Friday, February 25, 2005

all this has taken years but just came to a head

From Donnette Smith:

In 1968 We visited a distant cousin, Beatrice Harrison, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, Eng. She was telling us about her great aunt, Susan Heritage. (Susan is Richard’s great great aunt.) Susan married a man named Taylor at Bicester and they had some children and moved to Sheffield to work in the steel mills.  Then the whole family except the husband came down with smallpox. Susan’s sister didn’t dare come in to help but would leave food on the windowsill. After the husband nursed everyone back to health, he came down with smallpox and died. Later Susan married again. Beatrice
remembered that Susan had a daughter named Gertrude, and she said, Funnily she could remember that Susan had a boy named Fred Dennison by the second husband.

Now - I’ve got it sorted out finally. But Beatrice did give us some good tips.

I spent a lot of time the last couple of days on Ancestry.com looking up relatives in the 1891 and 1901 census and on FreeBMD looking up births, marriages and deaths.  I was looking up Dennison. Then I found all the records as Denston or Denstone.  But Fred  is "son in law" to Wm. Denstone in the 1901 census. Meaning - step son. Now I found that Fred Dennison wasn’t Fred Denstone but Fred Taylor! I finally found his birth and his father ( John Taylor)’s death and his mother, Susan Heritage’s remarriage.  Becky just did the temple work for Fred Denston.    

Anyway - all this has taken years but just came to a head this last couple of day. 

Mom (Donnette)
powergrandma@juno.com