Who is this woman? (a genealogico-photographic detective story)

For many years, this photograph has been in our photo album collection of my wife Caroline's ancestors, but we were not sure who she was. We had no more than Caroline's mother's note on the back: “Floie Tidd's grandmother..?” Florence (“Floie”) Pidduck (nee Tidd), 1901 – 1976, was my wife's maternal grandmother. Her ancestors and relations have lived in England's County of Kent, south and east of Canterbury, for centuries. Having wondered about this for a long time, I set out to solve the puzzle.

If the lady in the photo is one of Floie's grandmothers, I knew who were the candidates: 1) maternal grandmother Susannah Finch (nee Cook), who was born in Dover, Kent (of the white cliffs) in 1836 and died in Faversham, Kent in 1872; or paternal grandmother Ann Worrell (nee Tidd), who was born in Teigh, Rutland in 1830, and died in Dover in 1909. The lady in the photograph appears to be in her 50s (55 plus or minus three years, I thought). If you look closely at the lower right corner of the photograph, you may jump to the same conclusion that I did (“It says Dover...must be Ann Worrell”). Well, maybe. If the woman IS Ann Worrell, and her age is, say 55, the photograph would have been taken sometime close to 1885. I knew that the next step toward solving this mystery was to date the photograph.

To my good fortune, after Googling “dating old English portrait photographs,” I found a treasure of a web site to help me date the photo of the lady. It was constructed by Robert Vaughan from his personal collection and is titled simply “Put a date on that old photograph.” Mr Vaughan guided me through the dating method so ably that I felt like Dr Watson following along three steps behind Sherlock Holmes. 

Here is the address of his invaluable web resource:

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~victorianphotographs/family/index.htm

(Robert Vaughan, c. 2012)

Using Mr Vaughan's method, I was able to deduce that what we have is a carte-de-visite (square cut, thin card stock, 10.2 cm X 6.2 cm) from the 1860s. Despite the name, the carte-de-visite was not used as a calling card, but rather it was usually placed in the family photo album.

Next, Mr Vaughan puts us on the trail of the photographer. At the lower right corner of our lady's picture we see “Clark.” More information is found on the back side:

J Clark – 46 Snargate Street – DOVER

(Snargate? How Dickensian!)

With rising excitement, I opened Mr Vaughan's roster of Victorian English photographers, only to find no Clark from Dover in the list. Not giving up, Google leads me to an article about Dover's photographers on a wonderful web site about the town's history (https://doverhistorian.com) where I learn that:

“By 1862, Clark & Co opened up at 42, Townwall Street and James Clark opened a studio at 46 Snargate Street, staying for 7 years.”

The style of the card, and what we've learned about the photographer point to the 1860s. Mr Vaughan's web pages include a fascinating gallery of Victorian photographs arranged by year that gives further evidence that our lady's image was captured sometime between 1862 and 1865.– most definitely NOT during the 1880s. And that calls into question whether she can be either Susannah Finch OR Ann Worrell.

Now I had to do some real arithmetic, which has never been my strong suit. If we assume our photo was taken in 1864 and the lady is 55 years old, she would have been born in 1809 (long before the 1830s births of our previous candidates). With that in mind, I searched my family tree records in RootsMagic, a very useful software program for genealogists that has great search and reporting features. I searched for anyone in my tree born after 1802 and before 1815 who ever resided in Dover. 

From that search, only one person emerged as a likely subject of our mystery photograph: Susannah Cook (nee Belsey), who lived her entire life in Dover. She was born there in October 1805, to tailor William Belsey and his wife Susanna (nee Randall), and she died there in 1863. She married carpenter Robert Cook at the age of 23 and gave birth to five sons and one daughter (Susannah, “Floie's grandmother”). In the 1851 English Census, Susannah's occupation is given as “Matron Alms House.” English alms houses are charitable homes for the elderly or the poor. For a married woman to list any occupation on the census is notable, as most either replied with “None” or something like “Domestic duties” in that category.

The 1851 Census record gives another glimpse or two into the lives of the Cook family. The younger Susanna Cook, age 16 is listed as resident in the house next door as the servant of Surgeon Thomas Heritage, MRCS (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons – London). The residence is listed as a “dispensary;” an out-patient clinic for the poor that also dispensed medicines. It may have been associated with the alms houses for which Susannah Cook the elder served as matron. Finally, this historical tidbit from the 1851 Census report. The census taker lists a lodger of unknown name, age 50, who is described only as a “Frenchman.”

