Doing genealogy is truly like seeing how far the rabbit hole will take you. Two weeks ago I set out on an endeavor to find birth records on Martha T Barker, because her family line stops with her. I had her approximate birth year and thought I might be able to find her by looking for the 1841 England Census. Well, it turned out that many people named their daughter Martha around the time [my] Martha was born, and had to abandon that strategy. I then figured I could find more information about her with a death certificate. That search resulted with nothing. I was left with the task of finding out how many children she had and if she stayed with them in her old age, and that churned out some very interesting results.
Due to the amount of information I found about each of her children, I'm only going to lightly touch on everyone.
According to an immigration paper Martha gave birth to 11 children and by the year 1910 only four were still living. So far I have only found information on nine of them. Their names are: Fanny (died within the first year), Edward Barker (B: 1849), Alice Ann (B:1851), Charles John (B:1853), Mary Ellen (B:1856), William G (B:1858), Margret Isabel (B:1860), Fannie C (B:1862), Susan Martha (B: 1862).
Alice Ann (center) drowned in a shipwreck while coming back from England.
Another unfortunate fact is that sometime after 1881 Edward and Martha went their separate ways. Edward lived with his son Charles up until 1901. He then left to live with his daughter Margret almost until the time he died. I'm sure the last year or so he moved to a care center that was more suited to care for him in his last days.
Martha lived with Susan and her family until after 1910. The family immigrated Fayette, Pa. A death certificate does not confirm her death, but it can be assumed she died sometime during that decade. A death date and location with a Martha Thornhill was found in 1914 in England was found, but no immigration papers of her leaving the US has been found.
In summary, I was not able to find an exact birth date/location, or death date/location, of Martha. The very thing that started my investigation and this blog. However, I have uncovered her children and their places of residence. I have also found better ways to find information. One trick I have found is that parents tend to give their children names of their parent's maiden, middle, or surnames. The names of children help to find the names of their grandparents. This really helps in scenarios where records are hard to come buy. Sometimes you have to guess who is related to whom. I think that at year's end I'll sum up all of the strategies I have come up with while doing my genealogy.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI came across this while looking up my great-great-grandmother Martha Barker. Her daughter Alice (Thornhill) Robinson was my great-grandmother. She married Alfred Robinson and their son William Percy Robinson, pictured above, was my great-grandfather.
In your second picture, the woman on the right is actually Ellen Robinson, Alice's daughter, and the woman next to her is her sister-in-law Bessie Hally, my great-grandmother, wife of William Percy Robinson.
Here is a blog post I wrote about the drowning of Alice and Ellen Robinson:
http://104bridgestreet.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/women-and-children-first/
Cheers, Leslie