Alice by the seaside

Eastbourne beach and seafront hotels.

Alice Griffiths, the grandmother of my dna match, was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, on the south coast of England in 1873. While still awaiting contact from my match I found a family tree at Genealogy.com which showed that she had married Emanuel Beeney in Eastbourne in 1895.  This allowed me to find her in the 1901 Census where she was residing at 11 Hanover St, Eastbourne with Emanuel, a cab driver, their child Matthew, aged 2, and her mother Mary Griffiths, a widow.  Both Alice and Mary were working as laundresses.   Mary Griffith, hallelujah, was recorded as having been born in Liverpool, Lancashire.  That took that family line back to the very area where I needed them to be.

Eastbourne, in the latter part of the 19th century, was no seaside village.  The railway arrived in 1849, and thereafter the major landowner in the area had developed the seafront as a tourist destination with lavish hotels dominating the seafront, and an enticing pier devoted to entertainment.

Eastbourne Pier

The development of the resort provided work, though some of it must have been seasonal.  The Beeneys were a family of Travellers, though Emanuel seems to have settled happily enough in Eastbourne. I will need further advice on that.

But what were the Griffiths gals doing in Eastbourne?  Tracing them back through the censuses was a bit trickier than you would think, even with their age and birthplaces, but with persistence I found Mary and Alice together in the 1891 Census, Mary a widow, and both working as laundresses.  In the 1881 census another bonus occurred in the shape of an older sister for Alice called Emily. They were located in Eastbourne, but Emily had been born in Woolwich, Kent.  I wouldn't have been able to identify Mary in the 1871 census without that clue, seeing that Alice hadn't been born yet.  I was hoping to find Mary with her husband.

I found Mary aged 33 and Emily aged 1 in the 1871 census.  Mary was a Wife, so her husband was still alive though not with them on the night.  They were recorded living in the Sheerness Barracks, Kent.  Emily had been born in 1869 in Woolwich, another military town, so it looked like Mary's husband was a soldier.  My dna contact later confirmed that Alice's 1897 marriage record showed her father as Michael Griffiths, Corporal (deceased).

Trying to locate Emily and Alice in the General Register Office index of births was again not as straightforward as you would think - probably because I had a too narrow time range in trying to identify them from all the other Griffiths with the same names.  Their ages given in the census tended to skew their birth years - presumably late in the year, after the census.  I had some help with that from other folk with Emily as their Ancestry tree starting point, and along with their correct birth year was able to pinpoint Mary's maiden name as TAYLOR.

Before following that up I looked for the death a male Griffith in Eastbourne between 1871 and 1881, and found only one,  Michael Griffith, who died in 1875 aged 38.  By putting his age and death place into the Ancestry search engine, and then narrowing the results down to Military, I found a Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Admissions and Discharges, 1715-1925 entry for Michael Griffith.  He was examined on 6 Apr 1875, and was attached to the Royal Artillery Coast Brigade.

In 1793, following a survey of coastal defences in the southeast, approval was given for the positioning of infantry and artillery to defend the bay between Beachy Head and Hastings from attack by the French. Fourteen Martello Towers were constructed along the western shore of Pevensey Bay, continuing as far as Tower 73, the Wish Tower at Eastbourne. ("Eastbourne", Wikipedia: accessed 12/7/2017).

At the time of his retirement from the army, Michael Griffith was  a part of the coastal defence.  

The Eastbourne Wish Tower, 1890s. The name 'Wish' comes from the  marshy area called the 'wish' or 'wash' where the old Shomer Dyke entered the sea. The Tower was built in 1804 to counter the threat of invasion by Napoleon.  After the Peninsula war ended in 1815 it was disused until 1830 when coastguards occupied it for a period.   Courtesy of Prof Robert Pearl, Old UK Photos

At this point I did a search for the marriage record of Mary Taylor and a Mr Griffith. The only one that popped up was a marriage which occurred in Liverpool in 1856.  Both parties were minors.  As it was so long prior to the birth of Emily in 1869, and no other births apparent (though not necessarily non-existent) I went to bed thinking that couldn't be it.  I woke up thinking, "That could be it", and from that point it was a very short path to Ancestry trees with a Michael Griffith born in 1838 - but not George.

