive. Thanks to some immaculate record-keeping (no surprise there) there are some accounts of their life online - including one intriguing tale of the polygamy for which their chosen religion was/is famous!

Must finish now as I need to de-fragment this computer.

More soon.

Well it could be . .

A few years ago I first set eyes on a naturalisation agreement which named father & son (being naturalised) and father's parents. But not the son's mother or, to put it another way, not the father's wife.

Intriguing, no? Wife/mother might well have been dead; or separated from her husband; or British already.

The document is dated 1898 and the 1901 census shows that the father is married. Now, why put that on the form if you don't mean it? So, wife/mother isn't dead then.

A chance find last week *may* have cleared up the matter: found on ancestry.com (in the library, you may recall, as it's free) a marriage between Herman and Adeline. Adding to the "possibility-quotient" was that Herman's parents had the same names as those cited in the naturalisation document.

And the marriage took place just before (well, a year before) the birth of the aforementioned son.

So, the PQ has just zoomed up higher. And there it will remain, hovering, until I can think of a way to confirm it. Good find, I thought!

More soon.

Males of the line . . .

I'm back from a quick trip up to the land of Tartan and ready to get stuck in again.  So let's meet Reginald Storey Beasley, the younger son of Henry & Mary (nee Storey) and my second cousin twice removed plus my third cousin three times removed.  Yes, he's from that side of the family!

Ronald was born on 11 July 1900 in Cambridge and was christened at St Barnabas, on Mill Road, today 110 years ago.  The family lived in Tenison Road at the time and, by 1911, had moved a little way down Mill Road to Gwydir Street.  He married Nellie Louisa Edwards at the church of St Mary & St Michael in Trumpington in 1923 . . . . and that's all I know about him.

So we'll move on or, rather, back, to my first cousin three times removed William Murfitt, who was born in 1833 in Stretham.  The oldest of the eleven children of Isaac & Alice (nee Langford) he was christened today at St James' church in the village and, unsurprisingly, grew up to become an ag lab.  And then he disappears.  

Well, maybe not exactly but I can't find him again.  I guess he's got to be there somewhere - I'll keep looking.

And finally, for today, meet my great-great-great-uncle Richard Fordham, the fourth of five sons of John & Mary (nee Taylor) who was christened today in 1821 in Hemingford Grey.  Sadly, he died on August 16th and was buried two days later in the same church.

Still waiting for the certificate which should help with the details of the previous blog entry.

More soon.