Find My Family

26/11/2023

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/phoebe-hardy-and-peter-bradburn

I was in Farnworth Cemetery today researching and trying to find a grave. I was brushing shrubs off a stone which was damaged and had fallen over and happened to see a sad inscription (main photo).

It said "Phoebe Hardy (17) & Peter Bradburn (9), murdered 3 May 1882" on it

I came home and researched it and the newspapers from the time show that its a hugely tragic story.

The short version is Phoebe was born out of wedlock in 1865. Her mother Agnes would go on to marry a William Bradburn who had been institutionalised in Prestwich Mental Hospital some 15 years earlier after experiencing violent outbursts during bouts of epilepsy. Agnes & William would go on to have a son Peter in 1873. In 1880 Agnes would pass away aged just 32 leaving William alone to raise his stepdaughter & son. As Phoebe reached the age of 17 she began to court a local man of whom William did not approve. Having unsuccessfully attempted to confront the man who was seeing Phoebe, William took the awful decision to murder his step daughter Phoebe & his son Peter. He then attempted to take his own life but was stopped from doing so by members of the public.

At trial William accepted responsibility but was spared the death penalty after pleas by the Jury. He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment in Broadmoor Asylum.

Phoebe & William were laid to rest together in Farnworth Cemetery and had a grand memorial stone erected after work colleagues of Phoebes raised the money to pay for it in their memory but over time this memorial has toppled over.

It doesn't sit well with me that 2 children who were given such a bad hand by life are going to be forgotten in death and this stone has to be repaired and I want to make that happen.

I have spoken to Bolton Council and there are no requirements from them in terms of permits you can just repair it.

With that information in hand I have contacted a stone mason for a quote, I don't think it will be too bad because the base is intact, its just the main body needs reattaching although it is ridiculously heavy so is going to need some specialist equipment to lift it and then properly re-attaching.

I think £500 will comfortably cover this and should any money above and beyond that be raised then maybe this can be donated to a local children's charity in Farnworth.

If you can make a donation that would be great, If you can share this post to reach a broader audience then that would also be great. At this time of year, If (like me) you are a bloke who answers "I don't want anything" every time somebody asks you what you want for Christmas - Why not ask somebody to make a donation to this very worthy cause instead? Thanks so much.

14/11/2023

07/11/2023

Not sure what to give this Christmas? Why not give your family their history. Family trees researched and presented for you from just £95. www.findmyfamily.co.uk

05/11/2023

"My Christmas Family Tree" was a surprisingly decent Christmas film with a 7.6 rating on IMDB with the plot line being:

"A woman meets long-lost relatives for the first time after discovering her family tree during the holidays."

If you want to discover your family in time for Christmas then get in touch and we'd be only too delighted to help.

01/11/2023

We are Find My Family, a professional genealogy service who offer family tree researching to help unravel your ancestry and help you find your past.

Primarily our research is multi generational family trees starting from a person of your choosing but we also offer hourly rate work to help uncover military records, birth records, probate records, baptism or other religious records, censuses and no end of other historical research.

We go beyond names on a page. We will research to find out stories, search old newspapers, hunt for photographs and go that extra mile to solve your ancestral mysteries and help you understand the answer to the question "Who do you think you are?"

27/10/2023

This image is the Lancashire Landing Cemetery in Gallipoli in Turkey.

Whilst researching a tree our clients great grandmother was discovered to be born with the name Rachel Bethell rather than Rachel Rawlinson as was "known" by the family.

It turns out Rachel was married previously in 1913 to Private Charles Rawlinson of the Manchester Regiment 1/5th Battalion hence her marriage certificate stating the name Rawlinson.

Her 1st husband Charles's tale was a tragedy in that he & Rachel had 2 children Charles & Mabel in 1913 & 1914 respectively but both died before their 1st birthdays.

The 1/5th battalion was then sent to Gallipoli in Turkey. On the 7th August 1915 in an attempt to take a crucial position many hundreds of man lost their lives in a botched invasion with the 21 year old Charles being one of those men.

Charles is remembered in Christ Church, Patricroft, Salford with his memorial reading:

C Rawlinson Charlie born Eccles enlisted Patricroft private Manchester Regiment 1/5th battalion 1497 died 7/8/1915 CWG Husband of Rachel Robinson formerly Rawlinson of 2 Williams Place, Factory Lane Harpurhey. Grave E.88 Lancashire Landing Cemetery

Nobody was aware of Charles's connection to the family prior to this discovery and they were delighted to include him on their family tree.

