Eureka Moment
Kathy McNeill travelled halfway around the world in pursuit of the link that revealed her great grandfather’s identity, as Gail Dixon discovers
“A house name solved my mystery,” says Kathy McNeill
Letters written to loved ones in the past can be so revealing. An address, a fond remembrance, or the mention of a birth, wedding or funeral can all help us to discover ancestors. For New Zealander Kathy McNeill, a letter written in the early 1900s unlocked a secret that dated back several decades.
My Brick Wall
My maternal great grandfather John Cave lived in Sunderland, County Durham, in the 19th century. He was a trimmer on coal ships, responsible for spreading the coal in the hold to ensure that the ship was well balanced. He and his wife Jane Smith had five children, including my grandfather John James Cave.
According to family legend, my great grandfather ran away from home as a young man and changed his name. On his marriage certificate from 1859 he was listed as John Cave, labourer, aged 22, and his father was also “John Cave, labourer”. The census returns revealed that he was born in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, in about 1836. That was all we knew.
Forty years ago, my elderly Aunt Maggie gave me a blackedged letter dated 19 September 1905. This was written to my grandfather John James Cave and signed “Aunt Lizzie”.
The letter informed John about the death of Lizzie’s sister Jane. The address was “Clay Angles, Prospect Row”, and there was no surname. I added it to my collection of family documents as just another brick in the wall.
My Eureka Moment
In 2016, with decades of research behind me, I realised that Aunt Lizzie must have been the sister of my great grandfather John Cave. If I could track down Lizzie, I might be able to find his family.
There weren’t many places in England with a street called Prospect Row, and one of them was Cambridge. That wasn’t far from Chatteris, where my great grandfather was born.
Working on the assumption that John Cave changed only his first name, I began researching every Elizabeth Cave who was born in Chatteris in the 1830s and 1840s. I traced their marriages, and where they lived.
Soon I found Elizabeth Cave, born in Chatteris in 1840, who married widower George Lever. Eureka – they lived on Prospect
Row, Cambridge, and the family was still there in the 1900s when the letter was written. It was so exciting to know that I was on the right track.
I found George and Lizzie’s daughter Clara in 1901 living with her brother Walter and their aunt, Jane Hall, in Cambridge. The letter said that Clara had been nursing her aunt and Jane died on 5 August 1905, a month before the date on the letter.
My Breakthrough
The trail became even more enthralling. Cave Family History Society ( cavefhs.com) charts, along with birth and marriage records, proved that Jane and Lizzie were the eldest and youngest children of John Cave and Elizabeth Bearcock, who married in Chatteris in 1814. However, when John Cave married, and when Jane was born a few months later, he was called John Beck. By the time Lizzie was born 26 years on he was known as John Cave.
John was the eldest of nine children born out of wedlock to Charlotte Beck of Chatteris. The father was reputed to be Robert Cave, a farmer with whom Charlotte was living.
The eight younger children were baptised at the parish church in 1821 and given Cave as a second name and Beck as a surname, with no father’s name shown in the register. Robert Cave’s will, however, indicated the connection. John and many of his siblings had dropped Beck from their name by 1840, so Lizzie was called Cave from the start.
John Cave and Elizabeth Bearcock had at least 10 children, some of them born in the 1830s in Chatteris. I knew that my great grandfather John Cave – the purported runaway – was born in around 1836. I was convinced that John and Elizabeth must have been his parents, and that Lizzie and Jane were two of his sisters.
The son who was the closest match to my great grandfather in terms of age was Jethro, born in 1836. Jethro disappeared from Chatteris after the 1851 census, and never reappeared.
I believe that Jethro Cave left home as a teenager and turned up in Sunderland as John Cave. He continued to work as a coal trimmer, and died in 1899.
In 2017, my late husband Doug and I visited Prospect Row to see Aunt Lizzie’s house. I was stunned to notice the nameplate on the wall. It was Clay Angles, the name on the letter. Finally, I had found my great grandfather’s family.