General Chat

Thank you for the suggestion Susan and Sherlock- I'll enjoy having a trawl later in that LDS/Labs site. I did hear that the Mormons planed to have everythng on microfilm, internet searchable by about 2011, I thought- that's very nice!
In the meantime, I've got a bit of work to try & get back to!

Edited to add: maybe that was the same boat 'Fanny', Susan- anything's possible. Thanks for trying the FMP lookup. Maybe I'm using the free lookup wrongly, but I could only get to where they offer you all four quarters of the year, with a range of surnames, and you have to pay to look at the details on one...

The Northumberland and Durham PRs are on family searchlabs.org but as they are original images they are a bit of a trawl. Worth it though. ( Not indexed)

And I might note that I've got a kid born in 1884 and a kid born in 1880, children of old Ernest Hill/Monck and his sister, respetively, who were simply never registered either. At least, not under any of the multiple surnames I'm aware of. ;)

http://labs.familysearch.org/

Have you tried the options on the Family Search labs web site. My info is it contains info not released in the IGI. I had a bit of a look at your core people and never found anything, however there are many different enhancements and tools available. You might just find something which is relevant.
And some of the features are really interesting.

Unfortunately, some children during those years were not registered.

In some branches of my family, some children were registered, some were not. A mystery probably that shall never be solved as to the reason.

Hi Ian, further to Janey's post, in my tree there are three siblings born between 1866 and 1871 whose births weren't registered at all and, in their case, they were from a family that worked with the navy - sail makers, ropemakers, ships tailors.

If the registrar had to chase them up, no wonder they weren't registered. 1861- Hampshire. 1865 to 1870 - Kent. 1881 Hampshire. See what I mean?

I have done a search on Find My Past and not come up with anything yet. I do find their search engine and multiple red herring results laborious.

Interestingly a second cousin of mine, also from Northumberland, had an ancestor who had a boat named 'Fanny'...1860's .....I never did find out any more about it though.

Ian

you can do a bit of a free search on findmypast, which would show you the kinds of records they have, and which ones the names of possible people appear in


Then you could think about maybe getting a few credits.


I don't have a subscription myself to fmp, I prefer ancestry, but I do use the free search quite a bit



sylvia

Is it at all possible that the children with the missing birth regs were born outside England? Worked on a family a while back, here, where the kid was born in St Petersburg or some such place, but baptised back home in England the next year or so, presumably on a trip back to see the folks. India would be unlikely given the one-month lapse between birth and baptism, but possibly Scotland? and just not registered at all?

For the batch numbers - go to Hugh Wallis's site

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis
/IGIBatchNumbers/CountryEngland.htm#PageTitle

(paste it back together) and go to Northumberland, and find C017252 on the page. ... And great, it isn't there.

Well, you can search within the batch by putting only surname Stewart and region British Isles, and batch number C017252 on the search form. ... And none of the others is yours. No more help, me!

NEW bit of Data !

Familysearch (the LDS) actually had the birth of Margaret Jessie Stewart, and her baptism. There's no note of record office volumes or pages, just Bathc C017252, but it 'latinises' their names a bit...

Margarita Jessie Stewart Pedigree
Female

Event(s):
Birth:
08 MAR 1862
Christening:
02 APR 1862 St Mary, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Northumberland, England
Death:
Burial:

Parents:
Father: David Stewart Family
Mother: Francesca Middleton Stewart

(Actually I had a transcription of the church registry from the 1930s, also listing her God-parents, though that transcription didn't call her Margarita, nor her mother Francesca, just Margaret & Frances, and I thought it called the father David T Stewart.)

Interesting...the rest of the links get you nowhere.

Actually, Sylvia, I hadn't thought of that, very seriously- I presumed they'd be much the same indexes.

Thank you for the suggestion!

(edited to add- I haven't subscribed to them- just to the 1911 census- we're penny pinching at the moment., so I won't be doing that there, just yet)

Ian

have you investigated the records on www.findmypast.co.uk?

Thye have quite a few that are not on ancestry




sylvia

HI Susan,
thank you for trying- I actually have not found any of them in any of the Ancestry arrivals, which struck me as odd- well I did find my grandfather's brother & his family in the 1930s, and his mother- but that's not the era I'm stuck with.

A fresh pait of eyes and mind is always helpful!

David Henry, later Middleton-Stewart, b. 1849 in Wallsend as Turnbull, died mysteriously in 1897 in Poona, India, where he had been stationmaster.
We have a series of eldest sons of eldest sons-never mind the surname adjustments- all managing to die in the 45-54 years age bracket. Hence the difficulty of passing information down to their grandsons etc through 'grandfatherly discussions'. (I omitted to mention stories/legends about curses on the eldest sons so that they won't survive...anyhow I'm a son of a daughter of a second son of that line, so I'm in the clear!)

