Genealogy Challenge - Fame awaits you!

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Permalink Reply by Susan E. Cook on July 24, 2009 at 12:16pm

Isn't it remarkable how people can screw up records? :P Good grief! So here's a question for you. (I always love a good mystery!) By any chance was Lilla Maud Lodge living in your Great Grandfather's house when CHT was there? Could some 'dodgy' bureacrat have confused CHT with a 'lodger' instead of maybe a child who was using his Mother's last name, Lodge? Just a thought.

Susan

Permalink Reply by RouX Renard on July 24, 2009 at 1:27pm

Hi Susan,

Well you are right about 'a good mystery'. It's taken three years to find my 'possible' father CHLT and now I seem to have just found an equally bizarre mystery. Here'd he go????

No other bodies except the Phillips family there that night. Obviously I have to work out whether it's a one night baby-sitting exercise, or an unofficial adoption. I'm currently looking for Lilla on the 1911 Census. She may have remarried, but wild-carding Lilla Maud is not getting me anywhere and I haven't found her on any BMDs or electoral rolls yet..If I can find her in (say) London then I know she left CHLT in Little Cheverell and started a new life.

I have just found a Lilly Maud Harvey about the same age buried in the West Lavington churchyard, so perhaps she stayed, re-married and maybe took CHLT back and gave him a new name.

Any help with my research warmly welcomed.

:-)

RouX

Permalink Reply by Susan E. Cook on July 24, 2009 at 2:16pm

Sounds like you might be onto something. This is fascinating. Keep me posted. :-)

Susan

Permalink Reply by RouX Renard on August 15, 2009 at 4:33pm

Hi Michael

I have met a few Thomas's in West Lavington, but i don't think Christopher Henry Lodge Thomas remained a Thomas. He doesn't appear to have remained a Phillips either.

I have traced the Thomas line back to London and beyond that to Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire, Wales, trying to find Thomas males with male children who have living male descendants, so I can try a yDNA match, but none seem to have survived.

I have put ringing those 11 London Lodge names on my 'to do' list. I'll let you know how I get on.

Best regards,

RouX

Permalink Reply by RouX Renard on November 2, 2009 at 3:35pm

More clues!

Christopher Henry Lodge Thomas married Ruby Ross, daughter of a recently deceased jeweller 16 sep 1939 in Stoke Newington, London. Lilla aqnd her new husband Alfred Harrington, b.1875, were witnesses. I guess she had him sent to London at age 7 when she was wed/financially sorted. This was right at the start of WW2, but I cannot find him in War Dead, PoW, or Civilian Dead... so I presume he survived the war. Unfortunately data protection stops we finding our if he signed up or was conscripted, even though he would have been 100 on Oct 20 2009! Maybe I can't find him because he IS still alive!

In a second layer of mystery.... his father died in Market Lavington in Mar 1909, when his mother Lilla was two months pregnant with him. Hence the reason CHLT was boarded with my maternal Great Grandfather. Lilla was still in West Lavington to deliver CHLT, but I can find NO record in the area of his father's burial! Wiltshire History Centre and the local churches are baffled. A pregnant woman would not take her dead husband back to London then return to Wiltshire to have his baby, so CHLT's father is not buried in London. I did check, just in case, but I can't find him. So that's TWO missing forefathers! :-(

Permalink Reply by RouX Renard on January 4, 2010 at 3:10pm

Thanks. This CH Thomas was a northern lad, not related, unfortunately. My birth Mum named me Trevor, probably after Trevor 'Howard' so this bizarre coincidence did lead me to talk to the Green Howard's HQ just in case.

:-)

RouX