Unravelling the Puzzles
and Mysteries of Your Family
By SUSAN-MARY SMITH
One of the most common requests I receive is: Can you help me find my family? And the answer is always: Maybe. There are no guarantees in genealogy, but then that's what makes it so interesting.
Because of the internet, people new to the hobby of genealogy often have unrealistic expectations when it comes to the time frame of their research. They often expect that after a few days of internet research, they will have a family tree ranging back hundreds of years, with thousands of entries. It is just not so.
While the internet certainly has sped things up, especially where the records are plentiful and digitized, there are still many mysteries. These mysteries may be solved eventually, or they may never be solved in my lifetime.
As an example, I must offer up my own great -great -grandfather, Edward Harper. I've been looking for his death record for about 10 years. Edward was born in Linstead Magna, Suffolk in 1840. I believe the family must have been poor, as they were Ag Labs (agricultural labourers), and he left Suffolk at a young age to go to sea. By 1861 he was living in Seaham Harbour, County Durham and married to my great -great -grandmother, Christina Dennis.
Family legend has it that he died "at sea" in 1869, and I even have a death date: October 12. Funny thing is, I don't know where I got this date from. I found it written on some family papers, but as I have no living relatives on that side of the family, I have no one to ask. To try and confirm it I've searched civil, parish and mariner's records - no luck. Still, I can estimate the year from a number of sources.
First, my great-grandmother Christiana Harper was born in 1868, so we know that Edward was alive in 1867. Second, Christina nee Dennis Harper shows up on the 1871 English Census as a widow and a small shopkeeper with children - one of whom was a John Wade Harper born 1871.
So, at that point the window is 1867 to early 1871, when Edward could have died.
However, a careful examination of the parish records indicated that Christiana nee Dennis Harper gave birth to a John Waite Harper on January 21, 1871. So, was Edward was still alive in 1870 to get Christina pregnant, thus going against both family legend and the death date I have, or did Christina have a child by someone else?
I obtained the birth certificate for John Waite Harper, but no father was listed. That further confirmed that Edward was not the father, and that John Waite Harper was illegitimate.
I searched for a marriage between Christiana Harper and anyone with the last name Waite (or Wade) from 1869 (presumed death date of Edward Harper) and 1871 (birth of John Wade Harper), but did not find one. I didn't expect to, really. But by the next census, all (well, almost all) was revealed.
In 1881 she was living with a John Waite (the father of John Waite Harper), and Christina was calling herself Christina Waite. When she did eventually marry John Waite in 1882 she was listed on the marriage certificate as a widow (of Edward Harper) aged 39.
So, Christina's story was uncovered. But what of Edward Harper? I can only speculate. It is possible he did die in 1869 "at sea" but I have not found any record of that yet. I am still checking. It is also possible he just "disappeared."
People did that with frequency, often turning up in other countries, under different names and married to other people. Divorce was difficult and rare in the Nineteenth century, so walking away became the option of choice.
Is that what happened to my great -great grandparents? I'm still trying to find out. So if you're just starting out with your research, be grateful if you find lots of information out quickly in the beginning. For me, though, the most interesting and rewarding part of genealogy are the puzzles that take years, or possibly lifetimes, to understand.
Susan-Mary Smith is a family history researcher living in Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada. She can be reached at: smithjosephy@shaw.ca.
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