READER STORY
Joyce Fennell tells Claire Vaughan about her late father’s research into their American pioneering ancestry, and her quest to complete this tale of adventure and tragedy
Joyce Fennell set out to unearth the truth behind an intriguing family story – and struck gold
alf century ago, Stanley McGuire set about trying to unearth the truth behind a tantalising tale he’d been told by his father as a child, about an ancestor who had gone to America during the Gold Rush. His work has recently come to light and his daughter Joyce Fennell has made it her mission to track down the evidence he used to put it together.
Joyce’s mother passed away 18 months ago, and while clearing out the family home Joyce discovered her father’s detailed story. “I was astounded. He’d written a 12-page article called The American Connection and I was absolutely amazed by what was in there. He was clearly keen to prove that the tales he’d been told growing up were true,” she says.
“It was all new to me. I’d heard talk of Humphrey Peavey Bates when I was growing up and I knew my father was researching his family tree, but that was it. I’d never really paid much attention, so this has been a revelation to me. It’s really given me the genealogy bug.”
Humphrey, the focus of Stanley’s tale, was Joyce’s great great grandfather. “He was a mariner and I guess he must have been a very restless man,” she explains. In the mid-1840s, he visited the busy port city of Liverpool. It seems he stayed at a boarding house there, and fell in love with the proprietor’s daughter, Jane Wittleton. Their marriage certificate shows they wed in 1845.
When Stanley was researching in the 1960s and 70s, there were no computers or internet, so he had to do a lot of work ‘on the ground’. In 1968, convinced the family originated from Liverpool, Stanley put an advertisement in the Liverpool Echo, asking anyone with information about the Bates family to get in touch. It paid off, when a Mrs Hanscott contacted him. “She knew my father’s family and his parents, and was in fact descended from Humphrey’s daughter, Selina,” Joyce explains. “Mrs Hanscott confirmed the family stories about America. My father learned about where Humphrey met his wife, Jane, and was able to visit Crooked Lane and Litherland Alley where they lived.”
Old fashioned research
The same year Stanley also decided to visit his aunt, Helena Jane – only to find she had died two weeks earlier. “Her daughter was sorting through paperwork and gave my father some letters and an old tin photo of his grandmother, Harriet Ellen,” Joyce reveals. “The letters were from Humphrey’s sister, Helena Scoular Bates, to her niece, Harriet, dated 1894.
“They were sent from Islington, Massachusetts, and St John, New Brunswick. One letter stated that Helena Scoular had ‘been West with my children, but quite a distance from where your father [Humphrey] resided, which was the State of Nevada, ELKO’. She suggested that Harriet Ellen contact the postmaster for further info on Humphrey’s death at Fox Springs, Nevada.”
These letters were a mine of information, proving that Humphrey had been in and died in Nevada – Gold Rush country.
Joyce’s father also visited the Liverpool Public Library to trace the baptism records of Humphrey and Jane’s three daughters: Harriet Ellen, Sarah Jane and Selina, who was the youngest, born in 1850. But just a year later, at the time of the 1851 census, Jane, 26, is living back with her mother and stepfather Sarah and John Crossley. She has Selina, aged just nine months, with her. There’s no sign of Humphrey. This must be around the time he went to seek his fortune in America. Perhaps he planned to return to the family with his wealth or send for them once he was settled.
Going for gold
For those with a taste for adventure, the early 1850s was an exciting, if volatile, time in America: the subject of anti-slavery was dividing the nation and would lead to civil war, PT Barnum was touring his circus show, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Melville’s Moby Dick had just been published, and the Californian Gold Rush was in full swing.
On 24 January 1848, James W Marshall discovered gold on his land in Coloma, California. Word soon spread bringing 300,000 people to the area with a devastating impact on the landscape, native population and infrastructure. There were no laws governing property rights in the goldfields and prospectors – often known as ‘ fortyniners’ as many arrived in 1849 – would just stake their claim and begin panning for gold.
Humphrey was one of those prospectors, but his quest for fortune cost him his family on the other side of the world. “I don’t think Jane ever saw Humphrey after he left. She brought up their three daughters on her own,” says Joyce. “Times were tough and she thought he’d died, so she remarried in 1864 and settled in London. Later Humphrey sent for her, but she refused to go. It left him a broken man.”
So was there gold ‘in them thar hills’ for Humphrey? The tin photo given to Stanley provided a clue. It was a portrait of Harriet Ellen, Stanley’s grandmother. Stanley had it restored, and revealed Harriet was wearing a very distinctive pair of earrings. “The letters said Humphrey had sent a pair of earrings to each of his daughters, and his wife, from which dangled gold nuggets.” This was definitive proof he’d struck gold.
