| |
A Family Search
by S. Richard Goss
All I knew about my maternal grandparent's (Samuel J. TODD)
roots were that his father, Joseph S. TODD, emigrated to Northumberland,
PA, and married a Lydia DAVIES from the same town. A few years ago my
cousin, Jane, showed me two funeral cards from Joseph TODD's effects which
he left when he died. I was intrigued, having never seen them before,
so I photocopied them. They read:
Front of the card:
In
Loving Memory
of
SUSANNAH AMELIA TODD
(our devoted mother)
Who entered into rest on
16 September 1898
Aged 63 years
Interred at City of London Cemetery, Ilford
September 20th
The Family of The Late
Mrs. Todd
Reverse side:
Return
Thanks for Kind Enquiries
and Sympathy
"Endymion", Forest Drive, Leytonstone
The other funeral card read like this:
In
Affectionate Remembrance of
Ann Bearne
Who Died Friday, March 11th, 1887 at Teigngrove Cottage, Newton Bushel
Aged 77 Years
To Be Interred at Highweek, Thursday
at three o'clock
There was nothing on the back of this card.
Who were these people? I knew the name TODD, but was she Joseph's sister,
aunt, or who? And who was Ann BEARNE? I had never heard this name
before. Nor did I know where in England these places were. Of course,
the London Cemetery gave me a clue, but Highweek? I looked it up and found
it was in Devonshire. As my wife, Mary, and I had planned a trip to England,
I decided to try to find out more.
We landed in Manchester, drove down through Wales, then into Devon. I
had made reservations at a B & B near Highweek, thinking the woman
owner would be able to help me. Wrong! She had just bought the B &
B a year ago, having moved there from the London area. But she did know
the rector of All Saints, the Anglican church at Highweek. We called him,
and he gave me the phone number of the lady in charge of the cemetery
records, who knew the name BEARNE, said they were buried there, but there
was no gravestone to mark their plots. Knowing better than to take this
as gospel, Mary & I drove over the next day. But before we went there,
I decided to check on Ann BEARNE at the local Register's Office
in Newton Abbot, where they kept such records as births, deaths, etc.
Their records showed she was married to a John BEARNE, manager
of the Gas Works in Newton Abbot, and listed the cause of death (chronic
bronchitis), and that she died at Teigngrove Cottage, Bank Street, Newton
Abbot, which is only a couple of miles from the church in Highweek.
At the cemetery we found not one, but three stones with BEARNE's people.
There was an Ann BEARNE on one, but the dates didn't match the
Ann we had been seeking. The lower half of the stone was overgrown with
a shrub, and we couldn't read it until I pulled the shrub aside. Mary
got down on her knees, and read further: the wife of George TODD. Eureka!
We found some connection to my family. It also listed his middle initial
as "K", which we found out later stood for "Kirk."
But who was George TODD? We copied what we could from the stones, and
started to leave.
About that time a lady drove up to the church, got flowers out of her
car, unlocked the church, and went in. We followed her, and explained
why were there. She said she had come to freshen the Easter flowers, as
there was a funeral scheduled for the next day. Amazingly, she said her
husband (also "Dick" Smith) taught genealogy at the local junior
college. The church was an old, small, parish church, built in the tradition
of its time. The woman, Mrs. Smith, told us it was built in the 1400's.
To me it was in great shape
for being so old. Having found I had roots in the town, we walked around
it to get some of its "flavor". It is a quaint little residential
town, rather attractive. By that time we decided to return to the B &
B and rest a little before dinner.
Back at the B & B I reread Mellen's book on English Ancestry, and
decided to use his trick the next day for making an illegible tombstone
legible by smearing shaving cream on the inscription, then wiping off
all except that where the inscription is indented (a procedure I have
since learned is frowned on).
The following day I did just that, only when we pulled into the church
lane, a narrow lane bordered by a wall and a hedge, leading to the church,
I could see several cars parked in the parking lot. They were there for
the funeral, which had not yet started. I turned around in the lot, and
parked in the lane, then walked back to the church, holding a large red
can of Noxzema shaving cream as unobtrusively as possible. In order to
get to the cemetery I had to pass through the lych gate, which was guarded
by a man in a morning coat and top hat. He greeted me, and I walked past,
turned into the cemetery which was alongside the church, and proceeded
to do my trick with the shaving cream. It worked wonderfully well, and
I was able to read that Ann (BEARNE) TODD died at the age of 31, not 51
as we had thought it said, in the year 1846. It turned out she was my
great-great grandmother.
Having accomplished my mission, I left the cemetery, through the lych
gate, passing the gentleman with the frock coat, and returned to the car.
Mary had refused to accompany me, opting to read while I caused people
to wonder who I was and what I was doing.
Now that we had found the person on one of the cards, we set out for
London and St. Catherine's House, the General Register Office, the repository
of birth, marriage, and death certificates. This was an experience! The
records are kept in huge books, which must weigh 25 pounds, and there
is an awful noise of these books being slammed around on the desks as
people search for records. We couldn't find a record of Joseph S. TODD's
birth, not knowing his birth date nor his middle name, but we did find
records for both George Kirk TODD and his wife, Ann BEARNE, ordered
a copy of them to be sent home, and left St Catherine's.
What had we found out?
- George Kirk TODD married Ann BEARNE, and died in Newton
Bushel, Devon, in 1885.
- Ann (BEARNE) TODD died in Highweek, Devon, in 1846.
- Joseph S. TODD was not born in 1845, as we had originally
thought.
