‘I discovered an uncle my father never knew’
Frances Richardson knew very little about her heritage. However, she soon realised that even delving into recent family history can reveal fascinating mysteries – and terrible tragedies, says Claire Vaughan
he photograph shows sunny day in 1928. The four young boys smile shyly, squinting into the camera. The youngest about 10, they’re dressed smartly: hair combed, jackets neatly buttoned, socks pulled up to their knees. They are clearly brothers, and while Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader Frances Richardson could name three of the boys in the photograph as her uncles, the fourth was completely unknown to her – and to her father. Once she began painstakingly picking her way through her Hick genealogy, she discovered that even recent family history can hold knots to be untangled and secrets that were never meant to be told… Plugging the gaps “It all started in the mid-1990s,” Frances remembers. “I was curious about my dad’s family. There were big age gaps between him and his brothers and sisters. My grandad, Harry Hick, died before I was born, and my grandma, Ruth, died in the early 1980s when I was a teenager, so I don’t remember much about her.”
At that time, the records available online were pretty scant, so research was difficult. Frances’ dad couldn’t help much – he didn’t know who his grandparents were, just that his father came from York and his mother, née Bradley, was born in Ripon (although eventually Frances discovered that she was actually born in York, too).
“My father told me that most of the family documents, papers and photos were thrown on the fire when my grandmother died in the 1980s.” Despite this setback, Frances has managed to trace her Hick ancestors as far as 1676 in Walton in Ainsty, near York.
However, it’s the contrasting lives and fortunes of her grandfather Harry and his brother George Charlton Hick that really captured her imagination.
Harry and George grew up in a large, close-knit family. George Charlton was born in 1887 and Harry was born in 1890 in Acomb, near York. “George was the second eldest of 10 children born to George Hick senior and Jane ( Jennie) Charlton.” He appears in the records until the 1911 census – after which he simply vanishes.
“My grandad was quite close to his brother Ambrose, who went to stay with my grandparents at one stage. Another brother, Fred, also lived locally. I found it strange that I didn’t find George nearby. I thought he might have gone to war, but when I couldn’t find anything in the army records I searched the passenger lists, which had just become available.
“Initially, I found a ‘GC Hick’ on a passenger list aged 25, leaving London for Sydney on the Beltana on 29 November 1912. It didn’t give me a huge amount of information – just that he was a farm hand, and travelling third class. It could have
Most of the family papers were thrown on the fire when my grandmother died
been anybody. But then I found another entry for GC Hick. He came and went several times in the early 1900s. Some journeys were related to military work. I had an inkling it was him, but wasn’t sure.”
Many of the official records for Australia weren’t available online at that point, which halted Frances’ research. So she tried another angle, and Googled his name. The ‘Papers Past’ area of the National Library of New Zealand’s website yielded the clue that she’d been looking for: “The first bit of solid information I got about George Charlton Hick was from a newspaper article. At last I knew I was on the right track.”
The eye-catching headline in the 15 July 1926 edition of the New Zealand Truth read: “HICKS AS A DEALER IN ‘HICS’”. It told how the greengrocer George Charlton Hicks [sic], of Courtenay Place, previously fined £10 for illegally selling cider, was now in trouble with the law for selling whisky. For this indiscretion, he was given a two-year suspended sentence.
Frances was over the moon. So, George had lived in New Zealand! Now she could target her search. She looked for his death online. “This brought up the graveyard in Wellington where he was buried. I actually managed to get a photograph of his gravestone.”
George is buried in the Karori Cemetery in Wellington, New Zealand. He was 64 and a civil servant when he died in 1951, but puzzlingly is buried in the soldiers’ section. Crucially his monumental inscription showed his regimental number.
Wartime service
With this new information, Frances tracked him down in the military and electoral rolls. His army records note that George was medically examined for service within the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) in May 1916 at New Plymouth, on the west coast of North Island, but was found unfit. Later records showed that he eventually did join the NZEF on 1 May 1918, and also that he’d left New Zealand on 10 July 1918, on RMS Tahiti for Plymouth, England, and arrived on 9 September. His company marched to Larkhill in Durrington, Wiltshire, and then to Brocton, Staffordshire, the home of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. He left the army on 29 March 1919. “After George was discharged, he may have stayed with my grandparents Harry and Ruth at Ellis Laithe Farm, near Wakefield. I was interested to see this address on his military records.” Later, when New Zealand’s civil registration documents became easier to access, Frances discovered that George married Beatrice Alice Want from Walsall in 1922. The couple had had three children who were all born in New Zealand: Owen Frederick Hick (born 1922), Robert George Hick (born 1924) and Peter Ronald Hick (born 1927). Compared with his brother, Harry’s story seemed to be one of an unremarkable, home-loving family man, but Frances eventually uncovered hidden heartbreak. “The records I used to research Harry were much more straightforward,” she says. “There’s not really a great deal to tell – he didn’t serve in the military, he was just a contented guy who worked on a farm and had a huge family.” But Frances had a hunch that something wasn’t quite right. There was a family rumour of an illegitimate child, whose birth certificate had been burned with the other family documents. The only evidence was a faded photo of four boys standing in a row.
