Meetings with 3rd cousins

I took over my late mother's genealogy research and about the first thing I did was to join the East of London FHS and register my interest in the names Butler, Morris and Lazenby.

I did not have any great expectations.

However, in April 1998, I received a letter.

It turned out to be from a third cousin, because her great grandfather Charles Morris was the brother of my great grandmother Elizabeth Morris. It was not long before I made the short trip to Canvey Island to visit her.

I took with me a few photos which I had received from my mother, and she opened up her photo album so we could have a look.


In her album we found a photo of Charles Morris, with his wife and his sister and in my collection a photo of Elizabeth Morris and 3 of her daughters

My cousin did not know who the lady was standing behind her great grandfather, as he was sitting in a deck chair.
In my photo, my great grandmother is in the chair, and 3 of my great-aunts behind, one of whom lived long enough for me to meet her.

It was somewhat uncanny to realise that these two photos, obviously taken at the same family gathering, had been separated by almost 100 years in two branches of the family.

We continued to work on the Morris family history, sharing discoveries and brick walls.

One of the challenges was to find out the maiden name of the mother of Philip Morris, our mutual 2x Great grandfather, who was born in 1827. Eventually we found that he had a younger brother John Morris, born in 1841, and we obtained his birth certificate, revealing the mother's maiden name apparently Mufsard. It took us a while to realise that it was Mussard.

Meanwhile I had told her that I had a mystery to solve. I had Elizabeth Morris's Birthday Text Book, and this contained references to death of Uncle Wood (aged 44, 26 July 1877), births of Adelaide Wood (1861), and Mary Susannah Wood (1858) and marriage of Cousin J Wood to Pollie in 1877. Who were these Woods?

One day she e-mailed me to say she thought she had found the answer. She put me in contact with someone, who lives in Castlegar, British Columbia, Canada. Somehow she had made contact with the person in Canada, through the interest in the name Mussard. That person had been tracing the family of her ancestor Mary Wood (née Morris), and had discovered that her mother's maiden name was Muzard. This Mary Morris was the sister of the aforementioned Philip Morris. Her death was registered by WP Jones, the husband of Adelaide Wood. Adelaide herself lived to the age of 99 in Vancouver and was known to our contact.

The person in Canada is therefore a 3rd cousin once removed for both myself and my 3rd cousin.

So in 2010 my wife, my daughter and I had a two weeks holiday touring British Columbia, and visited Castlegar where I met my lost cousin. We have since managed to trace back up Elizabeth Susannah Mussard's maternal line and connect to Huguenots of Spitalfields, and discovered that a relative in Vancouver has an original embroidery dated 1732, which has been handed down through the family.

John