I've been waiting for the Brucie programme for some time and this week it finally arrived in Hungary on cable. Recapping, his ancestor Joseph Forsyth Johnson was a married man, with a wife and partner and between them they had 9 children. The real gem of seeing it several months after the initial broadcast however, comes from a comment left on another site. suggesting the slant of the programme portraying Brucie's GG grandfather sympathetically was inapropriate.
It transpires that another family historian had unearthed evidence showing that Brucie's ancestor had another daliance (1880-1884) with a Julia Kate Pearce and also abandoned her with two children. (Forsyth Oscar W Johnson 1881 and George Harry Ernest Forsyth Johnson born 1882.) Both children can be found on FreeBMD and reappear on the 1891 census together with their mother who by then suggests she too has been widowed. The historian obtained George's birth cert which names Joseph Forsythe Johnson (landscape Gardner) as the father, and the use of the Forsyth name strongly suggests that J F J also fathered her other child born a year earlier.
A finding like this showing that Brucie's ancestor may have turned his back on not two, but three women and at least 11 children, suggests he was not a misunderstood romantic with a failed marriage, but a lying, compulsive, womanisor. If that were the case, it may well be worth looking closer at how he spent the the final years of his life when his wife and 2 partners all declared him dead, for he may actually have been back to his old ways once again.
Roy G