“My mother said she’d been told that this child was called Harry. I spent years looking for him, searching on different names – ‘Harry Bradley’, ‘Harry Hick(s)’ – but never found anything.” So Frances reluctantly put Harry to one side and focused her attention elsewhere.
It wasn’t until much later, when she was researching Ruth’s family, that she confirmed the identity of the mystery boy in the photograph.
“My grandparents had married at Felkirk Parish Church, so I was browsing the registers trying to find my grandmother’s father and stepmother. By chance, I spotted the name George Charlton Hick-Bradley, baptised in 1913. I knew straight away that it was my dad’s missing brother. He had been born the year after George Charlton had sailed to Australia – there’s obviously some significance in the baby being given that name.” But what had happened to him?
‘Who else is in that grave?’
Frances searched in vain for evidence of her newfound uncle. Stirring at the back of her mind was a story she’d once been told about the family grave. When her grandmother had died, this plot was full so she was cremated. “I wondered who else was in that grave. Only the names of my grandfather and one of his daughters are on the gravestone.”
Delving deeper, Frances checked the parish records and discovered that George Charlton Hick-Bradley was, as she’d suspected, buried there too. His death certificate revealed that he’d died of meningitis in 1929, aged 16. “After his death, he was never mentioned by
Frances had a hunch that something wasn’t quite right. There was a family rumour of an illegitimate child
his other brothers and sisters – it was almost as though he hadn’t existed – so my father, born some years later, had no knowledge of him.”
The sons of George Charlton senior and Harry both endured tragedies of their own, on different continents.
During her hunt, Frances came across the story of one of her uncles, John Henry Hick (born 1915), who fought in the Second World War. “He was a medic in the Royal Army Medical Corps, was captured by the Japanese and spent three years as a prisoner of war.” There are some terrible accounts of atrocities that happened in these camps – including chemical and other testing. “John never spoke about his time in the camp after the war. We only came to realise what he had experienced when a camp mate, Arthur Christie, came to stay with us for John’s funeral. He told of the horrors that took place there.
“John was such a gentle, kind man, and I have very fond memories of him. I have several photos and artefacts that he kept from the war including a diary, postcards, camp newsletter, a letter of appreciation from the American War Department, his engraved billycan and his dog tags.”
Frances uncovered something else a lot more unusual. “By chance I found him on a film on YouTube, made when John’s camp was liberated by the Americans. I couldn’t believe it! When I showed my dad, he was really emotional. He said he wished his mother could have seen it at the time. It might have put her mind at rest.”
A tragedy of a different kind helped Frances to locate her relations down under.
Using New Zealand’s electoral rolls, she managed to track down George Charlton’s sons, Owen, Robert and Peter, but couldn’t get any further in trying to find her living relatives. However, when Googling their names one day she was shocked to come across an entry relating to Peter’s wife Shirley. On 10 April 1968 she was travelling on the Lyttelton– Wellington ferry the Wahine with her three children when it sank in Wellington Harbour. Shirley’s son David, from a prior relationship, survived, but Peter and Shirley’s two-year-old daughter Alma drowned, while their one-yearold son Gordon was pulled from the water and had to be resuscitated. He suffered brain damage and died in 1990, the 52nd victim of one of the country’s worst maritime disasters.
“It was a shocking moment when I found that my family were connected to the Wahine sinking. It wasn’t until I started looking at what actually happened that my feeling of elation turned to one of great sadness.”
New connections
It was easy for Frances to find her New Zealand kin: “I went onto the Wahine Facebook page and looked for a Hick, and there was one. On his page, there were photographs and information about his father, so I knew that he was the son of my dad’s cousin.”
“I’d always wondered what happened to George Charlton, so finding his descendants in New Zealand and being in contact with them on Facebook is fantastic.”
So having uncovered some remarkable tales, with not a lot to go on and several red herrings, what advice does she have for other researchers? “Probably, don’t take everything your family tells you as gospel!” she laughs.