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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Rishile on Friday 23 March 12 12:00 GMT (UK)
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I have a few (quite a lot, actually) people on my tree that do disappearing acts. You know - they are born, show up in a couple of census records then - whoosh - gone.
I have now started to try to think what might have happened to these and find myself concocting stories for them. There is a vague possibility that one dumped all her kids in the workhouse and run off to America with her lover. Another who's first child wasn't born until they were 40 years old was in prison for a ghastly murder.
This then starts me trying to prove (or more likely, disprove) my theory. For some reason this makes me start thinking 'out of the box' which, as we all know, is a great help. Invariably I then find the real story which is nothing like my original theory but it's a result ;D
Am I finally cracking up or do others do this too?
Rishile
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Just got you this Rishile ;D ;D ;D
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Know what you mean though and in some cases where on earth did they come from????
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Thanks - I think I may need it. ;D ;D ;D
Rishile
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Sometimes the truth is even more weird
One rellie dumped her family and fled to the USA where she married again and had a baby, then ran off taking the baby to the west coast with her 'husbands' gold pocket watch and cash and married for a third time, then produced two more children!
Then there's the one who just sat on my tree for a long time with no death date or other information until I stumbled across a newspaper article stating he had died from suffocation by a rubber bedsheet in his hotel room, having been depressed since his wife died :o
sort of makes me want to stick with the kinder fantasies...
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No you are not the only one....I have invented all sorts of theories about the disappearance of my 2x Gt Grandmother Louisa Crocker after the 1871 census.
I've been through the trail of died out of County and Country (got too many wrong death certs to prove it) re-married bigamously, emigrated, living in sin (looked at every and researched many of the Louisa's on the 1881 census just in case)
Now my latest is she must have died in a ditch and was buried as unknown, although I haven't quite worked out how she might have got in that state in the first place. :-\
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I prefer to imagine them creeping off into the night to to a happier life, although there were too many burials of unknowns found in ditches and canals. I do hope you trace Louisa Crocker and that she wasn't one of them :-\
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Weren't they all abducted by aliens?
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My great uncle Charles was abducted. Twice RC's have looked for him, twice they have been flummoxed.
So it's the only reasonable solution. ;D
meles
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My great uncle Charles was abducted. Twice RC's have looked for him, twice they have been flummoxed.
So it's the only reasonable solution. ;D
meles
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Mine and Royd's Cork/Cooley traveller family were abducted by aliens for the 1851 census.
I hope the aliens got value for money, because it's meant that we can't see them in the only census that would prove that Royd's ancestor and mine were siblings.
More realistically, they were in a tent somewhere. Actually, that's made me think that I could google and see if I could find out what the weather was like then. Whilst today where I am you wouldn't mind camping out, I bet early April 1851 wasn't so clement...... :(
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Two of mine - mariners - sailed of the edge of the earth never to appear in any record anywhere ever ever again. Their brother - a former soldier in her Madge's military - died in a hail of bullets at the OK corral.
Or they may as well have done. :'(
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I feel that there is truth in the stork!!! or cabbage patch......as they just appear and nobody can find where they came from....so dropping out of the sky will do me!!
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well, I mentally "killed off" 2 of my ancestors in WW1 because I couldn't figure out where they vanished too n it was the logical conclusion as they vanished between 1911 and verbal family history said one of them died young n the other was an unknown name to living relatives who would have known him.
n then. . . . I discovered the one who died young' died in a motorbike accident after WW1
n the unknown name emigrated to Australia n died in the 1950's
glad really that I proved my theories wrong :-)
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They've been drawn into a black hole or wormhole. How does your computer know when your on a critical point of tracking them. Don't it usually throw a wobbly.
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I have a grandmother and great grandmother one on each side of my family who vanish into thin air, spent hours in time and money, not a trace. My best theory is that they hooked up with a.n other, no divorce so no re-marriage, simply changed their names and their lives.
As an aside, I caught the tail end of a tv programme today. The burials offficer of some London Borough was attending the funeral of an elderly lady they called Susan Strand. She had been found homeless and wandering in the Strand.
She had complete memory loss, did not know who she was or where she had come from. She was put into a care home, chose her own christian name, Susan, because it was a name she liked and given the surname Strand as that is where she was found.
That poor lady could have been someones mother; probably a sister, cousin or aunt and someone somewhere might like us be looking for her... :'(
Suey
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Hello all, I feel compelled to join in this discussion! ;D
For years I had never known what became of a first cousin 1X. All his siblings and parents were well accounted for. Just yesterday a friend just happened to be looking for him and FOUND HIM! Although he was born and raised in Newcastle-on-Tyne, NBL, in 1911 he and his Father had gone to Glasgow to work on a local water works project! AND, the following year, he married there, had a child BUT, sadly, died at age 27 before seeing his daughter. Sometimes, not knowing a person's fate can give us happier fantasies. At any rate, I do feel a bit better at least knowing what happened to him. Pat
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On two occasions, I have finally found missing ancestors where their name was completely wrong on the census - one was a Francis, who became a Frederick. The other even more bizarre was a Frederick Culliford who became a Thomas Cullifer. It's no wonder we can't find the blighters!
