Every genealogist will come across a brick wall in their research at some point; a time where you can go no further with a particular part of your research. Usually records cannot be found for an ancestor or they just seem to disappear without a trace. However, brick walls can be overcome. I have come back to problems I have had in the past and solved them due to new records becoming available, or by tackling it in a different way, even up to a year later. This article is my list of brick walls, and how I hope to solve them.
Where was Welbury Mitton buried?
When researching an ancestor, I like to go “full-circle” with them. That is, finding out where and when they were born, where they lived, when they married, when they died, and then finally when they were buried. I cannot for the life of me find out where my great-great-grandfather, Welbury Mitton is buried.
He was born in Horton-in-Ribblesdale in Yorkshire in 1849, where he lived until about 1890 when he moved to Mungrisdale in Cumberland to work on a farm previously owned by his wife’s family. Shortly after his wife died, he remarried in 1892, and moved to Silverdale in Lancashire. On the 2nd March 1901, he died at Leeds Infirmary due to cancer. This was over 70 miles away from his home, but it must have been the most convenient hospital for his treatment. Later that year, his wife and children (from his second marriage) emmigrated to Canada.
I have been unsuccessful looking for a burial in Silverdale, Horton-in-Ribblesdale and Mungrisdale (although I may have missed something), so I am guessing that he might have been buried in Leeds — most likely in an unmarked grave. I aim to contact a local studies or family history department of Leeds Council and see if someone there can help. Hopefully they will have some digitised burial records.
What happened to Thomas Collingwood in America?
Up until recently, I didn’t even know when my 3x-great-grandfather, Thomas Collingwood, was born. He is a big mystery as he doesn’t appear in many records at all. The first record Thomas appears on, is his certificate of marriage to Eliza Smith (Thomas and Eliza are the parents of Agnes, who was the aforementioned Welbury Mitton’s first wife). This was in 1847 and his age was given as “of full age”, which means he was born in 1826 or earlier — not too much help.
The next time I manage to find the family is in 1861, where Eliza is living in Ainstable as widow with her two children William and Agnes. William was born in 1848 but there is no sign of him or any of the family in 1851. Eventually I tracked down a passenger list of Thomas, Eliza and William heading from Liverpool to New Orleans in 1850. Thomas is a doctor (a family profession) and his year of birth was finally revealed as 1821. This meant I could find the family in the 1850 US census living in St Charles, Missouri, where Thomas is working as a Physician. His place of birth is only given as “England”.
Thomas and Eliza’s daughter Agnes is born in England in 1852, so Eliza did not stay long in America. By 1861 she is a widow, and she later has two illegitimate children in 1866 and 1867. My guess is that he died in America and pregnant Eliza moved back to England with their son. I still don’t know when he died exactly, but probably 1850-1852. However, Thomas could have come back with the family and died in England, but I have found no matching death records of this.
I also don’t know where Thomas was born. His sister was born in Chichester in West Sussex in 1816, and his brother was born in Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1817. His father was a Captain in the Army, who owned a boat with his brothers, so the family evidently travelled around a fair bit. He seems to be missing in the 1841 census too, but he could have been anywhere in the world at that time. I am not sure where to go on this, other than trying to track down death records for Thomas in Missouri and to do some more hunting for Thomas in 1841.
Who was Willam Dixon Collingwood’s wife?
The aforementioned Thomas’ father was William Dixon Collingwood, a Captain in the Army who fought in the Battle of Salamanca in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. He was born in 1786 in Alnwick, Northumberland. After retiring from the Army, he lives with his wife Phoebe in Dalston in Cumberland in 1841, and in Sunderland in Durham in 1851.
His wife Phoebe is a bit of mystery. The census records state that she was born in 1791 in Pagham in Sussex. She died in 1856 in Sunderland, four years after her husband. Their eldest daughter Eliza is born in 1816, but I cannot find a marriage record for William and Phoebe pre-1816. Their daughter Eliza Elizabeth Collingwood emmigrated to Australia in the 1850’s, and her Australian death certificate lists her mother’s name as Phoebe Lovell, but I cannot find any other documentation that confirms Lovell is her maiden name. I am taking this information with a pinch of salt, as Eliza herself is a bit of a mystery; she marries a French Count in England, and after her move to Australia, she remarries but continues to use her previous names and a mixture of them throughout her life. All of the certificates I have detailing her and her children’s life often contradict each other or are inaccurate. She also often claimed as a point of importantance that she was a cousin to Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, and although that was technically true, she was in fact very, very distantly related to him (around an 8th cousin).
I cannot find any birth or baptisms for a Phoebe Lovell in Pagham, so other than looking a bit further afield, there isn’t much I can do. I will also continue looking for William and Phoebe’s marriage, but this could have been anywhere in the world.
Why did William Hedley Gray’s family settle where they did?
This is not so much a brick wall, but more of a curiosity of why people settled where they did. My great-great-grandfather, William Hedley Gray, separated (but not divorced) his wife Ann in around 1901. Ann stayed in Northumberland and went on to have other relationships and illegitimate children, but William and their children moved away.
I know for a fact that their son Edward was in Leeds by 1917, their elder daughter Nora was also in Leeds by 1920, and their younger daughter (my great-grandmother) Jean was in Thames Ditton in Surrey by 1924. Edward and Nora stayed in Leeds for the rest of their lives, but I think the family definitely lived in Slough in Berkshire at some point. Family members have described memories of visiting cousins in Slough, and William lived there when he in 1964. It would make sense that Jean would end up in Thames Ditton from Slough, as the two places aren’t that far apart.
The 1921 census will answer a lot of these questions. It will show me Nora and Edward living in Leeds with their respective spouses and children, but hopefully also explain where William and Jean are. It would be nice to know how Jean came to meet my great-grandfather Frank. Unfortunately I cannot do much about this until 2021!