Genealogy Chat

Hi should i approach the nearest medical records office to where my g.mother lived or died ,in order to find out when she died and where
Thanks Carol

Her death should be in the complete death index.

Do you have her full name at death and an approximate year? I know from your previous thread that she may have had one of three surnames.

Kath. x

I don't think you stand a chance of them giving you that information (even if they have it). Order her death certificate instead - that will give you the information you need. Should be possible to find if her name isn't too common and you know roughly when and where she died.

Hi Kathleen and Helen
If only it were that simple, she died around 1942/3 either in kenton harrow middlesex which is where she lived, but have an old letter in my possesion which mentions she died in kent which is too much like kenton, also she had a maiden name a married name and a partner of 10 yrs name , i have had many people look for her including myself she is not registered , sounds impossible but it was war years her name was Annie Gellatly Stewart then Annie Gellatly mills and finally if she took her partners name Annie Gellatly Bacon she was about 43/44 when she died , i would pay anything for a death cert as i want to to find her resting place and erect a headstone as she was very poor she would probably been put in a mass grave i expect , i need to find her
Carol

Do you have her birth certificate as I can't find anyone in any records with that name?

Kath. x

Hi Carol,
Just a thought. How much do you know about her partner Mr Bacon?

Sometimes if you you cannot find the person you are searching for directly, you can pick up some useful leads from an indirect route by researching those who they were close to.

Do you know if Mr Bacon died around the same time or whether he survived by many years? Has he perhaps got close relatives you could trace. One might know of the circumstances of your gran's death.

Have you tried posting messages or a letter to a local website or newspaper(Kenton or even Kent, to be sure) about your quest for information? With any luck it might stir the memory of someone who knew her during the war years.

Incidentally that middle name IS odd. I bet it has been recorded in a variety of ways. Is it a variant of Golightly? And, be warned, Mills often gets mistranscribed as Hills.

Good luck in your search.
Tracey

Searched births at Ancestry -- FreeBMD doesn't do middle names.

I can't tell whether you have Annie's birth cert or not.


Name: John Gellatly Stewart
Year of Registration: 1910
Quarter of Registration: Jan-Feb-Mar
District: Tynemouth
County: Northumberland
Volume: 10b
Page: 179


Might that be a sibling?


There isn't a male Stewart - female Gellatly marriage to explain the naming, so Gellatly must be a surname farther back in one of the lines.

As Tracey says, the indirect route can be the one that gets you there in the end.

Google finds:

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ANGUS/2005-07/1120250863

"Here are some deaths from Monifieth. Please contact me for full details. Format is name, age, father, mother, spouse(s).
... 1905
Alexina STEWART, 1 hr, Alexander Gellatly STEWART, Mary Ann SMITH"

Have you checked the common wealth war graves website? Even if she wasn't in the forces she could have been classed as a civilian war casualty - at least worth a try.

J

You could also get in touch with the local registra's office to see if they have the death certificate. It could be that the cert never got to the GRO or did but very mistranscribed.

Also check the local graveyards/Cemetries.

I would be very tempted to send for the cert for Annie Mills Dec qtr 1941 age 50yrs Dartford.
My g grandfather's age was out by 7 years (but then the informant was a Chief Medical Officer - not a family member).
Apologies if I'm covering old ground here.

Hi Kath
Yes i do have her birth cert she was born in scotland ,she came to England when she was 20 yrs old 1919 , sorry Kath thats why you cant find her birth entry
Carol

Hi Kathryn B ,Tracey, J, and Angela
Annie was born in Angus Scotland in 1899 she came to England to marry my grandfather in 1919 his name was joseph Mills they married in yarmouth , had 5 children,( my mum being one ) she left my grandad in 1930 as she became pregnant with william Henry Bacons child , she left the children behind and never saw them again , they were 10,8,6,4,2 my mum was the 6yr old and never remembered her mum ,all i had was her name to go by and from that i traced decendants in Scotland from her and found cousins of my mum that we never knew exsisted,i looked up a birth for the child she was pregnant with in yarmouth and she had a daughter named Iris beatrice Bacon ,i then found a marriage for Iris she married in willesden kenton in 1958
I sent for her marriage cert and got the address of where she was living ,bearing in mind my gran was dead at this point ,
some scottish rellies found a photo of my gran and William and Iris they were all standing outside a house with blackout curtains at the window we guessed that Iris looked about 9 or 10 so the photo was 1940/41 with the photo came a letter from Annies sister-in-law in scotland to one of Annies brothers saying that Annie had died in kent just before the sister-in-laws small child had died so i looked up that childs death and it was june 1944 , william died in 1973 in a hospital in kenton ,Iris there daughter died in 1990 in Australia where she emigrated arond 1962 i have the names of her children but they all live in Australia in N.S.W. i got there names from a lady on G.R.who lives in Australia who found Irises death in the paper and it named her childrenbut thats all the info it gave ,
Dear Kathryn B
You found an Alexander Gellatly Stewart and Mary ann Smith well they are Grans parents i found them and there unmarked grave 2 yrs ago in scotland , I had a headstone made for them and had it erected as they were poor and died 2wks apart with T.B. at a very young age Annie was 16 when they died her brothers were14 and not sure how old the otherone was , you mentioned Alexina1hr i never knew about her .
so you see i have all this info with only Grans name i must find her death i cant give up now , thank you all for your time and if you have a ideas on what to do next please tell me as i am desperate to know
many many thanks Carol x

