Thomas Graham, Graham orphanage London? Illegitimate son of Colin Campbell? 1897

[gtoal]

He is pretty consistent with his age, his service record from November 1916 states that he was 24 years 5 months.

That would place a birthday in June 1892?  (I'm working through all the places where we have an age to try to determine a plausible birthdate. If indeed he knew it and didn't just make one up.)

[gtoal]

So at the moment, this is our working hypothesis:

He showed as married with no children. Birth place given as Essex London.

Came across this birth entry at the St Pancras Workhouse:

Thomas Harris
Birth 2 Feb 1891
Birth Poor Law Union    St Pancras Camden, England
Birth Place    St Pancras, Camden, England
Mother Louisa Harris
Parish Register

However there's no link here to any Graham and the year is off a little from what he reported later.

So it occurs to me we can test the null hypothesis for a contradiction: if this *isn't* the person who was later known as Thomas Graham, then he is likely to have remained as Thomas Harris for the rest of his life so we just need to see if we can find a reference to Thomas Harris born at St Pancras on 2 Feb 1891 who still uses that name later in life after my grandfather was known as Thomas Graham.  Although coincidences of name and year abound, finding an exact match to the birth day and location would be beyond the bounds of coincidence.

I've started looking; haven't found one yet.

Graham

[gtoal]

Religious creed register
Admitted 2 Feb 1891
Louisa Harris
Born 1855
Admitted from an address in Kings Cross Road
Seems to say she was married
Two images
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-P3N2-TFVG

Thomas Harris, born of Louisa, is down the page.
They were discharged 16.2.91

Thanks Jon! Sorry, took me a little while to realise it wasn't behind a pay wall. (Unless you consider being posthumously baptized as a Mormon a form of payment, but I'll worry about that after I'm dead ;-) )

That 1855 birth date for Louisa Harris may prove very useful.

Here are the entries you found:

[heywood]

Nothing to apologise for.

It looks like that Spickett lead - despite a good match of dates and names - must be a dead end, as I contacted the great granddaughter of Louisa Ellen Spickett's father (through her brother George) and we've both taken Ancestry DNA tests but neither of us show up in the other's matches. I have to take that as definitive, and start looking for Louisa Harris again elsewhere.

I wrote earlier that Charles Sydney Herbert Harris’ mother is  Louisa Spiller - the cause of the confusion - you might want to inform your contact 

Going by hints isn’t good as people often use names without any real evidence.
However, DNA matches are better. Have you had any matches maybe from the London/Essex area etc  that might be useful?

[gtoal]

However, DNA matches are better. Have you had any matches maybe from the London/Essex area etc  that might be useful?

I wish.  Unfortunately the numbers are overwhelming just to browse the matches - 9,433 maternal matches and another 2890 not yet assigned to a specific parent!  However only a couple of hundred matches are given when you ask for geographical info (see attached map).  There were very few matches in London and none plausible even when expanding the radius.  Though it may be that using the US-based Ancestry.com for the DNA test has caused a bias of matches from the US - several hundred compared to only 50 in total from the UK.  I've also searched for matches with relevant surnames - Graham, Campbell, and Harris - and not found significant numbers or plausibly identifiable links different from any other surname.

There were only 3 matches in London - one was clearly Scottish (all Scots surnames) and one was a paternal relative (and Irish surnames) and the third had a private tree so no clues there.

If the Ancestry service had an API where I could programmatically access the trees of all the DNA matches I might be able to do some statistical analysis of the family names and perhaps identify some significant geographical cluster, but basically all they tell you is the six most common surnames (and who isn't related to some Smiths somewhere...) and everything else you have to work out, by manually browsing the trees of your 10,000 relatives, or at least the ones that are public.  It's all rather hit or miss.

I really appreciate the help you and your fellow group members have given - I really didn't expect that people would actually go research on our behalf when I posted - I had just hoped that someone might have recognised some aspect of my story - so I'm amazed and grateful for your help, but also it's frustrating that despite finding out lots of new info on my grandfather, I'm no closer to knowing why he was given the surname Graham and hence why I was too!  That was one of the main things I was hoping to discover from this exercise.  You know I had always worn the Graham tartan and thought it was my clan so it came as a bit of a surprise to say the least that I had no connection to the Grahams at all!

G

[gtoal]

Some significant new information!  In going through Thomas Graham's army papers we found the page below where he declared his next-of-kin.

I'm not 100% sure of the Christian name - It looks like Hannah but at a stretch could be Marrian or Marriam although most variants of those have only 1 'r' so I've been concentrating on Hannah. But the surname and the word 'Mother' is clear.  It looks like Mrs Hannah Graham Barrett, with the Graham scored out.  There's also the word "man's" to the right but I cannot see "man's"-what? - maybe Man's address?

The address is 310 Hornsey Road, Holloway, London.  It looks like he gave the info in 1914.

This could be his adoptive mother!

I tried searching in the 1911 census but I don't have a way to search by street address to see who lives there.  I've spent most of this evening searching but haven't yet found a plausible match for Hannah Barrett, Hannah Graham, or Hannah Graham Barrett. 

The scoring out of the word Graham in her name is either because the person transcribing the information expected Thomas Graham's mother to also have the Graham surname, but she didn't and he got ahead of himself copying down what Thomas said; or she *was* Hannah Graham or Hannah Graham Barrett but her husband had died recently and she was reverting to her maiden name.  Or something else entirely different as to which I cannot guess.

Do you know of any way to pin this person down or the occupants of the given address in 1914? Especially if there was a proper legal adoption.

Thanks,

Graham

[Dundee]

You are looking at the wrong soldier's records, Thomas' regimental number was 126706.

Debra 

[gtoal]

Phew! Thanks. Very confusing, they're all sequential and all say Thomas Graham.

[brigidmac]

You say you 100s of DNA matches to sort thru
But there are ways of narrowing down search parameters using the filters

For example  use
location search + colour code all your top matches with London connection

You can also have a colour code for particular surnames found on trees



The option of tree owners surname can be useful
But I prefer surname found on tree

Look at tree of highest match + try the filter search with surnames of each of their great grandparents


https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=862688.0

* people often neglect to compare their ethnicity with their matches but it can be very useful