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Good morning. I'm not sure if anyone can help or advise. We are looking for more details of my wife's Great (x2) Grandfather, William Mattin. He was born in Dallinghoo in Suffolk but then moved to London as a young man. He worked mainly as a coach painter but, according to family rumour, spent some time as a police constable. We believe, having used online resources, that he may well have had Warrant Number 66405 (starting in April 1882 and resigning in December 1883). He seems to have been posted to B Division (Chelsea) which very much ties in with addresses that he was associated with. We don't live in the UK so can't easily access hard copy archive data, if indeed any exists. What would be great would be to find a copy of his joining up papers or his career record but I am not certain that these are available. Can anyone advise what might be available and how we could ask someone to do a little rummaging for us? Many thanks in advance. Ian Holmes.

Thanks so much to you both for this. 

We knew that they used the Player Neal surname at times but Playernail is a new variant for us!!!!  By his middle age William junior (b. 1819) had dropped it and was just plain William Player (thanks goodness!!).

Thanks for the additional siblings (George and Eliza).  I'm still mystified what happened between 1816 and 1829.  William claims to have been born in Bath and your inability to find him in Bristol maybe supports that.  Perhaps they continued having children in Bath during the "missing" 13 years.  Sadly I haven't been able to locate William's birth in Bath so don't even know which area they were likely to be for Parish Record purposes.

Anyway, thanks again ... much appreciated.

Ian.

Thanks for all of your contributions.  Sorry I've not replied sooner but we have had a bereavement in the family.

We have done some more digging but have had no success to date ... although my gut feeling is with the "Catherine is actually Gertrude" argument but, as Heywood says, we just need to prove it.

If anyone is in the area I would really welcome someone at Hawarden record office checking the school records for Pantasaph Convent School (or any others in the area) if they are held there.

Thanks to all again.

Ian.

Ah, yes, WifeyWebb ... the Gertrude Rowley mystery.

No-one knows of her or has ever heard her name.  We can find no trace of a suitable birth for a Gertrude Rowley which involves any of the children of either William or Alice (to make her a grand-daughter).  We cannot find her in 1881 ... or in 1901 ... or having died or married between 1891 and 1901.  

There IS a Gertrude Rowley but, as I think a recent posting has said, she is accounted for in 1891 so it can't be the same one.

And, more mysteriously, we can't find our Catherine at all on the 1891 census.  We have even considered whether Gertrude and Catherine are one and the same person  ... unlikely I know but we can't cross reference anything that connects them even though we think that they are both grand-daughters of Alice Morgan (nee Jones, later Roberts).  Are they maybe twin sisters and at the point of separation one went with the mothers family and one with the fathers?  Again conjecture with nothing to back it up but this mystery is altogether baffling.

We have three old, but pretty lucid, relatives all of whom knew Catherine personally ... but they seem to be sworn to some sort of secrecy between them about what they actually know about her very early days.  Which, not surprisingly, makes us all the more keen to find out ...  there is a mystery there ... needs a sort of genealogical Scooby Doo to get to the bottom of it!!!!

Thanks for your input WifeyWebb.

We have done a fairly thorough search for the birth as a Roberts (the maiden name of the likely mother) and have not been successful.  Obviously we have looked for Morgan registrations too but we feel this is unlikely as the Morgan link only seemed to come in when she moved back to Wales.

We have searched around Hulme, Salford and Rhyl to no avail.  We are hoping that if we can find the date of birth we can focus in a little more closely.  We are not even 100% sure that originally the child was called Catherine ... that may have just been a name given she was "adopted" back to north Wales ... as this is reputed to have taken place at quite a young age.

The difficulty, if the family folklore is right, is that the liaison with the son of the visiting nobleman appears to have been a touch more serious than just the normal ships passing in the night ... in that they were still together in the caravan (for whatever reason!) at the point of the fire which was some weeks or months after the birth.  

Could the birth have been registered in the name of the father?  If so we are at a dead end until we find who he was!!!

Catherine was married with six children by 1911 and living in Meliden with her husband Herbert Jones.

William Morgan was born in Cwm in 1827.  We have him in all censuses up to and including 1881 but after that the trail goes cold although we have not found his death with 100% certainty.

His wife Alice (nee Jones, then Roberts) was born in 1814 in Tremerchion.  Again we have her until 1881 but no later.