tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8627322010786735293.post6561919788136647269..comments2023-10-01T09:35:35.894+02:00Comments on Antipodes: Family-history shockWilliam Skyvingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10052367756561555096noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8627322010786735293.post-59213774415231348752010-05-08T18:39:39.854+02:002010-05-08T18:39:39.854+02:00The facts you just unearthed about your ggf is why...The facts you just unearthed about your ggf is why I avoid people who consider genealogy b-o-r-i-n-g. Either such people are shallow and one-dimensional or, like my mother's mother, were aware of family skeletons they hoped no one would rattle. <br /><br />No surprise then that that's precisely what I've been doing for the last 30 years and found several men on that side who supposedly "died young", but who actually deserted the first wife and their children (three seems to have been the magic number) and started a new family elsewhere. <br /><br />In fact, unless I can locate a grave for such a husband in the same area, I **immediately** begin looking for him elsewhere.<br /><br />Therefore, I think your instincts are correct, that your ggf did have a second family in the West Country after leaving Newgate Prison. How sad for your gf that he never knew. Please keep us posted on your progress.JamaGeniehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16973656461323918279noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8627322010786735293.post-7713437415398283152010-05-08T17:06:51.020+02:002010-05-08T17:06:51.020+02:00What a fabulous story! It's almost mind-boggli...What a fabulous story! It's almost mind-boggling. Thanks for sharing all the details.Becky Thompsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11841947942442007031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8627322010786735293.post-34749866815854987212010-05-04T10:01:31.036+02:002010-05-04T10:01:31.036+02:00Australian genealogists are accustomed to finding ...Australian genealogists are accustomed to finding detailed accounts of much earlier English trials (often for petty crimes), during the first half of the 19th century, resulting in the transportation of convicted individuals to the Antipodes. The difference, here, is that the case concerns an ancestral line, the Skyvingtons, that did not arrive in Australia as convicts. Besides, this case belonged to the dying days (pun intended) of the terrible Victorian era of British justice meted out at the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison. But the main point of my explanations is the way in which this unexpected criminal incident served as a catalyst obliging me to rethink the case of my ancestor William Skyvington, and to envisage the possibility that he might have decided to restart a new family life in England.<br /><br />There's another tragic dimension to this affair of my English great-grandparents. How should a man behave when his young wife is dying of tuberculosis (a terribly contagious affliction), and their child is being looked after by aunts and a grandmother in a comfortable setting?<br /><br />The man in question, my future great-grandfather William Skyvington, had already lost his mother when he was a year-old baby. Then his father had remarried with an older Belgian lady, and the lad left the rural south-west and moved up to London. It's interesting when family history can be seen against a background of down-to-earth human events. I would even say that genealogy is <i>only</i> a worthwhile preoccupation when it can be investigated in such settings. I'm still at a loss, though, to imagine the circumstances in which my ancestor had decided to defraud somebody of the sum of one pound, three shillings and eleven pence. If I were inclined to romantic thinking, I might imagine that he wanted to buy an expensive gift for his Cornish mistress (whose identity I only unearthed yesterday) named Charity Tredidga…William Skyvingtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10052367756561555096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8627322010786735293.post-40863851472919244142010-05-03T22:27:06.342+02:002010-05-03T22:27:06.342+02:00What fascinating discoveries!
I would not have bel...What fascinating discoveries!<br />I would not have believed that it is possible to find such detailed records so far back in time.<br />Good luck with your research,<br />MerisiMerisihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16781937797213521146noreply@blogger.com