- Robert BEARNE and wife, Ann, both died in Newton Abbot.
Now to look into the other funeral card, which reported the death of
Susannah Amelia TODD. I called the Ilford Cemetery the next morning, explained
my search, and they soon called me back with information as to the burials
there:
- Susannah Amelia TODD, aged 63, buried 20 Sept., 1898
- DeJersey CHUDLEIGH, 62, buried 1 March, 1904
- Joseph Greenwood McKECHNIE, 66, buried 28 December
1921
- Victor Livingstone McKECHNIE, no age given, buried
24 April 1930
- Josephine Marian McKECHNIE, 73, buried 2 August 1939
We puzzled as to who Susannah Amelia TODD was; was it an aunt, sister,
cousin? We had previously searched Kelley's Directory of 1894-5 and found
the Joseph McKECHNIE listed as living at "Endymion" in Leytonstone,
the same as listed on the funeral card. From the difference in ages, we
assumed she might have been his mother-in-law (which turned out to be
true). But who was DeJersey CHUDLEIGH?
I decided we needed expert help, so we looked up the Society of Genealogists,
perhaps the most prestigious group in England, and went there. I asked
for help, and was sent to interview Mrs. MacDougald, a little old lady
in the basement, who looked as if she might have been out of one of Dickens'
novels. She patiently listened to our plight, then remarked that we certainly
didn't have much to go on, then suggested we visit Somerset House, the
repository of wills, among other records, and look for them there. We
did, and found the wills of both Susannah and George. Eureka! From these
wills we found she was his daughter-in-law, having been married to Joseph
S. TODD, his son.
His will named his granddaughters, Sarah Georgina TODD and Josephine
Marian TODD. He also named his (second) wife, Caroline, and his sisters-in-law,
Louisa Matilda Ann, and Lydia CHUDLEIGH. There was that name again! It
raised another question: were these CHUDLEIGH's related to the DeJersey
buried in Ilford?
Her will named her daughters, Sarah Georgina GILBERT and Josephine Marian
McKECHNIE (we identified this name), and her granddaughters: Josephine
Amelia McKECHNIE, Jessie Augusta McKECHNIE, and Catherine Mary McKECHNIE
and Minnie Brenda GILBERT plus her brother, DeJersey CHUDLEIGH (so she
was a CHUDLEIGH!). Thank you, Mrs. MacDougald!
Now we knew:
- CHUDLEIGH was Susannah TODD's maiden name, and her
brother was DeJersey.
- Susannah's daughters' names, their husbands', and
their children's names.
- Caroline TODD, George's second wife, Ann having died
young at age 32, must have been a CHUDLEIGH.
Whether there was any relationship between the wife and daughter-in-law
puzzles us to this day.
We still didn't know to whom Susannah was married, although from the
names of the daughters we should have had a clue.
The following day we visited Leytonstone, an eastern suburb of London,
and found their residence at 35 Forest Drive East was extant. It was a
row house, which has since been converted into apartments, upper and lower.
I called Dick Smith, the genealogist from Highweek, for further advice.
He urged us to go back and obtain the marriage records of Susannah Amelia
TODD and those of George and Caroline TODD, which we did. Lo and behold!
Susannah was married to Joseph S. TODD, having been married in London
on 15 July 1865; he was 23, she was 24 (although from the burial records
and this marriage record she must have been 33; guess this was a woman's
prerogative to lie about her age). His father's name was George Kirk TODD,
profession: "Independent" (although we later found out he was
a Master Mariner.) Her father was William Augustus CHUDLEIGH. Neither
of their parents were witnesses.
The marriage certificate showed George (his father) and Caroline were
married on 14 October 1850 in Newington, across the Thames from London,
where her roots were. He was 48, a widower, a "Master Mariner."
She was 40, a spinster, and they listed their residence as Newington.
It gave his father's name, John TODD, also a Master Mariner. Among the
witnesses was her father and an S. CHUDLEIGH. We later found out George
TODD was born in Shadwell, an eastern seacoast suburb of London.
We found out wills, birth, death, and marriage certificates can be gold
mines of information.
More determined than ever, we revisited St. Catherine's, and searched
for Joseph TODD's birth certificate. We had been looking at the wrong
date, and found, upon searching three years before and three years after
the date we thought was correct, we finally found him. His middle name
was "Somes," and not Samuel, as I had assumed, as both my grandfather's
and my (first) name is Samuel. He was born in 1843. His mother died in
1846, when he was only three years old. All of this ties in with some
of the family folklore I remembered, mainly that he couldn't get along
with his stepmother, and left home to come to America, but there was quite
a length of time between the two happenings. It also tied in with his
receiving the death notice of Ann BEARNE, who was
his mother's sister, and who we think might have helped raise him after
his mother died.
The main problem we ran into, though, was that he came to America and
started another family, of which I am a descendant, without the benefit,
we think, of a divorce. The wife he left in England, Susannah Amelia,
had listed in her will that she was the "widow of Joseph TODD,"
so apparently thought she was still married when he had died. Maybe she
was. I am certain no one in my family knew about this, as I certainly
would have heard a rumor of it. The only older relative still living when
we found all this out was my mother's sister, Aunt Belle, who was 90 years
old, so I decided not to tell her. She
may not have believed it, anyhow.
To make a long story short, this was how I found my BEARNE connection.
Since then I have researched my BEARNE ancestry, which includes
from as far back as I found:
Now you have at least part of the story of our fruitful trip when we
traced the information from two funeral cards.
Dick Goss (last named above), Michigan, USA
|