21/10/2023

Having seen these Victorian Photographs in an auction house I decided to produce a quick tree to alert the modern day descendants that these amazing photographs were out there (and cheap).

They are 20 photographs of the Yeoman Family, including Hannah Metcalf who married William Yeoman, Susannah Metcalf who married Joseph Morris, Jane Yeoman, Isabella Yeoman, John P Yeoman & Ruth Yeoman amongst others

The Yeoman family was (and is to this day) enormous and connected to the historic Eyam Hall in Sheffield so I was quickly able to put together a large tree and contact a number of modern day descendants who have now contacted the auction house in the hope of securing these photographs to bring them back into the family.

These photographs are in the Ambrotype style which means a positive picture made of a photographic negative on glass and then backed by a dark surface. It is rare to find nearly 200 year old ambrotype photographs still in perfect condition and I hope my efforts can help the family secure them.

19/10/2023

The Story

The Bury & District Table Tennis League play an annual championships and have done for over 100 years. Amongst many events is the men's open singles event.

In the late 1930s Bill Barlow and his good friend Vernon Peatfield had become notable Table Tennis players recognised both locally and at national level and were featured in a few magazine articles from 1938 and 1939. Vernon & Bill were also doubles partners and forged a formidable team making many finals together. In addition to being doubles partners they were frequently opponents. Bill won the open singles tournament in Bury in 1937/38 and in the 1938/39 season Vernon & Bill were opponents in the open singles final with Vernon being victorious. Bill also won the doubles with J.Taylor in 1939.

Bill won many other championships elsewhere including being Yorkshire Junior Champion in 1938/39.

In 1947 Vernon Peatfield presented a cup to the Bury League in honour of his great friend who had been killed during the war. The cup bears the following inscription.

The Barlow Cup: Men’s Singles Championship.
Presented to The Bury and District Table Tennis League by A.V. Peatfield.
In memory of W.T. (Bill) Barlow who gave his life for his country on 12th August 1944 whilst serving with The Royal Air Force

The league were keen to restore the trophy and hoped to find a modern day descendant of either the Peatfield or Barlow family to present the restored cup to that years champion and as such an investigation was started.

The Investigation

We quickly put together a family tree for Bill Barlow but it was noted he had no children so the search focused on Vernon Peatfield.

This proved challenging as no records could be found for Vernon afer the 1950s so a worldwide search was launched and yielded a possible match in Port Macqurie in Australia.

After lengthy investigation a telephone number was obtained and a call placed and it was indeed the right family. Vernon had passed away a few years earlier but his wife was the person who answered the call and was thilled to hear the trophy was still being contested each year. As it turned out she had met Vernon through table tennis and together they had won the Bury mixed doubles event in 1947.

She had kept contact with a relative in the UK and this ultimately led us to a modern day descendant who did indeed present the restored trophy to the champion at the conclusion of the season.

In addition to the above it was felt that Bill deserved further recognition so the website air crew remembered were contacted to find a little more about Bills passing. They conducted further research and produced a memorial page for Bill which can be read by clicking here:

https://aircrewremembered.com/port-gordon.html

Another family finder success story.

This search was successful for a number of reasons:

Firstly having the names Bill Barlow & Vernon Peatfield and a location for them in the late 1930s allowed us to check the 1939 registry and produce family trees and It was also successful because of our skills in hunting down worldwide records.

If you have a long lost relative you would like to find please or story you would like to get to the bottom of please contact us including as much detail as you have and include your contact details and we will be in touch to see if we can help you have a similar positive outcome.

18/10/2023

The Gypsy King

This weeks client is named Lavinia as was her Grandmother. Their was an old family rumour of Gypsy origins and that was all we had to go on. The task was to uncover as many generations as possible.

Gypsy's were notorious for changing their forenames and to make matters worse the family name was Smith! This was going to be challenging!

After lots of research we were able to trace the lineage all the way back to Absalom Smith who was the King of the Gypsy's when he died in 1826 in Twyford. A renowned fiddler, Absalom took unwell after a performance in the Saddle Inn Public House and died shortly afterwards being buried in St Andrews Cemetery opposite the pub.

