The Marriage Certificate (23 page)

In genealogical terms, Peter was up
against a brick wall. He needed to find some more relatives of Harry Williams.
As he hadn’t married or had children, aunts or uncles were the key. He took
some consolation in the fact that he was unlikely to be the first to research
this case. If it had been easy to solve, then it would have been solved by now.

He checked the Bona Vacantia website again and was relieved
to see that Harry Williams’ name was still there. Highborn hadn’t claimed it
yet.
Phew
, he sighed.
Now let’s review what I know and perhaps I’ll
get some inspiration
.

From the 1891 Census, he’d discovered that Harry had an
Uncle Frank and an Uncle David. He’d already looked for Frank as far forward as
1911 and failed to find him, so he decided to try to find Louisa’s brother,
David. He got nowhere trying the Census returns. Maybe he went abroad? He
hadn’t searched passenger lists for Frank Williams, because the name was so common,
but ‘David Crockford’, that was a different matter. Two minutes later he was
elated to find someone called David Crockford as a passenger on the
Manitoba
bound for New York from London in 1894.

The entry on the
Manitoba’s
passenger list was
intriguing. Directly above David’s name was the name of another passenger
called Frederick Crockford, occupation ‘Doctor’. It seemed reasonable to assume
that they were related and a quick look at the 1861 Census confirmed that
Frederick Crockford was the younger brother of Thomas Crockford. Peter was
certain he had found the correct David Crockford. In 1894, Doctor Frederick
Crockford would have been forty-one, and his nephew, David, eighteen. They were
obviously travelling together.

Peter looked up Frederick Crockford in the British Medical
Register of the time, but he was not listed. He may have had an academic
doctorate, Peter reasoned, but he was certainly not a physician. Peter also
tried the online record of passport applications, but drew blanks for both
Frederick and David. Passports were not compulsory until 1914, so the absence
of any record was no real surprise.

He then searched several international genealogy websites,
in order to find them after they arrived in the United States. He found David
Crockford on the 1930 United States Census. He was married with a son. For
Peter this was not good news. He had very limited knowledge of how to trace
relatives in the United States, but that would not be the case with a probate
research firm like Highborn Research. They’d have associates out there. Maybe
he didn’t have much chance against them. Still, he had some other avenues to
research. There was always Frank Williams, who’d disappeared and of course,
Peter still hadn’t discovered what had happened to John Williams, Harry’s
father.

Peter knew that in 1911, John was forty-one, yet he was dead
by 1962, a gap of fifty-one years. The maximum age he could have reached would
have been ninety-two. The neighbourhood watch busybody thought he’d died years
ago. The problem was, how long ago was ‘years ago’? Peter was reluctant to send
off for the death certificates of every ‘John Williams’ aged between forty and
ninety-two, who’d died during those fifty-one years. It was too expensive for
one thing. He needed to reduce the odds a little, by looking in the most likely
places first.

He could have started with all of the ‘Leyton’ deaths, but
for some unknown reason Peter was drawn to the idea of looking at the records
of the Commonwealth and War Graves Commission, otherwise known as the CWGC, to
see if John Williams had died during the First World War.

Peter already knew that John was a chief engineer on a ship.
In 1914, he would have been about forty-five, which was probably too old for
the Royal Navy, but possibly suitable for the Merchant Navy. Peter typed John’s
full name into the search box on the CWGC website and selected the ‘Merchant
Navy’ option. The search returned about thirty records matching his query. He
scanned the list. He noted that by each name, the rank and age was given. One
name stood out: ‘John Williams, Lieutenant, Mercantile Marine, age 44’. He
clicked on it for more details and when they appeared on his screen, Peter had
found who he was looking for.

So
,
John Williams had sadly died in World War One
,
thought Peter,
and there’s the name of the ship on which he served
,
HMS
Kidwelly Castle
.

He was puzzled, because John Williams’ previous ship was
called the
RMS Kidwelly Castle
. Were they the same vessels? He soon
found out that they were. In 1914, she was converted from a civilian passenger
and mail ship to an armed merchant cruiser, under Royal Naval command. She was
sunk off Zanzibar in September 1914, by the German raider,
SMS Salzenburg
.

He read with interest that before she sank,
HMS Kidwelly
Castle
inflicted serious damage on the German ship and it wasn’t until
April the following year, that the
Salzenburg
was finally put out of
action. After sinking
HMS Kidwelly Castle
, she limped into a river
estuary on the East African coast, where she hid for a number of months,
undergoing repair. The Royal Navy eventually found her. They set up a blockade
to prevent her escape, while they brought up heavy weaponry to bombard and sink
her, but the German Captain scuttled her, rather than have her fall into
British hands.

Just then, Peter’s phone rang. It was his contact in the
antiques trade in Marlborough.

‘Hello, Peter. I’ve got a couple of sovereigns if you’re
interested. They’re nice ones too, in excellent condition.’

‘Oh right, Nigel. Thanks for ringing. I’d like to have a
look at them. Could you hold them for me, until tomorrow afternoon?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Great, I’ll see you tomorrow then … about three o’clock.’

As he drove to Marlborough, Peter
came up with an idea. Somehow, the marriage certificate of Harry Williams’
parents had found its way to the antiques centre. The newspaper report from the
time of Harry’s death described his house as dirty and dilapidated, but implied
that it was fully furnished and that the contents at the time of his death were
intact. It was reasonable to assume that after Harry had died; everything in
the house was disposed of, either by the council, or by the builder who bought
the house for renovation. Peter couldn’t be absolutely certain, but the
clearance of Harry’s house must have been the starting point, by which the
marriage certificate had ended up in the antiques centre.

