Author Topic: Thomas Graham, Graham orphanage London? Illegitimate son of Colin Campbell? 1897  (Read 5238 times)

Offline gtoal

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Re: Thomas Graham, Graham orphanage London? Illegitimate son of Colin Campbell? 1897
« Reply #81 on: Tuesday 13 August 24 07:34 BST (UK) »
I am not sure what you are looking for here. Do you think this is a different Louisa than the St Pancras one and therefore a different possibility for your Thomas?
 
Alfred and Louisa, with Mary and Charlotte are at 1901 743 /5 /1
They are also in 1911.

*you have answered this whilst I was writing my reply.  :)

You mention a tree in your earlier post where there is a child added:
Charles Sydney Herbert Harris b 1889 Woolwich. His mothers name was Spiller which is where I got my information re Harris/Spiller.

added
Thanks Monica  :)

Some time between when that was posted and now, this Louisa Mary Spiller turned up on Ancestry married to Alfred Harris from Woolwich.
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/9405014/person/122304721326/facts - I believe the same one you were talking about here. 

The Charles Sydney Herbert Harris you mentioned is https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/9405014/person/122312809788/facts

This record for Alfred Harris at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/9405014/person/122124775984/facts may not be him (it looks like the poster merged two different Alfred Harrises, but did identify (in the comments) that one of them was from Woolwich.)  If it was him, it would suggest he divorced Louisa and remarried, but I think the suggestion of it being two scrambled records is more likely.

Louisa Spiller's dates are mostly plausible except my Grandmother could not have met her as she died 20 years before my gran married Thomas Graham.  However this Louisa Spiller doesn't appear to explain the large amount of Welsh ancestry on my mother's side which can only be from my grandfather, as the rest of the tree on that side is well filled out with Scots; *but* Luisa Spiller does appear to have traceable descendants which opens up the possibility of checking for a DNA link if I can find one who has taken a test.  So although I don't think it is her, it's a testable hypothesis.

And of course everyone could have been totally misinformed about the possible father and it could have been some 100% Welsh stable boy :-) and it could have indeed been an adoptive mother who my grandmother met as you suggested.

G
Mochrie, Stirling, Maxwell, Reynard, King, Gardiner, Napier, Bankier, Rankine, Fleming, Simpson, Grindlay, Jarvey, Nimmo, Salmond, Maitland, Fergusson

Offline gtoal

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Anyway, as told to me, the illegitimate child was sent to an orphanage in London, and my mother said that the Graham surname came from the owner of the orphan's home, though I haven't been able to find a Graham orphanage in the UK at the turn of the century, never mind one in London. 

Although I'm confident of having found his birth in London at the St Pancras poor house, and his army record at the age of 24, I've found nothing of his life in between and still consider the option of his having been raised in an orphanage as reported by my mother to be quite plausible.  I had not found any orphanages run by anyone of the surname Graham, but on reading "Children's Homes: A History of Institutional Care for Britain's Young", in the chapter on Thomas Barnardo, I found:
'The opening of his Ever Open Door in Edinburgh was viewed with antipathy in Roman Catholic quarters of the city, and the London-based Catholic Herald published a story alleging cruelty and neglect by James and Janet Graham, the managers of the home. Although the Grahams successfully sued the paper’s publisher, Charles Diamond MP, Barnardo decided to withdraw from Edinburgh and the home was closed shortly afterwards.'
Mochrie, Stirling, Maxwell, Reynard, King, Gardiner, Napier, Bankier, Rankine, Fleming, Simpson, Grindlay, Jarvey, Nimmo, Salmond, Maitland, Fergusson