Favourite Discoveries - 52 Ancestors Week 7.

This week's "52 Ancestors" prompt asks us to write about "A Favourite Discovery".  I have opted for three examples that mean a lot to me - Finding a WWI Service Record; Discovering a Coincidental Birthday; and Finding my First Emigrant Ancestors.


Finding the  WW1 Service Record for a great uncle.  
My great uncle George Danson (1894-1916)  was the youngest of eight sons of James Danson  and Maria Rawcliffe, and as such was regarded as an older brother by my mother and aunt who had fond memories of him from their childhood and would comment "George was a lovely man".  I can see why from this photogaph of him.

George was called up to fight in the First World War in 1916, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and became a stretcher bearer - in the thick of the war action.  He  was killed on September 16th of that year during the Battle of the Somme - a week after  his 22nd birthday. I was lucky enough to have memorabilia of his life from my great aunt  including photographs and letters written from the war front.  One letter written three weeks before his death said: 

"I had to assist the wounded at a dressing station and stuck to it for about 40 hours. It's blooming hard work being a stretcher bearer in the field."

Finding George's service record on Ancestry was a real bonus as many of WWI records were destroyed by enemy action in the Second World War - and his is the only such record I have traced of the five Danson brothers who were also serving.  


On his enlistment,  George's  medical report stated he was 5'3" tall,  weighed 109 lbs. (under 8 stone), with size  34 1/2 chest and he wore glasses - so such a slight figure to be a stretcher bearer of wounded and dead amidst  the turmoil of war.

Finding this record added to my impression  of George who remains on of my favourite figures in my family tree. 

 

A photograph, sent to his mother Maria, of George's grave.  It conveys in a stark way the reality of war amid the mud and blood that George must have experienced - and contrasts with the pristine white of the more lasting memorials that we recognise today. 

See my blog post  of October 2013:  A Stretcher Bearer in the Field 

Discovering a Coincidental Birthday  

At a very early stage of my family research,  I sent away for the birth certificate of my great grandmother, Maria Rawcliffe.  I eagerly opened the envelope when it came,  to find her birthday of 15th January was the same date as our daughter's birthday  114 years later.  

This coincidence delighted me so much   - one of the reasons  why family history is such an absorbing hobby - as Maria is at the heart of my family history and my favourite ancestor. 

With my daughter, Maria's great great great granddaughter.

See my blog post of January 2012  -  A Double Birthday Celebration

Finding I had American Ancestor.

For over 10 years I had puzzled about this striking mounted family photograph with no indication on who it was of, and nor any  photographer's stamp to identify  where it  was taken.   It came to me from my great aunt Jennie Danson's collection, with all her family very firmly based in the Fylde region of north west Lancashire.  It   must surely be of one of of my great grandmother's  (Maria) sisters - Anne, Jane, Alice, or Jennet?  The composition of the family and ages of the children ruled out Anne, Jane or Jennet. So was  this Alice Rawcliffe, her husband  and John  Mason and family?   This was my mystery.

So it  came as a complete surprise when  a very casual browsing of Rawcliffes on Family Search resulted in an  entry for Alice Mason née Rawcliffe (1853-1930) with the statement that she had died  in  Jamesburg, Middlesex County, New Jerse, USA - the first time I was aware of any potential American connection.  All the information fitted with "my Alice" - dates, names, places, and many of the children's names.   

I was keen  to find out more about my first known emigrant ancestors, so I boosted my Ancestry UK subscription for a short term, so I could access American records. The results:

Alice Rawcliffe married John Mason and they had in England  six children.   Then In 1886-87 t they  took the momentous decision to leave the fishing port of Fleetwood for the teeming tenements of Brooklyn, New York. where they had a further five children, with three dying in infancy.  The family took out US citizenship in 1895.  

Then 2010  I set up my blog  and posted about my mystery photograph.   A year  later came SUCCESS!!   

Bonny, my third cousin, and the granddaughter of Florence Mason (the young girl in the middle of  my  photograph) got in touch and she had the very same photograph  as mine,  but mounted with the name of a photographer in Brooklyn, New York.

We  exchanged e-mails, photographs and information of our ancestors down the generations and remained  in touch with one another until Bonny's sad recent death.

This discovery meant a lot to me, as Bonny's contribution added a new dimension to my family history and  gave a tremendous boost   to my blogging activity.  Her relations are still in touch through my Facebook page. 

My Rawcliffe/Mason Amercian ancestors -

 in a photogrpah taken,  I think,  around the late 1920's. 

So it is all thanks to the power of the Internet and of blogging, that my mystery photograph was eventually identified and I discovered the story of my first emigrant ancestors. It pays to be patient in family history research!    

See My Blog Post of July 2012:   My Mystery Photograph Identified   

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