The Elusive Charles Pearson …
In
the last two posts I described the beneficiaries named in the will of my
great-grandaunt, Emma Jane Wray. At the time of writing of those posts, I had
been able to find all of them through various records and indexes except for one
person – her nephew Charles Pearson. We could correctly surmise he was the son
of one of Emma’s brothers.
Tied
up with that problem was identifying Emma Jane’s brother, also named Charles
Pearson. I know he was alive in 1896 because his name is on an account for his
grandmother’s property which was settled after the death of his mother,
Susannah, that year. I assumed he also lived in England.
My
great-granduncle Charles (noted here as senior Charles, just to keep things
straight) is shown on the 1871 England Census, aged 15, living
with his parents and siblings and born in Australia. At the time he was a
labourer in an ironworks. No birth record from Australia has been found for
Charles but there seems little doubt from ship passenger records listing his
family and the 1871 England census that he was born there.
I had found a series of records that offered a strong
possibility for identifying the man but could not confirm he was my relative. There
is a Charles Pearson, with various occupations, shown on several England
censuses as being born in Australia. On every list his wife is named Annie.
There is a possible marriage record for Charles Pearson and Annie Merry in 1877
in Leicester. I found all of the children that are shown on the censuses, Lily,
Annie and Emma, with their mother's maiden name of Merry on the GRO index
seemingly solidifying the relationships. As I have said before one can find the
maiden names of mothers on the GRO index that do not appear on other databases
such as FreeBMD, Ancestry or FindMyPast.
Details for Charles on the censuses are:
Year
|
Age
|
Residence
|
Occupation
|
1881
|
28
|
Leicester
|
Great Jetten spinning
|
1891
|
35
|
Coventry
|
Range Fitter
|
1901
|
47
|
Coventry
|
Heating Engineer
|
1911
|
54
|
Coventry
|
“Eninger” (Engineer?)
|
Annie's birth place is shown as Leicester on all
censuses except for 1911 where it is listed as Scotland. In spite of the
differences in Charles ages, I believe they are the same family. Childrens’
names and ages are consistent throughout. I think the reference to Scotland in
1911 is wrong but I have no explanation of why that place would have written
when Charles signed the form. It is possible, of course, that Annie, nee Merry,
died and Charles married another woman named Annie before 1911. But then the
number of children shown on the record would not fit for a second wife.
In 1881 a Mary A. Pearson, mother (presumably of
Charles, the head of the household) is shown living with the family. I believe
this was actually Annie's mother. On the same census it appears her father,
William Merry, was an inmate in a workhouse in Leicester, indicating the family
had fallen on hard times. Until I can confirm who this Mary A. Pearson is,
there will be a question. But some other data, while indirect, gives me
confidence I have the right people.
In 1901 a nephew named Charles Pearson was living with
Charles, Annie and their daughters. He was nine years old and his place of
birth was Leamington, Warwickshire. I thought, “Aha, this may be Emma’s missing
nephew, but he was not the son of her brother, Charles.”
I looked further to see if I could find him on other
records. A Charles Pearson, aged 19 and born in Leamington, was living with
Joseph and Emmie Taylor in London in 1911. Charles was indicated to be Emmie’s
brother which meant her maiden name would have been Pearson. OK, maybe “Emmie”
was, in fact Emma Pearson, and Charles was not her brother but her cousin, the
same person who lived with her family in Coventry in 1901. Both Joseph and
Emmie were born in Coventry according to the 1911 census. It was also recorded
they had been married for three years. A marriage for the couple took place in
1908 in Coventry, so we had that regional connection established on a few records.
I looked for young Charles on FreeBMD and found a birth possibility in the March quarter of 1892
in Warwick. It had a note attached to it, though, that said it was a late entry
with the birth actually recorded in the March quarter of 1895. That was curious
but I felt I was on the right track and pursued some other lines. I went back
to search the GRO Index and found the birth of Charles Pearson registered in
the March quarter of 1895, just like FreeBMD
said. This one gave me the mother’s maiden name – Atkinson.
I had an Atkinson in the Pearson family. Isabella
Atkinson married James Pearson, one of Emma Jane’s brothers, in 1883. Through
census and other records I had seven children born to this couple, including a
Thomas Alfred Pearson born in 1892. Now I potentially had another son, born the
same year. The 1911 census had recorded that Isabella had had eight children
with seven still living at the time.
On FindMyPast
I found two military
records for Charles Pearson, one for service in the Royal Navy and one for the
Royal Air Force. They were for the same man, though, as both gave his birth
date as 15 January 1892, birth place as Leamington, occupation as automobile
mechanic and a physical description of him that matched exactly on both
records. The navy record indicated he had been transferred to the air force,
probably due to his mechanical experience.
Now I have to
say that I had already found another son of James and Isabella, Thomas Alfred
Pearson, on the 1939 register and it showed his birth date as 15 January 1892. Wow!
Could they have been twins? But why would one registration have been done so
late? Was the original registration for Samuel messed up and no one caught it
for a few years? I intend to purchase both records and see if I can determine
what the problem was.
The air force
record showed Charles had a wife, Cecily, who lived at 51 Aklam Road, North
Kensington, London. I looked for marriage information for a Charles Pearson and
a lady named Cecily and found one on FreeBMD
for Cecily Hefferman. They were married in 1916 in Kensington. That fit the
time and place as Charles had been living in London in 1911. To my delight, a
copy of the actual marriage entry was on Ancestry and showed Charles’s father
was James Pearson (deceased) a coach body builder. Indeed that is what Emma’s
brother was on the 1891 census that I already had.
James Pearson
died in 1897, leaving Isabella with eight children, the youngest possibly being
the five-year old twins. Perhaps she felt overwhelmed and jumped at an offer
from her brother-in-law, Charles to take the boy in. Through his uncle, young
Charles may have developed his interest in automobiles that were just arriving
on the scene.
The circle
seemed to be closing, notwithstanding a few questionable entries on some
censuses, such as young Charles shown as a brother to Emmie Taylor in 1911, or
Mary A. Pearson shown as mother to the senior Charles in 1881. I believe I will
be able to show these were mistakes when I have obtained other BMD records. I
am now quite sure that the senior Charles Pearson I have found on censuses who
was born in Australia is my great-granduncle.
One thing that
still needs to be determined is who the eight children were that the 1911
census shows the couple had. I have the names of the three that were indicated
as living then but not all of the five who had died. I did find three boys whose
mother’s maiden name was Merry on the GRO index but who died as infants. One was
born in Leicester and two in Coventry, and dovetail with the three girls named
on the censuses.
In unravelling
the relationships, I relied on databases from Ancestry, FindMyPast and FreeBMD. I used the search option for
the General Register Office indexes to narrow down births and deaths. I
compared BMD, census (including the 1939 Register), military, probate calendar
and ships passenger records for many family members. The new research path all
started this time with the information in Great-Grandaunt Emma Jane’s will.
There are still
many certificates that I need to order but everything seems to be coming
together, filling in holes on the family tree.
 |
| 1909 note on postcard to Emma Jane Pearson from her nephew, James Henry (Jim) Pearson and brother to young Charles Pearson; Jim was killed in France in 1915 before Emma Jane's wedding which may be the event referenced in his message. |
The close relationships
of the Pearson siblings and their children are demonstrated, first in Emma
Jane’s will but also in how they seemed to come together when they needed each
other’s support. It appears there are some very interesting and poignant stories
behind the data I have assembled. Hopefully I will be able to learn about a few
of them.
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
