You Break It, You Bought It!

Back in early 2008, my father, Gordon, was diagnosed with what turned out to be a terminal illness. Over the following months, I tried to “help” with his family history project, which he had inherited from his father, Edward.

Edward was born in May, 1910, in Ringwood, Hampshire, to Charles and Rose. Charles died in October, 1910, and Rose moved away, eventually remarrying and settling in Devon. Rose died when Edward was a boy. Her husband soon remarried, and Edward was raised by his step parents. He knew nothing but fragments about his father. What little he knew came from remembered conversations with his late mother, and from her family.

Family lore was that Charles was previously married with small children; that his wife had died, and that Rose, who was from Wimborne, Dorset, had been hired as a nanny.

Edward spent years trying to trace his family, visiting Ringwood, searching for clues, and collecting certificates.

One such certificate was for the marriage of Charles and Rose in February, 1909. It was troubling. The couple had lied about her age, and about the name and occupation of her father. The record had been amended in September, 1909, to show that she was 17, and not 22. Charles was 50.

Edward died in 1984 with lots of unanswered questions, and with a nagging worry (not supported by his date of birth) that his parents had “had” to get married.

My father, Gordon, took over the genealogy project, and expanded it. He connected with Rose’s extended family, and with the various branches of his mother’s ancestry in Devon. But Charles’ family remained difficult.

Charles was to be one of several children of William and Mary. (The certificate of marriage to Rose named his father as John, but that was assumed to be another obfuscation.) The 1901 census listed Charles, and his then wife Alice, with several children.

I first looked at the family history in late 2008, and promptly subscribed to Ancestry.co.uk to build an electronic family tree. Not long after that, the 1911 census was released early, and I decided to find out what became of Charles’ other children.

I was surprised to find that Charles, and his wife Alice, were both very much alive, living at the same address with all their children.

If I had kept this to myself, I could have escaped the genealogy trap. But I didn’t. I told my father, and ripped up the family tree. He was disappointed, and of course, I felt obliged to sort it out.

Over the next several months, I built a database containing every record of the family name - including all spelling variations - from every census, all the baptisms, and every BMD index entry. (I should mention I was semi-retired at the time).

I found Charles in the 1901 census (going by William, his middle name). I found the births of his children with his previous wife, Mary, and her passing. I found his parents, John and Elizabeth. I found his children in the 1911 census, living with John and Elizabeth, and with his sisters.

One day, looking at the BMD indexes, I noticed a girl child, Dora, who was born in Q2, 1909, and died in Q3. Based on nothing but a feeling, I ordered her birth certificate. Dora was my grandfather’s sister. We never knew she existed.

A few months before he died, I travelled with my father to visit Ringwood. We found the communal graves where Charles and Dora were laid to rest. We visited the house where they lived, and the cottage where Charles grew up. We had a cup of tea one of Charles' great-granddaughters, Susan, who is my half second cousin.

Hence I found myself bitten by the genealogy bug.