I agree with you J.J., Annie is wonderful and has helped me out loads of times in the past, but hey, I think that you're all brilliant!!.
I've had a most informative PM from Migky (thanks pal) and shortly I'm going to draft an email to send to Toby at the Together Trust to get the ball rolling and hopefully get cpoies of the records.
The news about Denis, Mark and Mary Ellen has travelled the globe, my mum telephoned her brother in Australia to tell him, he is also really excited by the findings and is another one who has his fingers (and everything else) crossed that the records will have survived the years. They never knew their grandparents as they had emigrated before either my mum or her two brothers were born, it really does mean an awful lot to them.
I've been looking at the passenger list of SS Kansas of Feb 1900 from Liverpool to Boston and I'm convinced that it is Mark, moreover I reckon there are a couple of clues which could aid my research that I might have overlooked at first glance.
On the top of the page, against the first entry, it gives the chap's occupation as Foreman Cattleman (I'm pretty sure it says Cattleman), on every entry under that (including Mark's) the occupation is given a cattleman. It looks to me like they are a party travelling together, Mark is the only one who was born in England, of the rest, the majority are American or Canadian born.
One of the column headings asks the question - Whether ever before in the United States and if so when and where? All of them answer Boston 4/1/1900, so I wonder if they all travelled to the UK from Boston and then returned just over a month later, but why? I could understand it if perhaps a foreman had come to the UK to recruit men for work, but due to the birthplace of the majority, that doesn't really pan out.
There is also the question -Whether under contract to labor in the USA, all of them answer 'working as cattlemen'
Also they are all heading to different destinations in the USA, except for Mark and the chap directly beneath him on the manifest, who were both going to Craig Street in Montreal albeit a few numbers apart.
I'm not really sure what all this means, but a party travelling together does seem likely. I would welcome any thoughts or opinions.
Gosh, I've rambled on
My desk is covered with bits of paper with notes scribbled here and there and there are post-it's stuck on my monitor (sound familiar anyone?
) I really must get my act together and make a start on that email.
Onwards ever onwards eh?
Mick