The marriage record shows that Michael Griffith was a bookkeeper residing at Gay St, Liverpool, father's name Michael Griffith, boot maker.  Mary was the daughter of William Taylor, watch maker, residing at Lionel St.  They married at St Nicholas Church in the Parish of Liverpool.  Mary signed with her mark.   (Liverpool Registers; Reference Number: 283 NIC/3/51)

So now we have my dna matches Griffith family back in Liverpool. Exactly where I want him to be.

Got you! DNA test collars George Griffith

Liverpool Landing Stage, 1864. George Griffith's home town.  Print by W G Herdman.

I don’t suppose this is a record, but a power-boost from my recent dna test results enabled me to nail my ancestor George Griffith within four days of them being posted online.  I was able to pick him up in the paper record, but it could not be proven without the aid of the dna test. 

I received my results last Sunday evening.  My first inkling that the results had been posted was an email in my inbox from Carol Wilkes, a second cousin on my father’s side of the family.  She very kindly pinpointed each of her (and my) relations which appeared at the top of my results list.  Using the buttons provided at FTDNA to separate the results into two camps – those in common with that Carol on my dad's side, and those not in common, I could identify which side of the family my other  results came from.

My Griffith match, Dennis Beeney, appeared quite high up in the list of matches, with 94 cMs and the longest block at 44 segments.   Using the “Not in common with” button on Carol Wilkes, I came up with a list of matches on my mother’s side of the family.  It was my great good fortune that at the top of that list was Graham Johnston, someone whom I knew to be a second cousin  from my mother’s maternal family. My Griffith match was not far behind him, but using the “in common with” button, he disappeared.  So he was not from my mother’s mother’s side of the family.  He had to be from my mother’s father’s side of the family where the Griffith line does occur. And he had Griffith in his list of  family names.  Perfect!

Before attempting the dna solution, I had created an excel database of known George Griffiths from Liverpool – I had 21 Georges on that list, and not one of them pretending to be a musician.  I couldn’t tell if he had stayed in Liverpool after he was born there as he was nowhere to be found in the 1841 and 1851 censuses.  That just increased the degree of difficulty.  I still cannot make the link with a paper trail but my brand new cousin Dennis Beeney’s grandmother Alice Griffith’s mother was born in Liverpool.  Going flat out on Alice’s available records I was able to create a rough family tree, but the clincher came from her father’s name  on her marriage certificate – Corporal Michael Griffith.  Her mother was Mary Taylor.  The only marriage in England for a Michael Griffith and Mary Taylor occurred in Liverpool in 1856.  That marriage showed his father was also a Michael Griffith, and a cordwainer (or shoemaker).  The only shoemaker I could find who was named Griffith was Michael Griffith. And that Michael Griffith senior had a son called George Griffith.

The whole family did not appear in the 1841 Census. Where the heck were they?  Don’t know.  Given that his whole family did not appear in the census, it seems I was wasting my time trying to figure out which whitesmith, grocer’s apprentice, engineer’s apprentice, labourer or warehouseman was my George Griffith.  In all likelihood, none of them.

In 1851 Michael Griffith senior’s wife Catherine was back in Liverpool, the head of the house, and still described as Married.  Her husband was not in the household, nor was her son George, but her youngest son Michael who went on to marry Mary Taylor was  in the house.   His occupation at the time was errand boy. When he married his occupation was bookkeeper, but when he died, he was a Chelsea Pensioner, formerly a Corporal in the Royal Artillery Coast Brigade.  He died in Eastbourne in 1875, where Alice was born in 1873.  It was a long time after their marriage in 1856, but whether there were other siblings beside her sister Emily born in Woolwich in 1869, we don't yet know.

