I had great difficulty
attempting to verify information about my
grandmother's mother. She was Ellen Cope and
married Charles Peever but that was the extent of
family knowledge. I was unable to trace her and
her husband on the 1881 census, either on fiche,
or CD-Rom. I wrote to Practical Family History
magazine requesting help but despite much advice
and trying different variations of the fairly
unusual name of Peever I came up against the
usual brick wall.
I found their marriage
certificate, dated 1880, in the Regents Park area
of London in my grandmother's effects, together
with their first child's birth certificate in
August 1881 but no mention of a birthplace on
either of them. My heart sank at the thought of
searching censuses throughout London in the hope
of discovering where they were born. it could
have been Camden, Paddington, or points west. I
must admit I faced the prospect of never finding
them and giving up the search, but I couldn't get
her out of my mind. I had a photograph that my
father said was a picture of Ellen with possibly
her first child and she looked to me about 20 to
25 years old. So I assumed (a somewhat dangerous
game in family history) that she was born about
1855. I used the Mormon Familysearch website (www.familysearch.org) and started to work on all the
likely candidates. It seemed a pointless
exercise, as the only clues to links with any
counties outside London were Portsmouth, where my
paternal family came from, an uncle who had lived
in Wales and two brothers who may have gone
abroad to Canada and Australia.
Then going through the
Familysearch site I happened upon an Ellen Cope
whose father was David (Ellen's marriage
certificate named her father as David, occupation
woodman) and her baptismal date the same as my
own son's birthday. It wasn't much to go on but I
assumed (again) I must be on the right track, as
it felt right. My conviction was overwhelming.
The baptism was in Preshute, Wiltshire, in the
Savernake Forest area, a reasonable place for a
woodman to be living and working. Wiltshire had
never surfaced in any family memory; in fact my
grandmother was born in Camden Town and moved to
Portsmouth when her father Charles Peever is
thought to have died. Was greatgrandmother a
widow, or did she run off with a marine and end
up in Portsmouth, or did she re-marry? I became
more and more convinced that Ellen Cope was my
great-grandmother on the flimsiest of evidence:
her father's name and the christening on the same
date as my son's birthday, not exactly
substantial evidence. Foolish woman........
I ordered the parish
register for Preshute from the Mormon Family
History Research Centre. It arrived within the
month and with some trepidation I wound the film
on to cheek her baptism date September 6, 1855.
There was an Ellen Cope but I needed to be
absolutely sure she was my ancestor and not some
stray person with the same name. I continued to
search and then stopped on October 2, 1881 (my
birth date) and there was the baptism of her
first child Charles David and parents Ellen and
Charles Peever 'abode Camden Town'. I could
hardly believe my luck. I would never have
considered looking in Wiltshire for his baptism
as his birth was registered on August 22 1881 in
Regents Park, Middlesex. I had initially chosen
to start with Peever precisely because it was an
unusual name, but it left me with more problems
than if the name had been Smith or Brown.
The moral of the tale is
that I took incredible leaps in the dark but only
by a combination of unusual circumstances was I
led to the correct place. The only 'evidence' I
had to go on was that my great-grandmother looked
about 20 to 25 years old. Is this what people
mean when they say beginner's luck? I think it
must be, as I shall find it incredibly hard to
stick to working back methodically, which I know
is the best way. Now the initial euphoria has
worn off I wonder if any more surprises await me
as I stick to the rules. Perhaps you might let me
know?
