Seeking a ‘vanished’ ancestor

Q

Can you help find a distant ancestor who has vanished from records? Edwin Virgilius Thornhill was born on 12 July 1829 and baptised at St. Magnus the Martyr Fish St Hill London on 14 April 1830. He was the son of Frederick Thornhill of Fish St Hill. He married on 3 May 1860 at St. James, Shoreditch to Harriett Lunn. After this he disapperars. In the 1861 census he is listed age 20 in Brick Lane, St. Lukes, Finsbury, London as a hard box maker. In 1861 Harriett his wife is living with her Lunn parents in Radnor St. Finsbury with her son Edwin William born that year. She is listed as married. There is a record for a discharge from the Holborn Workhouse on 10 August 1866 for Harriett Thornhill and Edwin W. In 1871 Harriett and Edwin, now age 10, are back at her parents’ house in Radnor St. and she is still listed as married. She died age 36 in 1874.

Edwin Virgilius was a cabinet maker. I have not found him in the trade directories nor is there any record of him in further census records or deaths in FREEBMD. I have not had access to criminal or military records nor emigration but there may be a connection here. His brother Frederick Magnus Thornhill emigrated to Tasmania where he married in Hobart in 1865. Likewise a cousin John Thornhill went out to Victoria, Australia, in the late 1840s and John’s sister Maria Weedon died in 1863 at sea near Tasmania. I would love to learn what became of him. Clive Allen

A

Despite the remarkable access we have to the records of distant ancestors, it’s an inescapable fact that people could – and did – disappear if they really wanted to. If we’re lucky, they might turn up using their real name in an unexpected place, assuming that they wouldn’t be discovered so far from home, but if they decided to adopt a new identity, recognising them as the person we’re looking for can be next to impossible.

All we can do is make sure that we’ve looked at every possible record relating to the immediate family. In this case, I would want to see the birth certificate of Edwin and Harriet’s son, Edwin junior, and I’d want to know how Harriet was described on her death certificate in 1874 – was she the wife or the widow of Edwin Virgilius Thornhill? I would also want to trace each of his siblings to see where their lives led them.

The entry for Harriet and Edwin’s admission to the City Road Workhouse on 7 August 1866 gives her ‘Cause of Seeking Relief’ as ‘Deserted’. Three days later she and her son were discharged at Harriet’s ‘own request’ and as you know, they returned to her mother’s house in Radnor Street.

From this, we can be fairly certain that Edwin had indeed deserted his wife and child. His absence from the 1861 census seems to suggest that the abandonment occurred not long after Edwin junior was born.

Perhaps he decided that parenthood wasn’t for him and headed off for a new life, complete with a new identity. There’s no obvious sign in any of the easily accessible online records of Edwin turning up in the USA, Canada or Australia but it’s a big world and he could well be hidden from us in some remote corner of the globe, using his real name.

There’s also the possibility that he left home, fell on hard times and ended dying somewhere as a person unknown. Our parish registers are full of the burials of ‘strangers’ who died on the road, or in the local inn.

It’s a depressing thought but not all of our ancestors ended their days surrounded by their nearest and dearest. DA