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I am doing this at the moment ;D
I have an ancestor last seen at her daughter's baptism in 1797. Her son turned up in 1815 over 200 miles away...
I'm currently going with the theory that her husband bumped her off and then fled with the children - possibly aided and abetted by his mother :o
PS Have finally got round to putting all my 'evidence' together if anyone has a spare few hours minutes to have a look:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=590014.new#new
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Of course, the prosaic explanation (mis-spelled name in the census, missing page in the census, etc) usually turns out to be the correct one...
But I also have a story where the truth has turned out to be stranger than I expected, although the mystery isn't quite solved yet. I will post it here, for anyone who is interested in reading the whole thing...
My g-g-g-grandmother was a Frances Patrick, from North Walsham, Norfolk, England. She married my g-g-g-grandfather in 1866, moved to Kent and had a whole lot of children - no mystery there. But trying to trace her family further back has proved more difficult. Her marriage certificate gives her father as James Patrick, Saddler. As she was born in 1844, she is not on the 1841 census, but I found a James Patrick, Saddler, in North Walsham, with wife and five-year-old daughter. Reasonable to assume that I had found Frances' parents and sister. But looking for them on any subsequent census? Not a trace... And therefore no accurate idea of when or where her parents were born, as the 1841 information is so vague.
Frances herself pops up again in 1861, but by this time she is living and working as a servant in London. On her marriage cert, though, there is no suggestion that her father is dead. So where is he? Not to mention her mother, and all her siblings (FreeBMD provides me with a whole list of probable siblings).
The answer is surprising. With the help of a fellow-researcher on here, I found a family who were almost certainly mine - there is James, there is his wife, he is a harness-maker (similar to a saddler), he lives in London but was born in Norfolk, all his children were born in North Walsham, and the names and dates match up exactly. Only problem? Their name is Watts.
Delving a little deeper, I found a marriage record for James and his wife (he married twice, but that's a different and less puzzling story) on which his father's name is given as Henry. There is no obvious baptism record for him, but there is a marriage between a Henry Patrick and a Mary WATTS...
Are they James' parents? If so, why did he move to London and assume his mother's maiden name? I thought I'd found the answer when I discovered that Henry Patrick was deported for cattle-stealing, but the deportation happened fifteen years or so before James changed his name (there is a fairly small window of time for him to have done so - he had a child born and baptised under the name Patrick, in Norfolk, in 1850, and appears in London as Watts in 1851...).
So, I found what had happened to my disappearing family, but to be honest, it created more questions than it answered...
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I am going to North Walsham tomorrow ... would you like any photos taken of the little town or the church?
xin
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The frustration of vanishing people is almost as bad as the frustration of those who "pop up" from nowhere! I've got two very persistent little blighters, one, a James Henry Anderson who was recorded as that when he was born in 1867 in Flintshire, at Hawarden, and at least sticks to that birthplace ( or close) when he does pop up again - no trace anywhere either withhis parents James and mother Mary or Maria Johnson in 1871 1881 or, despite record of his marriage in 1889, with his wife, up in Wigan, in 1891. He then appears again in 1901, and 1911. As he was a miner, do you think he could have been hiding down a mine all that time?? Did it run in the family, is that why I can't find his parents in 1871 / 1881? Or is it just that stupid combination of a (very) common name, and a job that makes you move round often?
-I think i prefer to imagine them sitting hiding in a mine..... like Gollum ...
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One of my great grandfathers walked out on his family in 1900, never to be heard from again.. So I reckon he absconded with another woman ;D
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Rishile,
See you aren't alone. :)
I have always subscribed to the left field theory concept when it comes to breaking down all that brick and mortar.And it doesn't have to be our more distant ancestors either.
After years of failing to find a death for a first cousin 2x-removed, I had come up with every theory you can imagine. It was only with some creative search techniques that I found she had married (for the first time) at 73! That old chestnut about truth and fiction rings true every time.
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i have thisproblem too with my 2 x gg and his parents, they all 3 appear in the 71 with my 2 x gg as a baby but no trace of either parent alfred loveridge or comfort parker before the 71 other than there births, no trace of the parents of comfort or alf either then they all dissapear for the 81, comfort reappears in the 91 with a man with a different name thomas gray i suspect it is still alf, but israel my 2 x gg doesnt appear again till the 01 ann 11 as a family man with children so what happens to him from a 1 yr old till he appreas 30 yrs later, very odd. they were romanies which is probably why i cant find them but still very frustrating. i wandered if they took off travelling round europe for years,maybe they joined the circus, very unlikely but who knows.
tracey
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No you are not alone
I have turned 3 sisters and their mother in to mass husband murderers who must have them buried under the floorboards somewhere. Another very tragic romantic story for my 2xGGrandparents which has changed several times as new info appears and a double identity/name change (which I think is actually true) story.
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I came across a real wag in my family tree who on the 1911 census must have decided that the gubbment wants to know too much and put the following:
Note his wife is named as Mrs! lol...oh and they had at least 4 children too according to my research (pending certificate verification)
Kevin