I cannot claim 100% certainty that the mystery woman in our family photograph is Susannah Cook (nee Belsey). However, one final observation weighs in favor of the identification: it is that this branch of Caroline's family seems most successfully to have saved and passed down many of the ancestral photographs that are preserved in our family album.

If you have read this far, I thank you for coming along on my search!

Sources:

1. "Put a date on that old photograph," Robert Vaughan, c. 2012, http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~victorianphotographs/family/index.htm

Accessed 16 MAY 2020 

2. "Dover's photographer's and the film festival," https://doverhistorian.com/2016/01/23/dovers-photographers-the-film-festival/ Posted 23 JAN 2016; Accessed 16 MAY 2020.

3. Ancestry.com. 1851 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Class: HO107; Piece: 1632; Folio: 361; Page: 36; GSU roll: 193534-193535

Finding Dedemiah: Tracing the life of a great-great-great grandmother through documents and DNA

When I became interested in genealogy research, my purpose was to chart the ancestry of my children. Thus, I have enjoyed learning about my wife's family background as well as my own. I am grateful for the work that my father-in-law, Peter W. Gilderson, has done on his forebears, as it laid the foundation for my own research. Any genealogy hobbyist knows the joy of the "the hunt," and that there is always another fact to track down or mystery to solve. One mystery in Peter's family tree was the identity of his great-great grandmother, Dedemiah, whose married surname was Bull, but whose birth surname was not known by him.

Peter Gilderson's family tree at the time I started researching in 2015

In my first try at researching the Bull family, I found information that hinted at fascinating stories of love, loss and struggle -- but I could not find Dedemiah. Particularly, I could not find anything about her origins or birth name. Imagine how many ways the rare given name "Dedemiah" might be mis-spelled in document indexes and transcriptions. Eventually, I found baptismal records for two girls with that name, born close to 1800 in the county of Sussex, which lies just to the south of London -- Dedemiah Driver, baptized in Brighton in 1805, and Dedemiah Allen, baptized in Withyham in 1804. But I could not find any document that would point strongly toward one or the other as the primary candidate to be my wife Caroline's great-great-great grandmother. I was at what genealogists call a "brick wall" in my research, so I moved on to something else.

I came back to this mystery in 2018, looking again for evidence that would reveal Dedemiah's surname and origins.The first clue came from the 1881 English Census for Barkingside, Essex (now part of London).

Now, there is no place in Sussex called "Wetham," but there is a village called "Withyham." This was the first piece of evidence that pointed toward Dedemiah Allen.

The second piece of evidence I found was that Thomas BULL married Didyma Allen in Tudely, Kent, England, on September 2, 1822. Tudely is northeast of Royal Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, and about ten miles from Withyham. It is about five miles from Speldhurst, Kent, where Thomas Bull was baptized on August 9, 1796. I was beginning to feel confident enough about Dedemiah's origins to type "Allen" into her surname space on my family tree.

The final piece of evidence came from a source that has only recently become easily available to family history researchers -- DNA testing. In 2017 and 2018, Caroline and her parents took autosomal DNA tests through Ancestry.com. The test results provide information about where in the world one's ancestors likely came from. Of more interest to the genealogist, Ancestry.com also provides a list of other DNA testers who may share common ancestors. When those DNA matches have also built family trees, it is sometimes possible to discover the links and to trace the generations back to common ancestors.

My father-in-law Peter's list of matches included a person in southern England who shares an amount of DNA with him that indicates a possibility of being distant (5th to 8th) cousins. Two people who are 5th cousins share great-great-great-great grandparents in common. Peter's DNA match has created an extensive family tree that shows they may be 5th cousins, sharing an Allen ancestor. I write that they MAY share an Allen ancestor because I have recently read a blog post titled Confirmation Bias in Genetic Genealogy: Beware! on the Who Are You Made Of? blog, which cautions against making premature conclusions about common ancestry from DNA matches. 

Whether Peter and his DNA match do indeed share a common ancestor, it seems to me that the documents, supplemented by DNA, point to Caroline's 3X great grandmother having been born Dedemiah Allen. This conclusion has led to the discovery of more information about the lives of Dedemiah and Thomas Bull, and of the Bull family of Speldhurst, Kent.

Sources:

1. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1881 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
Class: RG11; Piece: 1746; Folio: 53; Page: 29; GSU roll: 1341420

2. Confirmation Bias in Genetic Genealogy: Beware! 
https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/2018/08/27/confirmation-bias-in-genetic-genealogy-beware/  Posted 27 AUG 2018; Accessed 15 MAY 2020