Another famous link

Those who read this regularly will know that I like to comment on some of the mysteries in the Halstead trees and my steps to solve them. I hope that you find them useful.

Recently I was looking at Walter Francis HALSTED who married Mabel GIBBONS in 1901. Mabel sadly died in 1909 leaving a daughter Christina. In 1911 Christina was living with her grandmother Maria HALSTED (Marie died in 1927 leaving £6,747) and I knew from the GRO indexes hat Christina married a Gerald Rupert CONRAN in Kensington in 1928 and did nothing more as I do not normally research families once the female line has married out and certainly once you get into  modern times starts to get more difficult.

The reason I was looking at Walter was that is the 1911 census he is not in London but in Liverpool staying in a hotel with a Stella listed as his wife and married for 1 year. She was half his age and I can find no reference to her at all. I am still no closer to solving who Stella was but Walter was shown as a Stockbroker and the company he was with was declared bankrupt in 1914. Walter dying in 1918 and according to Ray Lewis-Jones in his Chichester tree on the 30 July 1918 but no reference as to the source.

I wrote to someone who had a tree on Ancestry asking what source she had for the exact date and she replied the Halsted One-name study (thats us) amongst others but none that was a genuine first stop. All being copies of copies.

So I went and searched on findmypast and there was the answer. In the Shareholder Records of the Great Western Railway which whilst again a copy does actually list the source as the GRO death certificate.

Her final comment was "In turn, Walter's father was a banker, another position of wealth. When you consider that Walter married the daughter of a dentist and surgeon, Mabel Gibbons, it is safe to say that most of the professions that carried status in late Victorian England can be located in the family tree.". now I thought that this was rather good - no source was given so I assumed that it was her own words until I was going through the results of a search on google for "Walter Francis HALSTED"

Amongst the few results was an article from the Daily Telegraph back on 3rd March 2007 entitled "Family Detective - Telgraph" and was one in a series of articles by Nick Barrett on the histories of famous people and in the case it was Sir Terence Conran. it includes the paragraph

"In contrast, his father, Gerard Rupert Conran, owned a rubber-import business in east London, though at the time of his son's birth his occupation was listed simply as "clerk". It carried on to include the paragraph quoted by my correspondent.

So another link to a famous that is not a HALSTE(A)D by name but has a link. the question is do I go and add the details of Sir Terence!

Interestingly when he died in 1918 Walter left no will despite his occupation.

Regards
John email: Halstead@one-name.org