Until I read the reports you so nicely found, we'd always thought he sailed his own boat & drowned when it went down off the coast of Bombay. We knew he had one sunk earlier somewhere between Ireland & Wales I think- (The Fanny) circa 1860 just after it was sold- uninsured, as a big loss to him as he had to refund the money- he had not yet delivered it- it was on the way when it happened.)

I wondered if he was always going out & returning in his own boat, whether he'd have to comeplete any 'incoming passenger lists' for the authorities, and decided that since we couldn't locate him on any, that perhaps as the owner of a small vessel maybe he didn't have to.

Now I'm thinking there should be far more arrival records about, with his name on them...maybe not London, but Northumberland? or Liverpool?
heading for or returning from the West Indies in the 1850-60 span, and ditto Bombay 1860-1870.

Thanks for trying with a fresh mind!

(I'm also still trying to locate the news report on the sinking of the Fanny (named affter his wife- Frances nee Middleton). Back in 1983 when I was in UK, I did find it in a registry office somewhere- unfortuantely my notes were lost in a house fire in 1987, and I only remember it was in a collision with a bigger boat/ship called the Carnarvon/Caernarfon/or similar. I don't remember which registry office- shipping? Maybe- but not having been insured, limits what Lloyds would have on it. I seem to remember it was in a newspaper- a short clipping, rather than in, say, a ledger of maritime accidents.

It was findable in some index in this place- maybe it was an old newspapers office- but I just don't recall- one of the few mind blanks- I can even picture myself finding it, looking at the broadsheets- and I didn't have much time in which to do the lookups, and I couldn't afford the wait to get a photocopy, nor the 50p cost at the time, so I hand wrote the little clipping's details. What was interesting was it didn't take long to find it- a few minutes looking at big volumes of indexes, and the a half-hour in the queue to make the request to call up the original, then a half hour to await the response, then I had to leave or I'd miss my connecting tube & trains ride back to my great-aunt's place before dark.

Off the coast near Liverpool seems to ring a bell, and the 1861 +/- 2 years, seems to also gell, plus that Carnarvon type of name. The only definite was his boat was called Fanny. I couldn't tell you waht type of boat it was, though.

Thanks again

Good Morning

Would this be yours Ian?

from Ancestry


UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960

about David M Stewart
Name: David M Stewart
Arrival Date: 18 Dec 1910
Port of Arrival: Glasgow, Scotland
Ports of Voyage: New York
Ship Name: Columbia
Search Ship Database: View the 'Columbia' in the 'Passenger Ships and Images' database
Shipping Line: Anchor Line
Official Number: 115682


EDIT:_ NO! he is American apparently

HI Katy,

yes, it is 'good fun' especially when you make progress.
It can be awfully frustrating when your searches all just disprove negative dead ends, though!

We had a similar sort of case eight years ago with my wife's side of the family.
Her great grandfather's family had a bit of a stigma with him being thought of, by certain very proper relatives, to have been illegitimate. They publicly criticised him, and mocked his stance on fidelity (after he had passed away, that is)

We had a transcription of his birth cert which said he was born in 1894, yet his parents married in 1896. Another relative wrote a book on the family, and also got a birth register transcription, and typed the same dates, making him look- shock, horror- illegitimate.

Something prompted my wife and I to decide we needed to see the real birth registration, in the registry office not the transcript.. (This was in New Zealand). She got a photocopy of it about 15 years ago, but the writing was pretty scrawly, so we never really studied it.

In about the year 2000, I dug the original out, and went over it carefully with a magnifying glass, and lo-and-behold, he was born in 1897, not 1894.
It was entirely unmistakeable.

The 7 had been written the european way, with a cross or line across the middle, so it kind-of looked like the crossbar on the 4, and a blob of splotched ink made up the appearance of the vertical part of a 4, but with a magnifying glass you can tell that it's a round blob, and not a line, and the 7 was suddenly very clearly a seven.

So, he was not illegitimate after all. What was really nice was that my wife was able to tell her oldest uncle what we'd just found out, not long before he passed away (cancer). He was very pleased, as he'd born the brunt of the attack from his sisters and others, about maintaining the grandfather's attitude.

( You see the grandfather's will had a clause about only legitimate grandchildren of married parents being able to receive a portion of his estate, and there were some which 'did not have married parents'.)

So, sometimes it really pays to look for yourself, and not trust the former typist's or transcriber's efforts!

Hi

Have been following this thread and loving it.....really good.

Isn't Family History funny and full of excitement.

In my own family my Gt Grandfather was not registered in Scotland until he was 19 years old as he was getting married....he was born without a father.

Was good letting the family know that one as through our family passed down was ' there is 5 generations of George Wilson Preston'...not!!!!...lol.

Have started doing a family tree for my friend now and have came across the name changing which I have found a bit strange...this really makes you want to know why.