His obituary in the local newspaper (which was re-reported nationally) reads as follows:

Died on the 15th of February 1826 aged 60 Absalom Smith better known in the neighbourhood of Nottingham as “King of the Gypsies”, leaving behind him a wife and 13 children (to whom he is said to have left 100 pounds each)and 54 grandchildren. He was attended in his last illness in his camp in Twyford Lane, by doctor Arnold and two surgeons. He was followed to his grave in Twyford churchyard by a large retinue of gipsies on Friday last. He was interred in his coat the buttons of which are silver and marked A.S, lest his circumstance should be a temptation to disturb his body. His followers caused alternate layers of timber and straw to be put into the grave with the earth.

Get in touch with us at find my family to see what we can discover for you.

12/10/2023

Alma was born in 1932 and at 91 years young made contact as she wanted to get an answer to a mystery that had been in the back of her mind since the early 60s.

The back story is tragic. In 1954, just weeks before Alma married her mother passed away unexpectedly after a short illness leaving Alma’s father John as a widower. Upon marrying Alma would leave the family home. With her own home to keep and with children of her own coming along shortly after marriage then she saw less of her father John who lived alone before remarrying in the early 1960s.

All that was known of John’s 2nd marriage was that he married a lady named Minnie who had a young daughter Sheila from a previous marriage to a Jewish man. Despite their estimated 20 year age difference, Following on from this marriage Sheila & Alma would become step sisters. Sheila attended the christening of one of Alma’s children when she would have been aged about 9 and a photograph exists of this event.

Sadly after less than 2 years of marriage John suddenly died and Minnie & Sheila disappeared into the midsts of time. Alma wanted to know what became of Sheila and asked for help.

The exact dates of John’s 2nd marriage and death were unknown and unfortunately John’s surname was a common one so this required investigating all weddings matching Johns full name and brides called Minnie in the Lancashire region between 1960 & 1965. This turned up 3 results and those ladies were then fully investigated to see if they were widowers and 1 was.

From that we were able to find the name of Minnie’s first husband which was Hyman which is a common first name in the Jewish faith. Whilst this wasn’t irrefutable proof the pieces of the story were startng to fall into place. Further investigation found a birth for a daughter named Sheila with the age being approximately correct.

Investigating these names led to no other trees on genealogy websites with the same names within it so that was a dead end.

With census records being legally unavailable for another 30 years yet for people in the 1950s then we had to follow a trail of birth certificate, wedding certificates and electoral roll records to find what we believed to be Sheila’s name in 2023. Fortunately this was a fairly uncommon name.

Entering this name into social media websites produced 2 possible matches and when looking at the photograph of 9 year old Sheila and comparing ito to the profile pictures of the 2 matches then 1 of them seemed to resemble whom we were seeking.

Contact was made with whom we considered to be the correct person and within minutes a reply was received stating this WAS the correct person and she was thrilled to have been found as she herself had unsuccessfully looked for her step family some 15 years earlier.

After confirming both parties were happy to share contact details I gave the respective telephone numbers to each lady and they spent an hour on the phone that evening, have been in regular contact since and plan to meet shortly (Nowadays they live 100 miles apart).

At the conclusion of the call Sheila was kind enough to send the below message which she has allowed me to use on this page:

“I have just had the most amazing chat to my long-lost step-sister! I am in a state of shock! Like we had always known each other. So many memories came flooding back, and she told me lots of things that my mother, bless her, had kept from me! Thank you so much for making this possible. We are arranging to meet up in the near future. I will keep you posted.”

Followed by a second message simply stating:

“This has been the most amazing day”

Having spoken to an emotional Alma the next day she expressed deep sorrow for Sheila’s situation in that as a 9 year old she suddenly had this large family (Alma had 4 young children herself by this point) and then almost instantly it was taken away leaving Sheila to grow up as an only child with limited extended family. She stated Sheila had said this in the telephone call to which Alma simply replied “Well you’ve got family now”

This hunt for a long lost step sister was successful for a number of reasons - firstly the amazing 91 year old Alma remembering a few simple facts such as the name Sheila and also remembering that Sheila’s father was of the Jewish faith and her mother was called Minnie.

It was also successful because of our skills in hunting down records and also because of some little strokes of luck which every search does need.

If you have a long lost relative you would like to find please contact us on the form below including as much detail as you have as well as your contact details and we will be in touch to see if we can help you have a similar experience to Alma & Sheila.