Where did my 3x great uncle end up?
The 28-year-old Thomas, already having some medical knowledge, purely took the opportunity to travel
QI can’t find any reference to my 3x great uncle Thomas Parry after 1861. We have an original letter that was written in 1852 to Thomas, as ship’s surgeon on the America.
I have tried without success to find more information about the voyage. I have traced Thomas from birth in 1824 in Llanbeblig in Wales to the 1861 census. I cannot find him on the 1871 census, and I can’t find reference to his death or marriage or anything else. He was a chemist and druggist on the census returns. Was he really a ship’s surgeon? Beks Parry, by email
AThe America sailed for the first time in 1848. Cunard’s administrative records, held at the Liverpool University Archives ( liverpool. ac.uk/
library/sca), may be worth consulting. Information on the steamer will also be found in the Maritime Archives at Merseyside Maritime Museum ( liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ maritime) where details are held for all the major shipping companies operating out of Liverpool. There is no evidence that Thomas ever trained to become a surgeon. Although by 1860 an experienced surgeon was attached to each ship, advertisements found in the Liverpool press before that date ask simply “for surgeons wanted for a ship bound to New York. No diploma requisite” which may indicate that the 28-year-old Thomas, already having some medical knowledge, purely took the opportunity to travel. Doctors were not required to have degrees at this time and were generally trained by apprenticeship.
Thomas Parry is listed as a local chemist and druggist in Gore’s Directories of Liverpool from 1857-1865. For the first three years he is found at 277 Upper Parliament Street. He appears for the last time in 1865 at New Road Tranmere – still a chemist but also running a Post and Money Order Office and Savings Bank. At this time, he is also occasionally the contact in local press advertisement sections – in 1860 letting a family home in Aigburgh and in 1863 attempting to set up a French language class locally.
There is no sign of Thomas in the Liverpool area after 1865. Both burials and monumental inscriptions at Llanbeblig should be considered in case Thomas returned to his place of birth. Online information suggesting his emigration and subsequent death in Pennsylvania have not been proved. It may be possible to narrow Thomas’s death down through probate records, looking not merely for Thomas but also his mother Anne and his siblings. Judith Moore