Family History Surprises - 52 Ancestors - Week 6

“Surprises” are the bonus in researching family history, and two instances come to my mind, in response to this week’s theme from “52 Ancestors”. 

Cousin Bait Success
We all hope that our blog will result in being contacted by long lost distant cousins, but this was very slow to happen to me. But then out of the blue, I had a surprise!

An unknown third cousin, Stuart,  discovered my blog and made contact.  Even better he lived only 50 miles from me, so we could  easily meet and spend afternoons,  sharing research, old photographs and memorabilia. As a result I was given  a wonderful boost to my blogging activities in terms of family stories and images, just when I felt I was coming to a halt with my own material.  

Our Background 

We shared the same great great grandfather Henry Danson (1806-1881) of Poulton-le-Fylde, near Blackpool, Lancashire.   Henry and his wife Elizabeth Calvert had nine children - their  eldest child Elizabeth (1831-1885) was Stuart''s great grandmother, whilst the youngest child James (1852-1906) was my great grandfather - both born at Trap Farm, Carleton.

So Elizabeth was 21 years older than her youngest brother.  She married Thomas Bailey, whose family lived on an adjacent farm with the picturesque name of Bready Butts.  Six children were born, cousins to my grandfather  -  the youngest Mary Jane in 1877, Stuart's grandmother.

 A modern photograph of Breedy Butts Farm, Carleton
where the Bailey family grew up. 

The story, however, has sad overtones.  Elizabeth died in 1885, aged 54, followed a year later by her husband Thomas, leaving a family orphaned with her two young daughters  only 12 and 8 years old.  Margaret went to live with her eldest sister Elizabeth, with  Mary Jane joining  the household of her older brother Henry in Blackpool.  

At the age of 28, Mary Jane married John William Oldham in 1905 at St. John's Church, Blackpool, but she continued to face tragedy in her life, when her youngest daughter Hilda  died aged 6 in 1915.   

 John Oldham and Mary Jane Bailey, with daughters Elsie (left) and baby Hilda.

The Oldham Connection

Mary Jane's husband John Oldham was the only son of a  firm of well established carters and coal men in Blackpool,in a house with a large yard, hay loft, tack room. and stabling for around 7 horses.

 

On the death in 1939 of John Oldham,  his daughter Elsie (left) took the helm with her husband Arthur Stuart Smith. She also ran   her hairdressing concern as "Elise"  run from the family home. where she promised "Bobbing, Shingling and Marcel Waves."  This lovely evocative advertising blotter below  is in the family memorabilia. 

Family history takes us in all kinds of directions and Stuart's family connections, although not my direct ancestors,  added a new dimension to writing my blog.

• Poet John Critchley Prince (1808-1866),  well-known in his time as a writer of poetry  in the Lancashire dialect.
  
  
  
  
• The Smith Family with their origins  on the island of Unst, off Shetland, the most northerly island of Britain.  Many of the family down the generations had the middle name of Ingram, after the local minister. A move to the mainland took place between 1861-71. John Ingram Smith became the catering manager  at the famous Winter Gardens entertainment complex in Blackpool.  John's  son Edward Stewart Ingram Smith as a young man had a sensitive and artistic air, but the impact of serving in the First World War at the age of 44 took its toll on him. 
  
  Ruins  of a  Smith family croft of Heogland on Unst.
  • The Dower Family  of Aberdeenshire,  with William Dower appointed by the London Missionary Society as a Wesleyan Missionary in South Africa,  setting  sail there in 1865 with his new wife Jesse. 

   
  

William and Jesse Dower  in 1913

• The Alan Blumlein Connection  - William and Jesse's daughter, married a German mining engineer Semmy Joseph Blumlein of Jewish descent. They settled in Britain and Semmy took out citizenship in 1903.  Their son Alan  Dower Blumlein (1902-1942)  has been described as "the greatest electronic engineer of the 20th century", notable for his many inventions in  telecommunications, sound recordings, television and radar.  He died at the young age of 38 during a secret trial of an airborne radar system.
  

You can stumble across some amazing stories when you start to delve into sidelines of your family history.  Stuart's contact with me was my lucky day  - and I haven't even mentioned the war-time tales, the wealth of wedding photographs down the decades or the charming children's photographs that have found their way into my blog posts. 

 Arthur Stuart Ingram Smith (1908-1979)

 

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A Surprise Birthday 
Early on in my research,  I sent away for the birth certificate of my great grandmother Maria Danson, née Rawcliffe, the central figure in my family history. I opened the envelope and read her birthdate “15th January 1859” - I could not get over this, for  114 years later “15th January” was also the birthday of my daughter   - a coincidence that meant a lot to me.

My great grandmother Maria Danson, nee Rawcliffe

Maria's great great great granddaughter, born 114 years later. 


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