I found Rose Whybrew

The fate of Rose Whybrew after 1918 has been one of those brick walls that has been a long time in coming down. But I think I've finally cracked it. And I had the evidence I needed all along, without realising it.

To summarise what I already knew, Rose (born 1877) was the fifth daughter of David and Susan Whybrew (nee Mason). She and her husband, George Henry Anthony, migrated to Chicago in the USA in 1907. Their son, George, was born just before they migrated and died in Chicago at the age of six, leaving them childless. George senior seems to have become a permanent resident of an asylum by 1910. He died in the 1940s. The last trace I had of Rose was her address on George's unanswered military call-up papers in 1918.

After that she disappeared. Ages ago I found this small clipping which listed a Rose Anthony from Chicago applying for a marriage license in Indiana in 1917. At the time, I assumed that it probably wasn't the Rose I was looking for because she was still married to George in 1917.  And I couldn't find a record of the marriage anywhere.

Lake County Times, (Hammond, Indiana)
15 June 1917

This week I went back to the article, and realised for the first time, that the future husband's name was also listed - Robert Reichert. I'd been looking at it as a random list, but it's actually a list of couples. I still couldn't find a marriage record, but I had a new name to look for.

First I found a Robert and Rose Reichert in the 1930 US census in Chicago. Rose Reichert's date of birth (1877) was the same as Rose Whybrew/Anthony, and her year of arrival in the USA matched. She was said to have been born in Australia, which wasn't correct, but Rose Whybrew's mother was born in Australia. 

By the 1940 census, Rose Reichert's birth place had changed to England. Each census asks for different information, and in 1940 one of the questions was 'age at first marriage'. Rose Reichert's age at first marriage was 19, about 1897 (the same year that Rose Whybrew married George Anthony) whereas Robert was first married about 1917. So Rose Anthony had been married before she met and married Robert Reichert.

All of this was suggestive, but not conclusive. I couldn't find the couple in the 1920 census. I did find a marriage record (on familysearch.org) for their marriage in Lake County, Indiana, in 1917, though it gave no details except their names and the date (14 June 1917). Could they have gone to Indiana to marry because Rose was still married to George? Perhaps she couldn't afford a divorce, or perhaps a divorce would have been difficult with George in the asylum. Maybe the reason I couldn't find the Reicherts in 1920 was that they didn't want to be found easily.

I'd begun to feel pretty confident (and excited) that this was probably the Rose I was looking for. But the evidence was still rather circumstantial. From newspapers I discovered that poor Robert Reichert was knocked down by a car in December 1955 and died in January 1956. His death record said that he was a widower. 

From that information I was able to find Rose Reichert's death record (on familysearch.org) which included her father's name; 'David Weybrew'. She died in Chicago on 9 February 1944 at the same address as in the 1940 census. Her date of birth on the death record was 13 November 1877, the same as Rose Whybrew. Her mother's name was listed as Murphy, which was actually Rose Whybrew's maternal grandmother's name, and she was said to have been born in Australia. Given that her husband Robert would have been giving the details, it isn't surprising if some of them are muddled or inaccurate. 

So this, I believe, is Rose Whybew's gravestone, at the Montrose Cemetery in Chicago. She had a hard life, but I'm glad that, even if her second marriage was possibly bigamous, she seems to have had a few good years at the end. 

 

A Rose by any other name won't do

As I've mentioned before, one of the toughest brick walls in my family history research is the fate of Rose Whybrew.

Rose, born in Kent, England, in 1877, married George Henry Anthony in Colchester in 1897. Their first child, Harriet, lived only a few months. Rose gave birth to a son, George William, in 1907, not long before the family migrated to the United States via Canada. They settled in Chicago, where Rose's sister Alice was living.

I've found the family in Chicago in the 1910 US census. Little George died and was buried in Chicago in 1913. In 1918, the older George received call-up papers from the US military, but as far as I can tell, he didn't respond. Rose's name appears as his wife on the papers, but her address, still in Chicago, is different to his, so it seems they had separated.

And then they disappear. I found a man  named George Anthony in the 1920, 1930 and 1940 US census, an inmate of a Chicago asylum, who fitted some of George's details. But Rose completely vanishes. I can't find any evidence that she died in Chicago. Did she remarry? Did she move interstate, or return to England? I've spent hours trying to find her, but without success. I've found lots of women named Rose Anthony, but none that I can identify as her.

