Help and advice needed on finding a date of birth.

[wifeywebb]

That Flora was nee Frankham - was hoping for a Roberts or Morgan!!

[heywood]

I know I am looking for 'Welsh' Gertrudes now in Hulme in 1870 -found a nurse child Gertrude Jones but I think she turns up in a later census 

But if they have given 'Catherine' an assumed name - surely they wouldn't give her a completely different 'assumed' name 

I wonder if any of the daughters married a Mr Rowley?

[catanaccio]

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!!!!

[alpinecottage]

Odds and ends, just for the record:

There was  only one Catherine Morgan birth registered in your time frame (in Wigan) and she seems to have died within a few weeks.  There are 2 Catherine Roberts, both registered in Liverpool and one seems to have died aged about 6 months.  Wrong city though, according to your story.

I did try the Manchester Times for 1870-1880 for reports of deaths in fires, but found nothing relevant. Perhaps I should have included 1869 if you think Catherine was just a baby when she was orphaned.

Do you know where Catherine is buried, a date of birth may be on the gravestone?

I have to say I'm a bit sceptical about the "son of nobility" story and the idea a servant would have been allowed to keep her baby at her place of work and the "noble" father would have been allowed to continue to see her.   Maybe William and Alice agreed to look after the baby, provided the real mother (one of the daughters?) kept away and Catherine (and the neighbours!) were told her parents had perished in a fire...  

[heywood]

I agree that there are often invented stories to disguise what really happened.
I also think, at the moment, that there could well be a link between the Catherine and Gertrude - odd that the 'Manchester' birthplace is shared between the adult Catherine and Gertrude and the approximate year of birth 

[heywood]

... and within the family in 1891- Gertrude is bilingual along with Elizabeth whilst William and Alice are both Welsh speakers. (so she hasn't just popped over for a visit).

[Gadget]

Odds and ends, just for the record:

There was  only one Catherine Morgan birth registered in your time frame (in Wigan) and she seems to have died within a few weeks.  There are 2 Catherine Roberts, both registered in Liverpool and one seems to have died aged about 6 months.  Wrong city though, according to your story.

In contrast, the North Wales BMD has two birth registrations for a Catherine Roberts in St Asaph in 1869 but no Catherine Morgan(s) in that area, apart from the Letita Catherine that Heather found earlier.

http://www.northwalesbmd.org.uk/cgi/birthind.cgi



Gadget

[catanaccio]

Thanks, AlpineCottage.

We are a bit skeptical about the "son of nobility" bit too but it seems about the only common thread between the three old relatives stories.  Maybe, as you say, that is in itself the conspiracy.  

That said, Catherine was born somewhere and to someone and while I can accept that she might not have been registered she very clearly had an education of some sort and the most reliable of our sources is the one that talks in most detail about Catherine herself talking about the "grand lady" in the "coach and four" that came to visit and supposedly paid her school fees and brought her gifts.  Maybe if we can find the school records we can see if her education was "paid for" ... and, if it was not, maybe debunk the whole tissue of lies!!!!!

[kanskar]

Freebmd has:

Ann Catherine Roberts - Chorlton 8c 724 - Jun 1869 Qtr

Lancashire BMD states that the sub-district for this birth was Hulme.


There is also:

Catherine Ann Roberts - Manchester 8d-205 - Mar 1869 Qtr