No Evidence v. Evidence and A Cheeky So-and-So

Last week I was thrilled to find - so I thought - another great aunt. We put her photo on our Facebook group HERE and remarked on how much she looked like Nan. Well, she does indeed look like Nan but she's nothing to do with our family. Why did I think she was? Because an Ancestry member had copied chunks form our tree onto theirs - including photos without asking permission - and added our great grandparents as her parents.

I sent two messages with family info to the tree owner. He ignored me.

Today I found the mysterious Letty. This was Nan's sister who was apparently shunned by the family. Nice. Mum had remembered before that she had two daughters, one named Maud who was older than Mum. Today she remembered that Letty had married a man named Saxby. I put the name Saxby in the tree and did a few searches and found that Mary Victoria Williams (not Letty - I wish they wouldn't mess with people's names) had married Charles Eli Saxby. They had two daughters Maud and Lilian.

The problem is Mary Victoria was born in 1899 and so was Mary Frances. You don't have two daughters six months apart with the same name!

I searched for Mary Frances and couldn't find any documents. On the other hand there are several references to Mary Victoria. You can see them on our Ancestry tree if you log in to www.horswillfamily.comm our private site. So Mary Victoria wins today's prize of being my great aunt. Or grand aunt as Ancestry would have it.

So I clicked on the name of the other tree owner to contact him. He's decided he doesn't want to be contacted by anyone and he's made his tree private. Charming! Let's hope he enjoys borrowing our ancestors and their photos or - here's a suggestion - maybe he'd like to do his own research and not be so rude as to ignore contact from other members. I really think Ancestry should prevent those with private trees copying the information from anyone.

I've written to a couple of members who have Letty in their tree so we'll see what happens next.

I found Grandad Hills and Great Great Grandad Ash!

Yesterday was Dad's birthday (he would have been 85). So it was a good day - I'd say propitious but probably can't spell it - to work on the family tree.

Joseph Hills 1888 - 1947

I'd spent months looking for my maternal grandfather Joe Hills. We knew when he died because Mum was 19 at the time. We knew how old he was when he died so we found his date of birth. However, he was nowhere to be seen in the censuses. Then the lightbulb came on. He was Hill in the censuses and various other documents, not Hills. It's the Horswill/Horswell problem all over again!

I dug and dug and came up with two possibilities for his family. Armed with a list of potential sisters I rang Mum to ask if she could remember any of her aunt's names. Previously she'd said she couldn't remember any (although she remembered he had sisters) because the family didn't keep in touch. She said "There was a Louie and an Ada ..." Yes!! Got him!

Here's the list of his siblings from Ancestry:



The good news is I found a new second cousin, Paul Ainsworth, and he's already joined our My Heritage site and our Facebook group. He is Johanna Hills' grandson. There's also a sad tale. Johanna, who was Ada's twin, died when she was about 36 leaving 4 young children. The two older children went to live with relatives and the younger ones went to a Barnardo's home. Life was very tough when a mother died young.

Now, the Horswill family ...

There's a clever print function in Ancestry which gives you a summary tree. More about various ways to print trees later. John has a really good summary with the whole page filled. I had annoying gaps in mine so I need to find more great great grandparents.

Geroge Horswill b1851 is my great grandfather. He married Elizabeth Ann Ash who was born in 1856 in Northill, Cornwall. Here's a photo of her:
How did we know her name? Because she was on the censuses. It stands to reason then that she must have been on the censuses, living with her parents, when she was a child. Fortunately she is shown as "Elizth Ann" on the 1861 census and not just Elizabeth so she was not hard to find. In some early family trees she is shown as Ann so the enumerator probably realised she had both names and entered both. You don't see this very often.

Her father was John Ash and her mother was Susan Hannaford. Luckily for us there are dozens of Ancestry members researching these families so I was able to find ancestors back to the 1600s.

All these new relatives will eventually be put on the My Heritage tree. Some are there already. If you want to see them now, along with all the evidence, go to our private site at www.HorswillFamily.com and you can see the full Ancestry tree (FREE!)

Cool names from this research:

We have a Hezekiah Webb on the Hills side and a Jemima Trengrove on the Horswill side.