I was having yet another look recently, hoping I might find her, when I came across a couple named George and Rosina Anthony in the 1939 England and Wales Register. Other women in my family named Rosina were sometimes called Rose, and vice versa, so the slightly different name didn't put me off. They lived in Hornsey, which is where Rose's sister Ada Metson lived in 1939.

According to the transcript, the husband was born in 1874, the wife in 1878, which matched the couple I was looking for almost exactly. Imagine how excited I was. Maybe George didn't finish up in an asylum after all.

Once I looked at the register image itself, I saw that the wife, Rosina, was born on 13 November 1878. That was Rose Whybrew's birth date, except for the year. Maybe the person recording the date had got the year of her birth wrong by one year. It wouldn't be the first time I'd come across an error like that in the register. I thought my brick wall was finally going to topple.

But then I noticed the couple had a daughter, Elsie Maud Anthony, who was born in 1907. That didn't fit, unless little George had a twin who was left behind when they migrated. I thought I'd better do a bit more research. And soon I found the whole family living in London in the 1911 England census. A bit more digging showed that Elsie Maud's mother's maiden name was Young. Drat!

So I still don't know what happened to Rose Whybrew. But I'm intrigued by the co-incidences between her and Rosina Young. It shows how carefully you have to check before assuming that you've found the person you're looking for in the records.

Image: F Muhammad from Pixabay

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To read more about Rose and her family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Albert and Hannah Hough's puzzling family life

The spire, all that remains of
Stowell Memorial church where
Albert and Hannah married in 1878

I've written a little about Albert Hough and Hannah Holt before. Their daughter Alice was my mother's maternal grandmother. But there are several gaps and puzzling details in their story that I've yet to resolve.

Albert Hough and Hannah Holt married in Salford, Lancashire, in August 1878. At the time Albert was working as a brickmaker like his father William.  When they married they both gave their address as 51 Jane Street in Salford. For some reason Albert’s name was recorded as ‘Alfred Hough’, although his name was registered as Albert both when he was born and when he was baptised. He was also listed as Albert on his children's baptism records.

Their first child, Alice, was born in 1879. But when the census was taken in 1881, Hannah and little Alice were living with Albert’s brother John Hough and his family in Lynton Street in Salford. Albert wasn’t with them. I thought I’d found Albert/Alfred boarding with another family in Ardwick Street, not too far away. Now I'm not so sure. This man was listed as Alfred, and was described as a dyer, which would be quite a leap from being a brick maker. Albert’s occupation was listed as ‘labourer’ when his children were baptised. So far I haven't found any trace of him in 1881.

So why were Albert and Hannah not living together? The obvious explanation would be that as a young working-class couple they couldn’t afford to rent a place for themselves, and found lodging where they could. Little Alice and her brother Albert (born 1882) weren’t baptised until 1885, another hint that the family might have been hard up. Although, as we'll see, there may have been other reasons for the delay in baptising them.

Other possibilities come to mind. Was Albert working somewhere away from home for long periods? Was he perhaps in prison, or the workhouse? None of these ideas have produced any results so far.

Still missing, or missing again?

By the time of the 1891 census Hannah had four living children (another died in infancy) and she and the children were all boarding with a family in Siever Street in Pendleton, Salford. She was working as a charwoman. Again Albert is nowhere to be found. That’s not to say he wasn’t living somewhere in Salford or Manchester, but I haven’t been able to find him.

It seems strange that the couple should still be living apart. They had obviously spent some time together in the previous ten years to produce five children! The census is only a snapshot on a single night, so perhaps they had been living together for most of the intervening ten years.

Still, it would be interesting to find Albert’s whereabouts in 1881 and 1891. By 1901 Hannah had died and the widowed Albert was living with his eldest daughter Alice, her husband, their son and four of his own younger children – nine people in a four-roomed house. He was employed as a labourer.