One of the most surprising things for Joyce was discovering that Humphrey had originally been born in the USA and later migrated to Britain.
“My father had written to the archivist of St John, New Brunswick, where Humphrey had been born. This source provided a lot of information on the Bates’ family, including the fact that they were originally from Eastport, Maine.” This led Stanley to approach the Eastport Border Historical Society, which was of enormous help in shedding light on the Bates family. Humphrey’s parents were Elias Bates (1771-1823) and Hannah MacLeod (born 1785) and the USA Federal Census records show them living in Eastport as early as 1810. They had seven children including Humphrey: Henry Winslow (the eldest born 1808), Helena Scoular, Hannah, Harriet Elizabeth, Hamlet and Hector.
Stanley also sent a letter to the local newspaper in Eastport in 1971, and again received a response. “A Mrs Belle Calder replied saying she had a connection with the Bates. She had the original family Bible, given to Richard P Bates, Elias’ brother, in the early 1800s. She sent my father a copy of the front page, which provided some key information about Elias’ forebears. She also sent my father a photo album.”
Taking up the baton
The copy of the Bible page is now lost and few of the photographs in the album are captioned, but this hasn’t stopped Joyce.
She has also been investigating the significance of Humphrey’s middle name, Peavey. Like her father before her, Joyce wrote to the museum in Eastport, which helped her solve this mystery. “Humphrey’s father Elias was very friendly with Ebenezer Hatheway, a merchant, and James Peavey, a timber trader. There must have been a very strong bond between them because Elias named Humphrey after James Peavey’s son.
“James lived 300 miles down the coast from Elias, so I wondered how he got to know the family. I assume because Elias and Ebenezer were both merchants, it’s likely they sailed down the coast and back again many times and James could have been one of their clients.”
The family ties didn’t end there though. Joyce discovered that one of Ebenezer’s children married into the Bates family and one married into the Peaveys. “All three men are connected through marriage. I thought
Humphrey’s quest for fortune cost him his family and left him a broken man
that was fascinating. And in fact, that bond is evidenced further down the line. My great grandmother, Humphrey’s daughter, was named Harriet Ellen Hatheway Bates.”
Joyce’s father mentioned a Joseph Peavey in his notes too. “He was also involved with the timber trade and invented a tool called a Peavey in 1857. It allows you to free log jams when timber is being floated downstream. It’s still in production today.”
No silver lining
With no chance of his wife and children joining him in America, Humphrey gave up on gold and turned instead to silver mining. He’d staked his claim and discovered rich deposits of the precious metal. But disaster struck when he was beaten up and robbed of his claim. Humphrey was so badly injured that he couldn’t continue as a miner and went to work at Willeys Freight Station, where he appears in the USA 1880 census.
The county’s local newspaper, the Elko Independent, helped fill in the gaps. “The editor told my father that there was a ranch in Fox Springs, Elko, Nevada, owned by a Mr Oldham. He confirmed that there was a grave on the ranch, with a headstone bearing the name of Bates. I think this ranch must have been Willeys’. It would be lovely to be able to see the original picture of his gravestone that my father once had.”
Humphrey died there in 1888. Tragically he’d been dead for several weeks when his body was discovered. “He’d been badly mauled by animals – it’s a horrible story.”
As well as writing his account, Stanley had set up a genealogy database using some family tree software. “My son has since managed to convert it into a readable format,” says Joyce. “There are at least 1,500 entries: my father researched the family back to 1445 to a Thomas Chatfield.” Remarkably, Joyce saw that Humphrey’s family weren’t the first of her ancestors to have made America their home.
“Sometime during the 1630s, the wife of Henry Chatfield (1588-1637) my 10x great grandfather must have gone out to America. She was born in Sussex, England but died in Connecticut, USA. Henry remarried a Jane Wickham from Sussex. Their children: Francis, Thomas and George were all born in Sussex but died in Connecticut or Long Island.” Clearly there is more here for Joyce to look into.
“Humphrey’s life was very tragic. He went through great hardship, but he was a pioneer of his time. I’ve learnt about how determined my ancestors must have been. Humphrey has shown tremendous spirit of determination and perseverance to strike out on his own across America – I think it’s incredible. Researching the Gold Rush, I’ve started to understand why the West had such a reputation for risk and danger.”
Equally remarkable perhaps are the ingenious methods that Stanley used to make his genealogical discoveries all those years ago. It’s almost as if he, too, were digging for gold – every hard-won piece of new evidence a shining nugget to add to his collection – ready to be rediscovered and held up to the light decades later by his daughter.