Ah yes, the TB. In the tangled web that my gr-grfather Monck wove of his life, one of the two things he ever said to family after emigrating to Canada, and probably the only one of the two that was true, was that he had had a family that was "wiped out by a plague".

I didn't hear that until recently, after two years of drudgery in trying to find the truth about him. I'd deduced that he was born with the name Hill -- and this tale was a clincher, since Hill's brother, niece (at 16), first wife (at 23) and daughter with that wife (at 19) died of TB, as did probably other family members whose deaths I haven't found.

What that Alexina death record means is that she only lived for one hour. That's why you never knew about her.

My suggestions? I can't do better than anyone here, and I'd take theirs. I'm in Canada, and pretty useless with anything that isn't on line.

I would contact the person whose website has the Alexina death, though. Her email address is on the site I linked to above. She might have more records for the family, possibly even Annie's birth.

What I don't quite know is whether you have Annie's birth certificate (which would settle her age -- even if it wasn't reported correctly on her death certificate).

Looking at scotlandspeople, there are two Alexander Stewart - Mary Smith marriages in Monifieth between 1890 and 1900. I haven't paid, so I can't see the records. Would one be yours? Do you already know the date?

Aha. There is one Annie Gellatly Stewart birth in the records. I'm guessing at dates now to narrow it down ...

It was in 1899. You should pay the little bit it costs to see the record, to make sure it's your Annie, but there wouldn't seem to be much doubt.

http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

There is one other Gellatly Stewart birth in the records.

There are also 3 Gellatly Stewart deaths in the whole range, 1855-1957, which are probably known to you.


That's about the best I can do, I'm afraid. Scouring through the death indexes to find anyone with a name her death might have been registered under, in a place where she might have died, with an age that approximates hers, as you have done, and ordering the certificates and crossing your fingers, is about the best I can suggest.


Although.

Googling, I see a document compiling the Jewish war dead in London, one source being

"the Register of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney"

At the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site, searching for Annie's possible names (did you do that, as suggested?), I see references to, e.g.:


LEWISHAM, METROPOLITAN BOROUGH
OLDHAM, COUNTY BOROUGH
HACKNEY, METROPOLITAN BOROUGH
etc.

under "cemetery/memorial name".

It seems that records have been kept by each borough, of WWII civilian war deaths.

Being a foreigner, I have no idea what borough(s) you might be wanting to look in.

But this is the job that reference librarians are trained and waiting to do.

Go to your nearest public library and ask how to find records of civilian war dead in whatever borough(s) might be relevant! Or just every London borough that could possibly be relevant.

That's about all I can think of doing, but I do wish you very good luck.

Possibly a longshot, but there is an Annie Mills listed in the 1945 Q3 death index:

Mills, Annie 48 Hendon 3 a 472

Hendon is fairly close, geographically, to Kenton and the age isn't so far out....

Good luck with finding your Gran!

Hi Donna
Thanks for look up,but she def died before june 1944, but thank you so much, sorry for being a twit but what is Q3 index?
Carol

Carol,

All medical records are ried up for 100 years. I wanted info on my gt grandfather who died in a workhouse in 1922. These were classed as 'medical' and I had to apply for special approval to even find out the dates of admittance and dishcahrge for him

Anne

Hi Carol,

Sorry it wasn't a match.

The BMD indexes are held in quarters - Jan to Mar / Apr to Jun / Jul to Sep / Oct to Dec... also known as Q1 / Q2 / Q3 / Q4.

Regards,
Donna