Some unexplained baptism records

The Lancashire Online Parish Clerks site offers another strange puzzle related to this family. Most of Albert and Hannah’s children were baptised at St Ambrose church in Pendleton. Until 1902 this was a mission church of the parish of St Thomas, an Anglican (C of E) church. But James, born 26 June 1889, appears to have been baptised on 20 November at the Catholic Mother of God and St James church. There’s no photo of the record available, but the transcription reads:

Baptism: 20 Nov 1889
Mother of God and St James, Pendleton, Lancashire, England
Joannes Jacobus Hough - filius Alberti Hough & Hannae (formerly Holt)
Born: 26 Jun 1889
Abode: 40 Dawson St.
Godparents: Julia Anna Donovan
Baptised by: P. J. Markey
Source: Salford Diocesan Archives

(Catholic churches at the time recorded baptismal names in Latin).

Even more strange, Albert and Hannah’s next son John, born on 16 October 1892, was also baptised in the Mother of God and St James church in Pendleton on 1 November 1892. But then on 2 November 1892 he was apparently baptised again, this time at the Anglican church of St Ambrose in Pendleton.

Baptism: 1 Nov 1892 Mother of God and St James, Pendleton, Lancashire, England
Joannes Hoff - filius Alberti Hoff & Annae Rosae (formerly Holt)
Born: 16 Oct 1892
Godparents: Helena Bower
Baptised by: Henrico Van Wtberghe
Source: Salford Diocesan Archives

Baptism: 2 Nov 1892 St Ambrose, Pendleton, Lancashire, England
John Hough - [Child] of Albert Hough & Hannah
Born: 16 Oct 1892
Abode: 24 Buckingham St.
Occupation: Labourer
Baptised by: G. Morgan
Register: Baptisms 1881 - 1894, Page 175, Entry 1393
Source: Parish Register

The names are spelled a little differently, but it certainly looks like the same child. But why would he be baptised twice? As far as I’m aware, the Catholic and Anglican churches have always recognised baptisms carried out in each others’ churches as valid, so there would be no reason to have a child “done” in both churches, even if the parents were of different denominations. I've heard of baptism records being accidentally duplicated in the same church register, but not across two different churches. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Albert, the father, was baptised in St Phillip's Salford, an Anglican church. I haven’t found a baptism record for Hannah,  but her mother Elizabeth Hardman was Irish, so perhaps she was brought up Catholic. By the time Albert and Hannah's youngest child Elizabeth (a.k.a. Lily) was born they seem to have resolved the issue and she was baptised just once, at St Ambrose Anglican church.

Why did Matthew spurn his family?

Equitable Street, Milnrow. Matthew and his family
 lived at number 33 in 1911.

Most of the unsolved mysteries from my family tree involve "what" "when" or "who" questions. What was the relationship between James Beales and William Beales? When was Richard Ward born? Who brought up Harriet Whybrew? They're questions that, at least in theory, could be answered by finding the right records (if they exist).

But sometimes the question behind a mystery is "Why?" Why did someone suddenly move across the country, or across the world? Why did a child named James apparently take the name of his dead brother William as an adult?

Most of the time, these questions are unanswerable. I can make a guess, based on learning more about a person's background, the social conditions, and local customs at the time. But I can never really be certain. The people who could tell me the answers are long gone.

One such unanswerable "why?" involves my father's Uncle Matthew (born November 1867). Matthew was born in Walton le Dale in Lancashire, but in the late 1870's his parents John and Mary Ward moved with their family to Littleborough. Then for a short while in the early 1890s they lived in Rastrick in Yorkshire. By the late 1890s the whole family had settled in the village of Milnrow in Lancashire, where John was a bootmaker and clogger. Most of the children remained there after they married and had families of their own.

For most of his adult life Matthew was employed as a fellmonger. Fellmongering is a process in which the wool is chemically separated from sheep hides, and was an industry for which Milnrow was noted. The wool was used by the woollen mills for weaving flannel, while the hides were tanned for leather.

Matthew met and married his wife, Elizabeth Ann Brown, while the Ward family were living in  Rastrick. They had six daughters, the first born in Rastrick and the other five in Milnrow. The youngest, Edith, a twin to Esther, died in her first year of life. The rest of the family all lived to a great age. Matthew and Elizabeth themselves, along with their two married daughters, Doris and Esther, all lived past eighty. Their unmarried daughters, Maud, Annie and Clara, all lived beyond ninety. Perhaps that in itself is a bit of a mystery, but not the one I'm coming to.