They started of as Cutmore in England and changed to Moore when they came to Scotland and then years later changed back to Cutmore.

Well at least it keeps us going and something to get our teeth into.

Hi

Have been following this thread and loving it.....really good.

Isn't Family History funny and full of excitement.

In my own family my Gt Grandfather was not registered in Scotland until he was 19 years old as he was getting married....he was born without a father.

Was good letting the family know that one as through our family passed down was ' there is 5 generations of George Wilson Preston'...not!!!!...lol.

Have started doing a family tree for my friend now and have came across the name changing which I have found a bit strange...this really makes you want to know why.

They started of as Cutmore in England and changed to Moore when they came to Scotland and then years later changed back to Cutmore.

Well at least it keeps us going and something to get our teeth into.

I forgot to say we had another relative who came to Australia (where I live) in about 1935- called-David Stewart, or David Middleton-Stewart- but I've located no trace of him whatsoever- and it's a big empty country down here- Monck might have been an easier name to trace than Stewart!

This fellow was more at home in crowded bars & pubs, apparently, than wherever a census might have been found.

I keep hoping I'll eventually find a distant cousin with all the answers, but so far, distant cousins, when I find them, keep coming to me for the answers...!

Janey, yours certainly is a queer tale- which needs to be told from the point of view of YOU, and how you figured it out in reverse- that's always more remarkable than the truth, I find.

Our lot- well I had a similar rough time- and I've omitted all sorts of other legends- as I was really wondering why the 'no birth certs' might have happened. Our lot, we wrongly presumes, like many do, to have always had the one surname- that of the oldest son, going back to his father and so on.

It was by chance & lateral thinking, plus adding up notes scrawled in letters from the 1930s which made no sense at all- absolutely none- and after sleeping on it for long enough, I decided to take a really long bit of paper- well several sheets of cartridge paper, and tape them together, to make a 2 ft by 8 ft strip- and then I drew horizontal lines on it from one end to the other, representing various people/families, and I drew vertical breaks every ten inches, representing a decade in the 1800s.- so a year was one inch.

I then created a time line for the tricky people, and tried to get into their shoes, as it were, and live their times, and put some world political history dates and stuff on it too.

That was when it dawned on me that the family ceased to exist before 1882 with their current surname (Middleton-Stewart, ), and by dropping Middleton off, they could be refound, only back until 1859 their current surname (Stewart), and nothing before that, but the name Turnbull kept appearing, occasionally, and yet we knew several of our unfindable ancestors were born in the UK.

Re-searching over the years, and shedding all preconcieved ideas from the mind, opened up the avenues to refind the same family under Turnbull, and it took a bit of working from both ends, and reanalying the few old letters we had and trying to decide that the cranky old great great granny who wrote it wasn't quite as weird as we'd always thought she was.

Unfortunately though she still was somewhat weird, and some facts she wrote were very wrong (referring to a relative as illegitimate, when in fact that relative was OK, but it was her sister who was illegitimate), and other bits she just did not care to bother about the truth- so you had to distil the essence from her nearly illegible scrawl, and then go seeking the real truth, not knowing which end of the snake you were holding!

There were other red herrings, and legends you wanted to bias your searches with, but which had to be ignored till the bare facts were ascertained.

It's hard when dealing with pre 1837 stuff, and Indian/West Indies (like which island out of the hundreds) stuff, and the likelihood of a lack of standard expected records.

The help from here has been wonderful!

In the meantime I still have thousands of questions, in other areas- legends about a brother who threw a fellow overboard a ship in a rage, and fearing the authorities, fled (to USA maybe, or one of a hundred of the West Indies islands?) leaving a wife and kids to never see him again.
Which brother- I can guess- but you have to plod along with the facts, and spread your radar for other influences. etc etc.

All much more interesting (and way slower) than the modern TV detective movies!

Thanks!

Susan# also gave me the impetus to go back to the Gazette. The lovely GR member who found an Anglo-Boer military record for me at Kew a couple of years ago had also found that person's father's 1883 bankruptcy in the Gazette. I hadn't paid enough attention to it.

I did some browsing last night and found another bankruptcy - the father-in-law of the first one, i.e. the father of my own name-shifting gr-grfather and his sister. One minute he's a mining agent and has an option on a mine lease (someone else found that in the National Archives for me, where I'd never thoght to look for my lowly Hills - in partnership with a fellow Cornishman whose son later became one of Australia's prominent politicians), the next minute, boom, or rather bust. And the addresses in the notices also gave me the exact point when he left his wife, my grx2 grmother, and hooked up with that girlie from Scotland! And then married her, while wife #1 was still living, as far as I can tell ... if she was in fact wife ...

Here, I think I get to inflict the tale on you! Fun with Hills and Moncks:

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.asp?wci=thread&tk=976217

a tale told even less coherently than yours, but still amusing. ;)