Dennis’s connection to the family from Liverpool now has a paper chain.  My paper chain is made of  very fine tissue paper, virtually not there at all.  George’s daughter, my great grandmother Mary Jane, didn't know either of her grandparents' names, but remembered her grandfather’s occupation of bootmaker. I didn’t take it as being reliable proof of relationship to the shoemaker, but the dna chain shows that Dennis and I are related, and so I have to rely on the very basic facts –George's name, his birthplace, his birth year, and the uncertainly remembered fact that his father was a bootmaker - plus the dna evidence - to show that I have found his right family. 

   

George, you may consider yourself well and truly collared.  I told you I was coming to get you!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to my second cousin Carole Wilkes who kindly contacted me with a list of her (and my) relations whom she had encouraged to be dna tested.  This enabled me to quickly separate my father’s and my mother’s families.

Thanks also to my second cousin Graham Johnston who had himself dna tested.  This enabled me to differentiate between my maternal grandmother’s and maternal grandfather’s lines and identify Dennis Beeney as being likely related to me through the Griffith family which he had named in his FTDNA profile.

Thanks to my friend Jenny Coates who patiently coached me through my abject ignorance of dna tests and helped me figure out what I was doing.

Very great thanks to my third cousin once removed Dennis Beeney who had put a detailed family tree online showing his grandmother Alice Griffith (a first cousin to Mary Jane) and came up with the first name of Alice’s father, Michael, which enabled me to put together a family tree which would include George Griffith; and who very kindly had his DNA  tested and put the results where I could readily find them.

Thank you everybody - you’ve all been Very Good!

There will be some future posts coming up looking at the family in Liverpool.  Can't wait to do the work!

PS  And thank you to a Benevolent Universe which provided me with a set of dna results which did not include my husband as a match.  Given that some of our brick wall families come from the same part of Tasmania, and that our colouring is very similar, I was suddenly struck with some trepidation that when I looked at my matches he might possibly turn up there.  But thankfully not.  How would I explain THAT to the children?

PPS  I should add, by the way, that I had my husband do a dna test back in 2012 to try and break down the brick wall of his Tasmanian family, the paper record being totally inadequate, but there has not been any movement at all in terms of solving that problem – so not all dna results are equal, I am afraid. In his case we just have to keep waiting.

Dear George, I am coming to get you.

Courtesy of Pixabay

George Griffith is one of my few ancestors who stand out from the crowd of agricultural labourers in my family tree. He described himself as a Professor of Music, and was able to play complex orchestral and liturgical pieces.  He played and taught violin and piano, but was not above leading a goldfields “N****r Band” when the circus came to town.

He was very consistent in giving his native place as Liverpool, and his birth year of 1824.  He was very inconsistent in giving a date and place of his marriage to my great great grandmother, Susan Rochester, from which I was forced to conclude that they had never married.   I also concluded there was a fair chance he had been married before.  Susan was just a girl off the boat from England, and there are no indications she was already married.

Because George and Susan never married, the occasion never arose where George stated his parents’ names. When he died his daughter could not name her Griffith grandparents, but made a stab at her grandfather’s occupation as bootmaker.

While George might have been born in Liverpool (and there are several christenings that might be him), there is no certainty that he stayed in Liverpool - but I don’t really have much to go on if he spent his youth elsewhere.  A musician would have to be fairly mobile to make a living.

 I have not identified with any certainty what ship he arrived on, though I have selected the George Griffith, 28, clerk, who arrived on the Panama from London in October 1852 as the most likely candidate.  (And yet, why not direct from Liverpool?)

I went fairly exhaustively through census records years ago when they were only on microfilm, going through all the printed indexes without coming to a conclusion, but I will now go through them again on Ancestry and compare them with later censuses and marriage records to figure out whom I can eliminate.

I have purchased marriage certificates to compare signatures with documents signed by George - eliminated them.

There is always the possibility that George gave his native place as Liverpool while in Australia in the same way I might give my native place as Melbourne if I was in England – but in fact I wouldn’t appear in any Melbourne records – I would appear in suburban records. 

But here is the big news, George.   I have had my DNA tested and I am coming to get you.