In
my last post I summarized some information I found about my Pearson ancestors
after analyzing the original will of my Great-Grandaunt Emma Jane (Pearson)
Wray (1861-1951). In this post I will set out some interesting discoveries I
made about others named as beneficiaries.
Emma
Jane kept in contact with her siblings and many nieces and nephews. I have
copies of a few letters and cards from which I have been able to extract
information about several family members. The will added to this library of
data.
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| Photos taken at 23 Priory Terrace: left -1909; right - present day, from Google street view Note on the back of the snapshot, later sent to my grandfather, James Pearson Shepheard, says - "My house where I lived when you came to visit me before you went to Canada"; Emma is standing in front of the residence; photo was taken by James Henry (Jim) Pearson, one of Emma's nephews, who was killed in action in WWI |
I
stated before that several family members were remembered with cash bequests.
There was another group named who were to receive the residue of Emma’s estate:
- · niece Annie Overton
- · Winifred, the widow of her late nephew Thomas
- · two daughters of her late nephew Thomas – Pamela and Joyce
For
the second group, named in the original will:
Annie
Overton was Annie Louise (Slinn) Overton, a daughter of Sarah Ann Pearson and
George Albert Slinn. She married Walter John Overton in 1910. They had three
children between 1911 and 1915. In the first codicil to Emma’s will, signed in
1947, she left a house in Leamington Spa to Annie and her husband. One might
conclude that Annie and her family had been very supportive of Emma in order to
receive that kind of bequest. The will showed Annie’s address at the time –
Bishops Itchington in Warwickshire – which allowed me to easily find her and
Walter on the 1939 Register living in the same place.
Results
from 1837 onward come up with the mother’s maiden name. Thus I thought I might
be able to match the wives of Emma’s married brothers. The birth dates of the
nieces and nephews I knew about began in the 1880s and extended into the early
1900s, so that gave me a range of years for the searches.
The
will gave me a lot of information about Thomas Pearson’s family from which I
could track them down. He was born in 1892 and had obviously died before 1946
and his daughter would have been born before that year. I figured he would not
have married before 1910, at the age of 18. So I did a search of FreeBMD for
the births of Joyce and Pamela Pearson between 1910 and 1946, looking for
people with mothers with the same maiden name. You can do that for births from
1911 onward on FreeBMD. You can also now search the entire GRO index from 1837
using a maiden name of a mother which really helps in deciding which person
might be the best fit for your family.
Anyway,
between 1910 and 1946 I found 285 girls named Joyce Pearson and 83 named Pamela
Pearson. A computer search narrowed down several on both lists with the same
maiden names for the mother. But only one resulted in girls born within a few
years and a few miles of each other. Their mother’s name was Jenkinson: Joyce
in 1920 and Pamela in 1924 and both in London. A FreeBMD search of marriages
for Thomas Pearson and a lady named Winifred resulted in only one with a
surname of Jenkinson and it was also close in time and proximity to the birth
places of the children – in London, in 1918. I was now very sure I was on the
right track. A search of the death index resulted in deaths for both in the
same locality, Thomas in 1942 and Winifred in 1955, both in Wallington, London.
That was also where I found the couple on the 1939 Register. Starting with
names listed on a will, facts about a whole family emerged.
In
1949, Emma’s codicil to her will took away the bequest to Annie Walton and
divided it among my grandfather, my grandmother and their three
children, all living in Canada.
Emma
Jane’s will was only 2 ½ pages long and each of the codicils were less than a
page each. But they were crammed with information about many individuals and
allowed me to add significant details about my Pearson family ancestors. The
information also left me with several unanswered questions and some new trails
to follow.
Family
historians would be well-advised to obtain copies of wills of any and all
ancestors. Some may come up short but others will be rich with information
about people you may not have even thought about.
Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling
four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number
of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history
society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications.
Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated
