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I have to say, especially as a long term member of Rootschat, I'm surprised and a bit offended that several people can read a title saying "sad about death certificate" with details of an ancestor who died horribly and derail and reduce the entire thing to complaining about my use of two letters (and yes, I am myself below 40). Sorry, but shame on anyone who thinks that is the primary point of this thread.

I understand the 'temporary insanity' verdict. I meant his own motivations. He'd lost a lot of family members, but not recently to his own death. He was getting older so perhaps his health was worsening, but there's no secondary cause as given on the certificate. He might have been worried about his job or house, although I don't think he'd have needed to be concerned about the latter other than pride- as long as he hadn't alienated himself from his family there were a lot of people lodging (and dying in some cases) with other family members.

It's a bit unfortunate that the abode is so vague. I'm not sure where he was living for his last six months.

Zaphod: Tw means "trigger warning" In other words, 'be warned, sensitive topic'

Hi all

I decided to 'treat' myself to some death certificates. They are for a branch of the family I haven't yet proven but I went for them partly out of curiosity, partly because there is a good chance I'm right and partly to see who the informants were (hopefully helpful!)

They arrived today and I made the mistake of opening one during my lunch break at work- I gasped so loudly I'm surprised my coworkers in the next room didn't come to see what the problem was.

My (possible) 4th great grandfather, Benjamin BELL, passed aged 69. "Emaciation and debility consequent on cutting his throat on the 9th September 1867 [exactly 6 months prior] whilst temporarily insane".

Poor man 

Of course, back then not only could you be in hot water just for the attempt, but the punishment for being successful was that the person couldn't be buried on consecrated ground and the soul would spend eternity in Hell. I once read a document of inquests (I forget for where) where you'd be surprised how few people who killed themselves actually committed suicide. Of dozens of cases, only two or so were found to have maliciously and purposefully destroyed the life given to them by God. The rest had some frequently creative accidents (such as mistakenly downing a whole bottle of arsenic rat poison after forgetting having bought it an hour earlier) or, in many cases, were inferred to be upstanding, law abiding, God fearing Christians who, presumably under the influence of the Devil, had sudden and insuppressible intrusive thoughts and couldn't possibly be blamed for having done so.  I can only assume the two people who did it on purpose were either not liked very much or the gentlemen of the Inquest couldn't think of a good enough excuse within the evidence provided.

I have no idea what brought on his "temporary insanity"- two more of his children died in short succession the following year so 'at least' he wasn't around for that, I guess? 

Got off to a good start. Quickly found an apparent death for the child she's supposed to be descended from   

To recap one of my biggest DNA projects...

My 2nd great grandfather was illegitimate with no father mentioned. With DNA, and descendants of several of his children having tested, I became quietly confident I identified the family the unknown man came from. I have a whole group of people descended from William TELFORD and Frances HAGGERSTON (as well as a few matches from the HAGGERSTON side) so in theory a son or grandson of theirs is my unknown man. Provided he himself was the legitimate child of a marriage I have a shot at figuring him out (more or less).

The surviving sons would have been a lot older than the mother at the time of conception, but age can't rule them out, particularly since I don't know how the conception took place and an older man may have been an attractive prospect to a young and impoverished widow. One of the sons, the youngest, was unmarried and living in the right place at the right time. If it was a grandson, however, he'd be more the same age as the mother and, crucially, I'd have a chance of finding DNA matches to the non-TELFORD side of the family.

In the case of their son Henry, he married Ann GREENER and his eldest couple of sons would be old enough to have fathered a child. In the case of their daughter Georgiana, she married Benjamin BELL and their eldest sons would also have been old enough, not to mention at least one was in the right place at the right time.

I suspected the BELL family primarily, until I got a number of matches to what appeared to be the same GREENER family and that family fitted in to one of the speculative lines I had for Ann GREENER. I thought I'd cracked it! Just goes to show how fickle the whole thing is and how wrong you can be while looking so right (a lesson for you all DNA folks!), I'm glad I had the sense to try to back up the DNA with paperwork instead of taking it as gospel because I turned out to be completely up the wrong tree. Ann's family was a completely different branch... which seems to curve back into HAGGERSTON (the aunt of Frances). I couldn't match the paperwork up to the DNA results, but perhaps the reason I have hits in HAGGERSTON is the potential I'm related to them twice...

Anyway... My focus shifted back to BELL, especially since the papertrail stops dead (and not just for me... not a single person has any information...)

Benjamin BELL, husband of Georgiana TELFORD, was said to be the 1st son of John BELL and Ann FORSTER... except there's no marriage and no other children so I'm suspicious that, like Ann GREENER's parents, there wasn't one and they were recorded as though there was!

The name "John BELL" is common enough that I haven't worked out (yet) which of several men he was. There's another family (on paper) coming from the same area with several of the same forenames (including Benjamin) and I have wondered if this is a cousin line, but I haven't managed to find a John among their lot so far.

I think I've had more luck with Ann FORSTER though... as the illegitimate daughter of Thomas FORSTER and Hannah EMMERSON. Hannah had at least two illegitimate children and I'm not sure she married. There's a potential death and corresponding christening that I noted down... and then noticed I had a DNA match to somebody who is descended from the same parents as that Hannah.

Here we go again 

I've sent them a message asking if they've done much research, particularly with DNA, in this area but we are talking low cM amounts (understandably). Naturally this person also doesn't DNA match with the TELFORD lot (and shouldn't!)

Wish me luck! I haven't had a lot of it lately 

(Also, while I'm shaking my head at the number of illegitimacies going down the family, kudos to having the father's names on them lol)

Ayashi