Maybe the vandals and drug takers who had broken in to the
property had helped themselves to some of the contents. That was a possibility,
but they probably only took items which they could turn into easy cash. They
were unlikely to have been part of the chain along which the marriage
certificate had passed.

Peter pictured the interior of the house. Items like
marriage certificates were often kept in a box or suitcase and stored out of
the way. There might have been other important family documents, photographs,
and paperwork as well. What if some of those other items had also found their
way to the antiques centre? What if the unit where he’d spotted the marriage
certificate, had more family mementoes or records from the same source, from
the home of Harry Williams?

Peter realised it was a long shot, but why not? Unit 14,
where he’d found the certificate, actually specialised in postcards. Perhaps
there was a postcard there, connected with the Williams family? Imagine if
there was a postcard from David Crockford in the USA to his sister Louisa. She
might have kept it and stored it away with the marriage certificate. He decided
that he would pay another visit to Unit 14 – it had to be worth a try.

His dealer contact was temporarily absent when he looked
through the glass window into the interior of the shop on Marlborough high
street. It was situated directly opposite the antiques centre and specialised
in antique clocks and jewellery. A note was stuck at an angle on the door:
Back
in five minutes
. Instead of waiting, Peter crossed the road to the antiques
centre and went in.

When he entered, he took in the familiar atmosphere and
surroundings. It was only a few weeks since his last visit and the weather was
still cold. The place had an aroma of old musty objects and paraffin. The
paraffin smell came from various portable heaters scattered throughout the
rambling premises. There was no central heating. Peter recognised it as a
sixteenth-century, timber-framed building with an uneven ground floor and
creaking boards on the first floor. He realised that its conversion to its
current use had been fairly basic and rudimentary.

When he approached the postcard unit, Peter found that three
other people, avid collectors by the look of them, had taken up most of the
space and he was forced to wander around elsewhere, looking at some of the
other units to waste a few minutes.

He scanned numerous antiques and items of bric-a-brac on
display, not looking at anything in particular, but hoping for an idea that
might provide some inspiration or hint at some new path to investigate. He
spotted a glass cabinet containing a pair of military medals from the First
World War. He would be amazed to come across a medal with a family connection
to the Crockford’s or the Williams’. He peered at the information card beside
the medals and saw the original owner’s name. Unsurprisingly, they had nothing
to do with his research.

He worked his way back to Unit 14. By then, there was only a
middle-aged man still browsing and he could see that he was not looking through
the box labelled ‘USA’. Now was Peter’s chance to have a quick look. It would
only take a few minutes.

He carefully grasped half of the postcards from the ‘USA’
tray – a shoebox in a former life, Peter noted, smiling to himself – and
holding about forty cards, he started to go through them methodically. He saw
that most were relatively modern, from the fifties and sixties, nothing much
before. He put them back and picked up the remaining cards. They came from all
over the United States. He turned each one over to see the address and paused
several times to read the messages. He thought it nosey, but some were quite
interesting. It was surprising, the information that some of the cards
included. One or two were very amusing, but none was addressed to Leyton or
sent from David or Frederick Crockford. Peter put them all back, feeling a
little deflated.

He left the antiques centre and crossed the road to see if
the dealer had returned to his shop. He had, and Peter bought the sovereigns.
They were both dated 1902. It was the first full year of the reign of Edward
VII. Queen Victoria had passed away the year before. The British Empire was at
its height. It was also the era, Peter recalled, in which John and Louisa
Williams were getting used to married life.

Peter then walked down to the local branch of his bank and
deposited the coins in safe custody. He looked at his watch and decided he still
had enough time for quick sort through the postcards. Maybe if he browsed the
categories, a germ of an idea would come to him.

The man who’d been looking earlier was still there. He
seemed to be very focused and was searching intently. He’d already put five or
six cards aside. Peter noticed that the boxes containing postcards from the
English counties were some way to the right of the man. Peter decided that he
could look at those, without interruption or the need to shuffle sideways, to
allow anyone else to search beside him.

He spotted the box labelled ‘Essex’. It was unlikely that
someone living in Essex would receive a card from Essex, but he reasoned there
might be a picture of St Martin’s Church, Leyton. He grasped a handful and
worked his way through them, but again he drew a blank.

He scanned the labels on the other boxes noting the names
for each county and saw that the ‘Hampshire’ box had a sub-section tabbed ‘Isle
of Wight’. Suddenly, Peter’s heart started to beat a little faster. The Williams
family came from the Isle of Wight. What if a family member had sent a postcard
to John and Louisa in Leyton?

He began to examine the Isle of Wight cards, studying the
addresses on the back. He was halfway through them when he stopped and read one
address again, this time carefully:
Mr & Mrs J Williams, 46 Apsley
Street, Leyton, Essex.
It was postmarked: Ventnor I.O.W. 28 July 1902.

The scene on the front was entitled ‘Ventnor, Isle Of
Wight’. It was a coloured picture of the beach and esplanade. Numerous bathing
machines were drawn up in a line along the water’s edge, extending towards the
pier. Behind the beach, buildings dominated the face and top of the cliff.

The message on the reverse read:

Dearest John and
Louisa,

Charlotte and I took
Edith and Harold to the beach today. Lovely sunshine. They paddled and made
sandcastles. Hope Henry is better now. George and Charlotte send their love.