The following story was published in 2004 by Family Chronicle Magazine in their book, "More Brickwall Solutions to Genealogy Problems." The photos were not part of the originally published article.
My maternal grandfather, Samuel Sharpe, came to Canada as a Home Child in 1911. I grew up knowing virtually nothing about him other than he had come from England as a young boy. In fact, I didn’t even know he had been a home child until several years after his death. Once I developed an interest in genealogy, I discovered that three of my four grandparents had been home children. Imagine the number of brick walls I’ve come up against with those kinds of odds!
My grandfather was born in Liverpool in 1896. His Canadian military record showed his parents names to be William and Kate and his 1964 death certificate identified his parents as William and Catherine (nee McEwan). Once I received his birth certificate, I learned that his parents’ names were William and Catherine (nee McKeowan). I eventually found their 1887 marriage and it seemed to me that there probably would have been other children born to the couple. The surname Sharpe is quite prevalent in Liverpool, so I didn’t dare order birth certificates of every child born with that surname from 1887 on. I had no way of knowing if my grandfather had any siblings.
My search of the 1891 Census eventually turned up my great grandparents, William and Catherine Sharpe with a two year old son named William T. It was easy enough then to find the birth reference and order the certificate – William Thomas Sharpe, born 1889, was definitely my grandfather’s brother.
Now I was on a mission. Maybe there were living relatives in Liverpool who didn’t even know about their Canadian branch of the family! Find them, and perhaps I might find out about my grandfather’s past.
In 1910 a William Thomas Sharpe married Maria Whitby – and the certificate showed that it was my William Thomas! Then I searched the Sharpe births, starting at 1910, and found two children born with a mother’s maiden name of Whitby: William Thomas, b1912 and Samuel, b1915. Their birth certificates were quickly added to my growing file. Then I turned my attention to marriage entries to see if either of those boys had married. I didn’t find another entry for a William Thomas but a Samuel Sharpe married Esther Rawley in Liverpool in 1938. Going back to the birth indexes, I recorded five Sharpe references with mother’s maiden name Rawley. -- the last being in 1951. Now surely I would find living relatives in Liverpool. But I still had to prove it.
I ordered the 1938 marriage certificate for Samuel Sharpe, stipulating the condition of groom’s father’s name William. It was rejected, with the explanation that the father’s name was Samuel Thomas. But what if that was an error and the registry clerk had entered the groom’s first name rather than the father’s? My Samuel’s father’s name was William Thomas, a rice mill worker.
Some months later, a routine visit to the ancestry.com site on the Internet turned up references to the UK death registers beyond 1983. I plugged in the surname Sharpe and up came several deaths in Liverpool – but the one that intrigued me was the death of Samuel Sharpe in 1989, showing a birth date of 8 February 1915, the very date of birth for my Samuel. That death certificate was ordered and when it arrived it proved that the 1938 marriage was probably mine. The informant was Samuel’s son – with the same name as one of the children my notes showed had been born to Samuel and Esther Rawley.
The previously rejected 1938 marriage certificate was quickly ordered and it convinced me that I had the right couple.
Although the groom’s father’s name was shown as Samuel Thomas, the occupation was rice mill worker – the first given name had to be a mistake!
Back to the Internet search engines to pull Sharpe references in Liverpool from the UK Telephone Directory. Letters were sent to several Sharpe listings but the one I expected would be most promising was the letter addressed to a Sharpe family at the very address shown as the residence of the son who registered Samuel’s death. What a coup!
It didn’t take long for me to start receiving e-mails from various Sharpe families living in Liverpool. Their parents were Samuel and Esther (nee Rawley). Their grandfather was William Thomas Sharpe, the son of William and Catherine (nee McKeowan)! The letters from Canada had started a flurry of telephone calls in England amongst the five siblings – they had no idea that they had family in Canada! Their grandfather, William Thomas, had two sons, William Thomas (b1912 d 1913) and Samuel (b 1915 d 1989). He had served in World War I in Germany. On January 1, 1919, as he boarded the ship to bring him home to England, the plank collapsed and he drowned. He is buried in Germany. His widow, Maria (nee Whitby) subsequently remarried and had several more children.
William Thomas did not live long enough to share his family’s stories with his only surviving son. Samuel was just shy of four years old when he lost his father; he died in 1989 in Liverpool and his children and grandchildren are just as delighted as I am that I found them.
I still have not found any death records for my great grandparents, William and Catherine (nee McKeowan). But by looking forward, I finally found out a little about my grandfather’s family and have expanded my Christmas card list with names of several very-welcome new-found cousins!
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