William Edward Naylor, 1895 - 1910 killed in the Pretoria Pit Disaster 1910

William Edward Naylor, age 15, of Water Nooks, Westhoughton, Bolton, Lancashire was one of the 344 men and boys who perished in No 3 pit on the 21st December 1910.  William was a chorister, and often sang for coins underground for his colleagues.  He was the son of James Naylor and Martha Mary Stokes (my ancestor).

Wow, my fingers are sore from typing into the family website all the new information found on my dad's family the Stokes's and Sharpe's.  Again through my cousin Joan Broome, someone emailed her about the Sharpe's, a young man from Wigan called Dean Sharpe and through talking to him I gained some information and photographs of the Sharp family.  We share the same great grandparents, his great grandfather being the brother of my great grandmother Annie Sharpe.

We have also found out a lot about the Stokes's and have found yet more living relatives, one in Lowton not far from here, one in South Africa and one in Ohio, USA.

Over 500 names associated with the Stokes's and Sharpe's has been added just this week, and one entry today which I will tell you about on my next blog.

Linda

Facebook has become a useful tool in finding family.  I was on the Newton le Willows page on there and someone posted "Where were your Earlestown family in 1911".  I responded Viaduct Street and Bank Street and put the names Stokes and Peters.  A day later someone posted Broster, Viaduct Street.  This rang a bell because my dad Tommy Stokes was living with the Broster family in Viaduct Street in 1911, so I left a post and lo and behold two ladies got back to me, two sisters, Sue and Diane, their dad was a descendant of Jane Broster, they didn't think they had any relatives in Newton.  So now we are all delighted to have "found" each other and I am looking forward to meeting up with them in the future to exchange photos.

Linda

Very strange

My cousin Joan sent me a copy of the 1871 census, and there was Joseph Broome b. 1811 living with his brother John. Now Joseph died in 1862 according to all the research I have done, so how is this possible. I looked at the census again to where his wife Alice was and the children, and she was down as a widow.

Curioser and curiouser says Alice (quote from Alice in Wonderland) - so what do I do. Luckily a medium friend of mine was online so I emailed and asked. I haven't got the full story yet, Joseph didn't fake his death, he did die in 1862, his wife was a widow, but why was his brother using his name on the census.

Watch this space, all will be revealed.

Lots more news

The family website is closer to 3,000 names as my cousin Joan and I are finding more people as we search through ancestry. I have also being doing some research on the Kay/Key family which is my late husband's mothers family. My sister in law sent me some info she had received from her cousin, and from this I looked back further into the family and have sent for their grandmother's birth certificate which should give me the name of her mother, as this is the only name missing from my research. With this I can go back further, and my daughter and her children, along with her cousins will have some of their history as well.
We have discovered that more Broome's and some Jones's emigrated to America at the end of the 19th Century, as I don't have ancestry worldwide I have had to rely on Joan to get the info for the site. But it has been interesting to see where they went and what they did.
More records from World War I have been found, including those of Great Grandfather Broome, which are now on the site and these too provide vital information on addresses etc.,
I found a family searching for Uriah Jones and discovered that they are descendants of Great Great Uncle Abel and Auntie Maggie Ann, which prompted me to contact Wigan Heritage Centre to find the newspaper cutting of their 60th Wedding Anniversary - it didn't provide me with the information I wanted, but it was a start. Still a lot to do on that family. Still a lot to do on the Ashton in Makerfield Jones's too, the 1911 Census didn't provide me with what I wanted to know and the only survivor of that family, Enid, hasn't a clue. I would like to do more about the Jones's and will continue to search.
The Broomes and Hollinheads just gets bigger and bigger with everyday, we are now back to 1672 on the Hollinhead side of the family and we are finding more out about the Smalley's, the Wainwrights and Whiteheads which could take us back even further.
This past month has been perhaps one of the busiest updating and researching. My cousin Joan has been invaluable in sending images and info from ancestry worldwide and I think I will update to that from ancestry UK, when the membership is due to be renewed.
That's it I think for now. The search is ongoing and I will report back anything new as and when it is available.

Linda

Excited

It has been a very exciting week, my cousin's wife Joan Broome sent me some Parish records, and from that I have discovered several branches of the Hollinhead family I didn't know about, and from searching through the family tree section on Ancestry have discovered another living Broome descendant (different branch to ours but sharing the same ancestor) and am really excited to find Jones relatives, still living, with descendants in Ohio, USA. The family tree is so long now and we are now back to 1691.

This family tree business is so frustrating at times, you can find nothing for ages then suddenly you get a lot of information at once.

Research continues

Wow I hadn't realised it has been nearly three years since I wrote on this blog. The research into the family is ongoing and a lot of information has been added to the family website, more people involved in the research and we have found connections in South Africa, USA and Australia.

Since my last blog, my mum died, my daughter married and I have had another grandchild, so this adds extra research for the site, and I found my two half brothers, sons of my birth father, who also died, which is why I was able to contact them. A whole new family to add to an already large one of mine.

There really isn't anything of interest to those outside the family at the moment, just names and dates, but I will blog if anything of interest comes up.

Linda