How Jean Evans’ grandmother missed out on a family fortune
Jean Evans solved a 90-year-old mystery involving her great grandmother and a vast sum of money. Jon Bauckham finds out more
How long have you been doing your family history?
I started about 20 years ago when I enrolled on a family history course at night school. I was especially interested to find out more about my great grandmother, Sarah Ann MacNaboe, who was buried in a paupers’ grave despite apparently being due to inherit a fortune.
What had you managed to uncover before hitting your brick wall?
Sarah Ann MacNaboe was born in 1859 in Manchester. She was working as a servant girl when she married Joseph Thomas (1850-1909), with whom she had nine children.
Despite my ancestor’s humble beginnings and the fact she died a pauper, I grew up with the family story that she should have inherited £ 26,000 – a sum equivalent to nearly £ 2 million in today’s money.
As a young girl I was intrigued to hear that my grandmother, Henrietta Thomas, had been visited by two gentlemen telling her that she was due a huge inheritance. My grandmother later understood that Sarah Ann had been left a large sum by a rich relative living in London. But as Sarah Ann had died some years before, the money was to be shared between her descendants, including my grandfather, Arthur Thomas. However, as he had also died and only been buried a day before the visit, my grandmother was in such a state of distress that she sent them away. In doing so, she missed out on a substantial share of the inheritance.
I understood that a great aunt of mine was subsequently one of the beneficiaries and that the story made one of the Manchester newspapers. I was also told that a photo of my great aunt hanging out her washing had been taken to accompany the article.
What was stopping you from progressing your research?
I had not managed to find out much about Sarah Ann despite MacNaboe being a relatively unusual name in England. All I knew is that my grandfather Arthur Thomas had passed away in 1922, which gave a clue as to when the rich relative in question might have died.
However, I could not find anything out about the inheritance, the mystery relative, or which newspaper the article had appeared in.
How had you tried to solve the mystery previously?
I had gone online to see if I could find a will or any possible members of the MacNaboe family living in London, but all to no avail.
What was your ‘eureka’ moment?
My daughter-in-law Anne, herself a keen family historian, offered to help me and went to visit Salford Local History Library.
It was with great excitement that she rang me later that day to say she had found a newspaper article about the inheritance! The story was printed in the Salford Advertiser on 14 October 1922 entitled “A Pendleton Heiress. Legacy of £ 26,000”.
How did it solve the problem?
It confirmed details of the story I had grown up with – that there was a large inheritance
originally left to my great grandmother, Sarah Ann Thomas (née MacNaboe).
It explained that some of the money was subsequently given to Mrs Emily Osbourne (née Thomas), who was Sarah Ann’s eldest child and my great aunt.
How did you feel when you discovered the story?
I was absolutely thrilled! The article said that a wealthy London uncle had died in 1921 and had left a massive £ 46,000 to both Sarah Ann and her brother Thomas MacNaboe. At last I had proof there was truth in the story about what had become known in my family as the ‘MacNaboe money’.
Did you discover anything else along the way?
Yes! The article gave me a wealth of information, including that the inheritance was originally to be divided unequally: £ 26,000 to Sarah Ann and £ 20,000 to her brother, Thomas.
It also provided biographical details about the family, and an insight into how the news was received by my great aunt Emily Osborne. Apparently “the only thing she knew about her generous benefactor was that he lived in London” and that since her windfall had become widely known, she received “innumerable callers to congratulate her, and it had begun to get on her nerves”.
I later found out that Sarah Ann was buried in a paupers’ grave in Weaste Cemetery, Salford, presumably because the family couldn’t afford anything else. I also found entries for her in the census, along with her birth, marriage and death certificates. She was born at home in Allum Street in Ancoats, married at St Bartholomew’s Church in Salford, and died aged just 49 of tuberculosis. Sadly, her husband Joseph passed away nine months later from a brain tumour.
Discovering the truth about the money has given me a real thirst to find out more. Who was the rich relative? Why was a greater proportion of the money left to Sarah Ann? What impact did the fortune have on her and her family? Was the photo of my great aunt hanging out her washing published in a subsequent article? Maybe this information will come to light in the future.
What would your advice be to other family historians who hit an obstacle on their family tree?
Don’t underestimate what fantastic riches are stored in local archives!
You should also consider all possible spellings of a name when undertaking family history research. We found a variety of ways of spelling MacNaboe, including ‘McNabo’, ‘McNab’, and even ‘Macbre’.