Sunday 4 March 2018

Finding the name ..... finding the story

Now as everyone knows who has ever gone looking for a great uncle or a maiden aunt, the past can be unforgiving.

The Blackstock, 2014
Official records do not always lead anywhere and all the other genealogical tricks of the trade can prove unrewarding.

And so it was when I took up the challenge to find a Joseph Fletcher who features in a Warrington project to track 41 men of the Great War.

All but Mr Fletcher had been found and I was asked to help, which I suspect was less to do with my detective skills and more that I had once written a story about the Blackstock pub on Upper Brook Street where in 1911 Annie and Ellen Riley were working.

Two years later and Annie and married Joseph and the hunt was on to find out more.

The entrance
My part was to confirm that the pub was the correct one and that and to look for Mr Fletcher in Temple Street where it was believed the family had once lived

Alas the 1911 directory failed to turn up a Fletcher family.

But so far I have done the easy bit, relying on the people in Warrington to supply some of the information and trawling the electronic records.

So as we all know in the end there is no substitute for going down and trawling the records in Central Ref, which I will do.

There will be the  electoral registers as well as the full sweep of directories.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; The Blackstock 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson

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