Death surprise! Why would........

[Merry]

BK6 updated from this thread

a 61 year old farmer from Werks House Farm, Nutfield, Surrey (where he was born and lived his life) die in Three Anchors Bay, near Capetown, South Africa?

It's a mystery, but would explain why I had never been able to find a death reg for him in England.

Any ideas either why he would have been there or how I can confirm that's where he died? (I have tried contacting two people with this info on Ancestry trees, but not had any reply.)

UPDATE - whoops, sorry, the date would be helpful!! His name was Thomas Tully Dann and he is supposed to have died 15th Dec 1880.

[Olde Crone]

I don't know, but isn't it maddening when they do these unexpected things?

I was astonished to find on a census the information that two children were born in Prussia. Highly unlikely I thought, as the father was a weaver, born married and died in the same street.

Turned out he was sent by his employer as part of a task force to set up a new cotton mill in Prussia. He and his family were there for seven years before returning to England and picking up where they left off.

Perhaps your man was visiting friends/family, or investigating the possibility of farming in SA? Not sure how you would prove the death - has google anything to offer on the subject?

OC

[Mary from Italy]

http://ancestry24.com/?s=search&search=tully+dann&collectionID=

[Merry]

OC, I agree - they shouldn't mess us about doing things unexpected. Last week I discovered someone who was a shoemaker in the IoW had spent the five years before his marriage sailing about the world being attacked by 'savages' in the South Seas and being shipwrecked a couple of times etc etc when I would have expected he was just sitting in Newport making boots! lol Reminds me that the census is just a snapshot!

Wow Mary, what's that site then? I've not seen that before!! Interesting that he says "originally of Nutfield" suggesting he had been in SA for a while.

Thanks very much indeed!

[Mary from Italy]

I just found it by googling for Cape Town burials, but it looks like an interesting site for South African genealogy. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Cape Town FHS are helpful, too.

http://www.family-history.co.za/

[Merry]

Nice one :) I have one or two other who 'escaped' to SA so I'll be having a look at that site again tomorrow to see if it can help me with them too. :)

[Olde Crone]

There might also be something in his local rag (Nutfield). They rather liked it when people died abroad, lol, or so it would seem in my family...a sort of "serves them right for daring to go abroad".

OC

[Mary from Italy]

Ooh, just found something else. I'll PM you,

[Val in Oz]

Merry could he have been out there fighting in the Boer War?

[Merry]

Mary, Thanks very much for your PM.

OC, I expect you are right. It's just unfortunate that his 'local' relgious rag, the Annual Quaker Monitor of BMDs, isn't online yet for 1881. I have got quite a few records for his family from the editions that have been made available, including the distressing tale of the loss of two of his sons in a bathing accident. Surprisingly I already new one of his sons had died, but the local newspaper hadn't made a deal of the fact that of four boys drowned, two were brothers and so I hadn't realised before (imagine that in today's papers). It would seem the fault may have laid with their schoolteacher who was supposed to be overseeing the swimming party, but he wrote a long paragraph about the boys for the Annual Monitor saying they were in a better place. He was lucky the inquest judge hadn't sent him to court over it (this was debated in the paper)

Val, for a second I laughed at your comment as he would have been a bit old for fighting, but your remark opened up my thoughts to the war and the fact that as a pacifist (as he was a Quaker) there's a slight possibility he was there in connection with the war, or trying to argue against it in some way. I hope he wasn't there for a business opportunity on the back of the war :eek:

[Kit]

This is a website for the SA national archives. I've found some useful bits and pieces here for OHs family. Ancestry24 is a paid site so I'm not sure how much you can get off it for free.

http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl

[Rosie Knees]

I was astonished to find on a census the information that two children were born in Prussia. Highly unlikely I thought, as the father was a weaver, born married and died in the same street.

Turned out he was sent by his employer as part of a task force to set up a new cotton mill in Prussia. He and his family were there for seven years before returning to England and picking up where they left off.



OC

Last week I discovered someone who was a shoemaker in the IoW had spent the five years before his marriage sailing about the world being attacked by 'savages' in the South Seas and being shipwrecked a couple of times etc etc when I would have expected he was just sitting in Newport making boots! lol Reminds me that the census is just a snapshot!



How on earth do you discover these things?

[Merry]

In my case it was because I had a contact from a fifth and sixth cousin (same person, we are related twice) via GR. Her aunt has a family history written by her g-grandfather and in that he wrote about his grandfather, the bootmaker, come traveller of the high seas!

Once I knew there was something to look for, I did actually find the info on line, here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jgEqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA155&dq=%22annual+monitor%22+pierce&hl=en&ei=GUv-S7ejLsmF4Qbc9rHwDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false


Thomas Pierce, entry begins at the bottom of page 155, and the bit in question is on the following page.

As he has a fairly common name and isn't a very close relative to me, I probably would never have found this without my 'new' cousin finding me!

[Olde Crone]

In my case it was an extremely lucky find - I literally tripped over a cardboard box which had just been dumped in a local archive and contained some old church magazines.

These turned out to be an absolute gold mine of trivial information about church members and ex church members, many of whom had gone abroad for one reason or another and whose letters home were published in the church mag. These mags plus the local paper have really coloured in my extended family in a way I could never have hoped to do...not knowing I was looking for the information in the first place!

OC

[Nell]

It's our ancestors doing the unexpected which makes this hobby so interesting. My poor gt x 3 grandfather Emmets Matthews was born, baptised and died and buried in Whichford, Warwickshire. He is in Whichford on all the censuses 1841-71. So when I found his marriage - in Whichford - it was a thrill to find he was "of the parish of Long Compton" so he had managed to escape even if it was only to the next parish along!

[Rosie Knees]

I - I literally tripped over a cardboard box which had just been dumped in a local archive and contained some old church magazines.



OC

talk about coming smelling of roses lol.

[Rosie Knees]

*remembers manners*

Thanks for the replies :)