Martha T Barker (prt 2)

To say that doing genealogy is easy would really be great, if it were true. We can send a human safely around the moon and back, but locating our ancestry further than 100 years ago can be quite a challenge. I feel like locating the whereabouts of Martha Barker's death date and place such a challenge. Things that I have found out since the last post:

 

• She separated from her husband (Edward Thornhill) between 1881 and 1891.
• 1900 and 1910, she is found to be with her daughter Susan Woodwal (Woodall, Woodhul)and their family.
• The family moved to the US after the turn of the century.

 

I'm thinking she died between 1910 and 1920, which would place her in her 90's. I have pretty much exhausted all efforts to find her name on any census records, immigration pages, or death certificates. Once again she has fallen off of the radar screen. Her daughter, Susan, also has disappeared between 1900 and 1910. This might have caused her to live with other children or extended family. I did find a possible death date and location in Liverpool, England, but I have been unable to find any passenger records of her sailing from the US to England.

 

Another step I decided to take was to simplify the information I had on Martha. Initially I thought saving all possible census records of her before marriage might help me locate her before she married Edward. This only complicated things and I removed those records.

 

As of right now I'm going to concentrate on locating the whereabouts of all of her children from 1880 to 1920. This will give me the chance to find out if she lived with anyone else. I also would like to know if she still had ties to England. Her daughter and granddaughter were drowned in a shipwreck while returning from England. Why were they going to England? I might find a big piece to this puzzle if I can answer that question.

I have been doing family research on and off for the past ten, or so, years and have to say that using a notepad specifically for genealogy is a great help. I can actually see my progression, although slow, unfold.

Martha T Barker

The person I have been working these past couple of months has been a Martha T Barker or Martha Thornhill. I was able to find Canadian Census records of her whearabouts between 1851 and 1891. I had an approximation birth year of 1821 and a possible marriage year of 1843, but that was about it. I wanted to know exactly when and where she was bor so I could also find her parents, and continue the line further back. After 1891 Martha seems to have dissapeared. There were no census recods or death records that showed any further places of residence. Thus began the hunt for Martha T Barker.
My initial attack was to find all of the Martha Barkers in the 1841 Census and try and narrow down the number of hits to just a few. I then tried to find a match using the marriage location I had and tried to see if any correlated. To my disappointment, none did. Since I am not familiar with Brittish culture, I couldn't piece together any possible scenarios to find a match either. Using a notepad really comes in handy. I wrote down the information what I already had on her. I wrote:
Status:
I have census records up until 1891
Husband Edward died in 1906
Daughter sailed from England and drwond in a shipwreck (1899)
Action:
Locate husband during 1891 census
Figure why daughter (Alice) was going to England
Might have to find childrens whereabouts.