My father recounts that when he was about eight or nine years old, Matthew and his family suddenly stopped all interaction with the rest of the family. The rift was apparently never healed. For the rest of his life, Matthew's family had no contact with the rest of the family, even though they continued to live in the same small village. Or so my Dad remembers it. He was too young at the time to know what caused this disruption, though he thinks it involved some sort of argument.

I can't find anything in the records to suggest why Matthew and his family would have suddenly cut themselves off from the rest of the family at this time (around the end of the 1930's). Could there have been an argument over property? Or was it something more personal?

At the time of the 1939 Register (which is now online on both Ancestry and FindMyPast) Matthew had retired from work. The three unmarried daughters, Maud, Annie and Clara, all in their forties, were living with Matthew and Elizabeth in a house at 17 Buckley Hill Lane, which was practically "shouting distance" from other members of the family. They had been living there for at least eighteen years according to the electoral rolls.

Matthew's wife Elizabeth died in 1946 and Matthew himself died in March 1949, in Milnrow. He left his property to his daughters, who eventually all moved to Morecombe on the coast. None of them appears to have had any children. Unless something unexpected turns up, it seems unlikely that we'll ever find out what caused the family to separate from the wider family as they did.

Were James and William Beales brothers?

Here's the next family history "mystery" that I've yet to solve.

Robert Beales, born about 1785, was the great grandfather of my great grandfather, William James Beales. Robert and his wife Hannah (surname uncertain, but possibly May) had a number of children baptised in the church of St Peter and St Paul at St Osyth in Essex, or in nearby St Andrews, Weeley, between 1810 and 1827. Their names can be found in the baptism records on the freereg.org.uk search site*. Their eldest son, James, who is my direct ancestor, was born about 1816.

In the 1841 UK census the only Robert Beales of the right age living in the St Osyth area was married to Mary Ann, and they had an adult son, William, living with them. The same is true in 1851. What I'm still trying to discover is whether this Robert Beales is James Beales' father, or part of another family. And was William a brother to James, a cousin or half-brother, or unrelated?

It's quite possible that by 1841 Robert had remarried. Hannah's last two children were twins, Elizabeth and Benjamin, who lived only a few weeks after their birth in 1827. Perhaps she died in childbirth or soon after, though I can't find any record of her death.

The freereg.org.uk site has a marriage between a Robert Beales, widower, and "Merab" Farthing in St Osyth in July 1833. Could the strange first name be a poorly written "Mary Ann"? The date would be consistent with Hannah dying sometime soon after 1827.

According to the 1851 census William was born in St Osyth about 1819, which would fit in the gap between the birth of James and his next sibling Eliza, born about August 1820. The difficulty with adding William Beales to the list of Hannah's children is that his name doesn't appear among the baptisms recorded in the St Osyth area.

Was he perhaps born somewhere well beyond St Osyth? I can't find a baptism for any William Beales with a father named Robert anywhere in Essex, or the next county, Suffolk, between 1815 and 1825, even allowing for the various misspellings of Beales. Perhaps he was simply left unbaptised for some reason - some crisis in the family, or a period of dire poverty, for instance.

Nothing in William's own story gives any clues as to who his parents were. He enlisted in the 21st foot regiment in 1839, but was discharged a few months later after he lost the sight in  both eyes due to complications from smallpox, which is probably why he was still living with his father and mother (or step mother) as an adult. In 1852 he married Mary Ann Dale. (Sorry about the confusing repetition of first names!) He found employment as a broom maker. His army records don't name his parents, and his marriage certificate would only name his father, which doesn't help.

One detail that makes me think that William's father Robert may not be the same man as James' father is that William's father is described as a carpenter on the census records of 1841 and 1851. On most of the baptism records for Robert and Hannah's children Robert's occupation is given as labourer. Carpentry was a skilled trade that most people followed for a lifetime after being an apprentice. It would be unusual (though obviously not impossible) for a labourer to become a carpenter late in life.

For now, that's as far as I can go with solving this one. It doesn't affect my direct family line, but it would be nice to know where poor blind William fits in.



*For the record, the children of Robert and Hannah that I've been able to find are:
Hannah Beales 1810–
James Beales 1814–1887
Eliza Beales 1820–
Rebecca Beales 1825–
Elizabeth Beales 1827–1827
Benjamin Beales 1827–1827

Images: 1. Church of St Peter and St Paul, St Osyth, by Peter Stack
2. The chancel of St Peter and St Paul by John Salmon

Richard Ward - born twice?

