Seeking Ann Horner

QI wonder if you can help me to trace family member Ann Horner? Ann was born on 30 June 1866 at 15 Coatbridge Street, Glasgow, the daughter of John Horner, carting contractor, and Elizabeth m.s. Miller. Elizabeth was the mother of my great-great grandfather William Miller, later Horner Mcmillan; William, sadly, was born illegitimately.

John Horner’s family came, in fact, from England – Beadle, Yorkshire; but even a poor relief application which he made, aged 73, at 7 Coatbridge Street, Glasgow, in 1895, mentions only William, not Ann.

John’s sister, Isabella, who married John Wauchop/wauchope, also made an application, in 1890, from 15 Coatbridge Street, but, again, there is no indication of her niece Ann. The parents of John, and Isabella, were Thomas Horner, farmer/carter, and Ann Wellburn.

My last record of Ann, junior, comes with the 1871 census on 3 April, at 17 Broomhill Street, Port Dundas, Glasgow (Ref. 644/01 102 Central District). She is detailed here as aged 5, and then the trail goes totally cold.

Over the years I have tried many and varied spellings of both ‘Ann’ and ‘Horner’, I have even wondered about ‘Nancy’, for example. All to no avail! No trace, can I find, of a marriage, or death certificate.

I would so appreciate any help in tracing Ann junior’s eventual whereabouts, please. Thank you in anticipation.

AThis one is quite a mystery, because she does seem to disappear as you say, but there are some further possibilities to consider. Like you I have been able to find her birth record from 1866 at 15 Coatbridge Street on Scotlandspeople (www. scotlandspeople.gov.uk), but nothing beyond the 1871 census entry quoted. I could not find this census entry on Scotlandspeople itself, only as an incomplete transcript on Findmypast with little source information, and on Ancestry with the source details provided matching those you have quoted, but with the surname incorrectly indexed as ‘Maner’. Her father, John Horner, is found on Scotlandspeople to have died on 1 May 1898, and it would seem that his daughter Ann was indeed named for his mother, although his death record gives different parental details to those you have identified, stating him to be the son of John Horner, farmer, his father, and Ann Campbell, his mother, with William Horner Mcmillan as the informant (Deaths, St. Rollox, 1898 644/6 543).

She’s either there... or she isn’t

In circumstances like this, Ann is either there on Scotlandspeople, and there is a problem in how she is documented or indexed getting in the way, or she is not there, which raises a whole range of other possibilities. I will assume that you have exhausted all the possible searches for her using wildcards and name variants, and perhaps using her mother’s maiden name. With this being within the civil registration era, every death in Scotland should be recorded, but I have seen instances where such registrations have been missed. If she died in infancy or at a later stage, she may have been buried in a family plot. Many Glasgow cemetery records are now available on Familysearch (see http://familytr.ee/fsglas). If you know where other family members were buried you could try to locate their records for the relevant lair number, and then try to see if she may have been buried in the same lair, or simply browse the records of the nearest cemeteries for possible burials.

It is also possible that she may have been institutionalised, either for medical considerations or for criminal misdemeanours

Where to look next

The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 made it mandatory that every child aged 5-13 should be educated at a school. As Ann was

5 in 1871 she was certainly in the right age bracket if she survived beyond the census, so you could perhaps try tracing her presence in a school local to Broomhill Street through records held at Glasgow City Archives (http://familytr.ee/glasgow for the ‘Important Information’ and latest news about visiting the archives.

If she attended school locally, the records should hopefully document for how long. The 1881 census still shows John Horner to be at 17 Broomhill Street in 1881, so the family was certainly based in the same area of Glasgow for at least the first eight years from when education was made compulsory.

Newspapers are also well worth searching for further information about the family. A quick search on the British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), for example, using the search terms Horner +“Coatbridge Street” shows articles in several newspapers from August-september 1894 mentioning John Horner, Contractor of 7 Coatbridge Street in Port Dundas, Glasgow, as being listed under their Sequestrations section, with the word ‘sequestration’ being the Scottish term for bankruptcy proceedings.

There are papers concerning this sequestration process held at the National Records of Scotland (www.nrscotland.gov.uk) in Edinburgh, which date to 1898 (the year of John’s death) and which are catalogued under CS318/41/173, with the catalogue noting that proceedings commenced on 18 August 1894, and which were almost certainly the reason John applied for poor relief the following year. Sequestration papers will document the nature of his business at the time of the bankruptcy, but also any factors which may have emerged over the years following the start of the process up to 1898 which may have affected John’s ability to work towards a discharge of the proceedings. The papers are certainly worth examining, because they may be another documentary source within which Ann may have been named, if she was still alive at that point.

Incidentally, an earlier notice on page 12 (column 2) of the Glasgow Herald on 17 January 1894, several months before the sequestration, shows that an auction was to be held at 7 Coatbridge Street on the following day to sell off ‘The property of Mr John Horner, Contractor, and sold on account of his giving up the Contractor’s Business’, with many of his assets listed, including horses, carts, lorries, harnesses, and an ‘Irish jaunting car’. You may also find more about his business ventures by checking the Edinburgh Gazette (www.thegazette.co.uk).

If Ann’s father was from Yorkshire, there may still have been a connection to family down there, and so looking for expanded family members in the censuses at Beadle or beyond may be a further possibility. It is is also possible that she may have been institutionalised, either for medical considerations or for criminal misdemeanours.

Newspapers may again be worth consulting for the latter, and on the former, you could contact NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives (http://familytr.ee/greaterglas) for advice on any records which might exist and be worthy of pursuit. CP