Church door, St Leonard's
Walton le Dale

One of the most long-standing mysteries in my family history research is the date of birth of Richard Ward, my paternal great great grandfather. I know from several sources that he was the son of Thomas and Frances Ward, and that he was born in Walton le Dale, in Lancashire.

The problem with determining his date of birth is that two baptism records exist for Richard Ward in the Walton le Dale registers. Both say Richard's parents were Thomas and Frances (or Fanny) Ward. But one says he was born in 1809, and the other gives a date of 1813.

The most obvious solution would be that Thomas and Fanny had a son named Richard in 1809, who died in infancy. They then used the same name when they baptised another son in 1813. That was a common practice at the time. But I can't find any record of a burial for a child name Richard Ward between 1809 and 1813.

Besides that, most of the census records for Richard suggest that he was born in 1809 or 1810. Only in the 1851 census does his recorded age suggest a later date. At his death in December 1881 he was said to be 72 years old, which again gives a date of birth around 1809.

Images of the originals of the two baptism records are available online on the Ancestry website, so it's not a case of a transcription error causing confusion. The first record comes from the Parish Registers of Walton le Dale from 1698 to 1812. Among the christenings for 1809 is this one:
"Richard, son of Thomas and Frances Ward. Born Aug 17, baptised Oct 1." 
The names and dates are quite clear.

The same details appear in the Bishop's Transcripts, the local bishop's copy of the records for all the parishes in his diocese.

The second baptism record is from the Parish register of the Parochial Chapel of Walton le Dale, 1813-1887. Again the record is quite clear and unambiguous.
"Richard, son of Thomas and Fanny Ward" . His date of birth is recorded as 27 April, and his baptism 20 June 1813.

Another Thomas and Fanny

One possible explanation of the two baptism records is that the Richard born in 1813 belonged to another couple named Thomas and Fanny, and the minister at the time, E.S. Radcliffe, has recorded the wrong surname for some reason.

Only one other child-bearing couple named Thomas and Fanny lived in Walton le Dale at this time. Thomas Marsden married Fanny Bushby (or possibly Buskey) in 1805. They had three children baptised in Walton le Dale - Elizabeth in July 1808, John in April 1810 and Sarah in September 1811. Sadly all three, plus an older child named Mary, died in infancy and were buried in Walton le Dale.

The graveyard at St Leonard's Parish Church
Walton le Dale.

Their mother, Fanny Marsden, died in 1813 at the age of 30, and was buried on 25 April*. Is it too far fetched to suggest that she might have died giving birth to the Richard who was said to have been born on 27 April 1813? Obviously there is an awkward discrepancy of a couple of days between her burial and his reported date of birth. But given that the child wasn't baptised until two months later, perhaps the date of birth could be in error by a few days. It's easy to imagine a grieving husband mixing up the dates.

To give this theory a bit more weight, a Richard Marsden, born about 1812 in Walton le Dale, appears in the 1851 and 1861 census in Leyland, Lancashire. In the 1841 census his place of birth isn't recorded, but he was living in Leyland with a Thomas Marsden, with no other relatives listed. That would be consistent with Thomas being widowed and Richard being the only surviving child.

Since he was born in Walton le Dale, we might expect that Richard would have been baptised there, but I can't find any record of a baptism for a Richard Marsden in the Walton le Dale registers within 10 years of 1812. Could that be because his baptism in 1813 was recorded as Richard Ward?

Against this theory is the fact that the 1813 baptism record describes Thomas Ward's occupation as "joiner" (ie a carpenter). This was, in fact, his occupation according to other records. Thomas Marsden's occupation was a "cotton operative" when his wife was buried, and an agricultural labourer in 1841. For my theory to hold water, I'd have to explain why the minister not only wrote "Ward" instead of "Marsden", but also inscribed the occupation of Thomas Ward rather than Thomas Marsden. Any suggestions?

In the meantime, I'm leaning towards the earlier date of birth being the correct one for Richard Ward, though I'll keep the other one recorded as an alternative.


(*Burials, Parish register for 1813-1819, p 8, entry 58. Reference Number: Pr 2948/1/17)