Find Ancestors

I think this is the death of John Joseph Sharples who's 1922 probate is posted aove:

England & Wales, Death Index, 1916-2006
Name: John J Sharples
Birth Date: abt 1851
Date of Registration: Apr-May-Jun 1922
Age at Death: 71
Registration district: Blackburn
Inferred County: Lancashire
Volume: 8e
Page: 428

If it was the right chap he would have been a lot older than the Jane(t) that we're looking for.

AnnMac - you don't need a descendant to have a copy of the will, you can just buy it. Here's Jonesey's link on how to do it:
http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/genealogy_chat/thread/1259939

Bear in mind also that often quite well to do young ladies chose a career in nursing. Some of Florence Nightingales assistants were high born ladies who wanted to "do their bit".

It wasn't actually domestic service that Jane was in - she was a nurse in the Asylum - possible there maybe surviving staff records?

lancashireAnn
Thank you very much for the advice on interpreting probate records - it's obvious once you stop and think about it! I can see now why you asked about a will, but I don't rate my changes of finding a descendant of one of the executors who still has a copy - and it's probably a long shot that Jane was left a legacy anyhow.

I appreciate that in the Victorian era many girls would have left education by the age of 14 and it wasn't unusual for those from less well off families to go into service. But I'm pretty sure it's not the fate these girls would have been expecting, bearing in mind that their father had a promising career in a secure job and was earning quite good money. It's also illuminating that the daughters of the second marriage appear to stayed in education well into their teens and then remained in the family home, either until they married or in "genteel" occupations such as milliner or telephone operator. There is a persistent theme in our family folk memory that the girls of the first marriage were not treated well by their step mother and I think the documents tend to support rather than disprove that..
But none of this helps me pin down the elusive Jane after the 1901 census in the lunatic asylum.!
And I haven't even started looking for her sister Mary (born 1884) yet. She was 16 and still living with the family in 1901 but I don't know where she'd gone by 1911.

Hmmm....if this is the husband it contradicts the death of Janet in 1920, maybe another person(s)


England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966

Name: John Joseph Sharples
Probate Date: 14 Sep 1922
Death Date: 4 May 1922
Death Place: Blackburn, Lancashire, England
Registry: London, England


47 Eldon Road, Blackburn. £2681 1s 5d to Janet Sharples, widow, William Lancster, ass school master, and May Fairclough, wife of Thomas Cook Fairclough


Marriages Sep 1921
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fairclough Thomas C Lancaster Blackburn 8e 1191
Lancaster May Fairclough Blackburn 8e 1191

those are only the executors of the will not the legatees. You need the actual will to see who he left his money to - it might be none of the 3 named, he could have left it all to his widow! The same with his widow, the 3 named were again only the executors, the daughters etc could well have been named in the will.


also it would not have been unusual for a girl to go into service at age 14. Most girls would have left education by then. In fact they were often younger.

I was just prompted to look up John Smith McKeand's probate which I realised I hadn't done before. He also apparently left his money to the three sons of his second marriage. And it was a decent amount- £3670, or the equivalent of £200,000 in today's money. That's quite an achievement for a man from a family of itinerant agricultural labourers from Scotland. His mother's parents were listed as paupers in their old age on early census records!
Thank you for prompting me to look into this!

Even tho' he was promoted to Superintendant and worked for 50 yrs for the police retiring on a 2/3rds pension of £353 p.a. - i haven't yet converted that to modern money - I doubt he amassed a lot of cash, because he had so many children (13 seems to have made it to adulthood). He left a widow so I guess his savings went in the first instance to her. She died sept 1940 and I've found her probate record - £1831 left to her 3 sons - none to her daughters or step children. maybe she just didn't like girls!
Curiously,from photos, it seems John Smith McKeand wasn't estranged from my grandmother (his first child) despite him having allowed her to be dispatched into domestic service by the age of 14 (it says 16 on the 1891 census but it's not true) . And that was within a few years of her losing her own mother whi died in childbirth.
I guess what seems shockingly harsh to us was more accepted in Victorian times.

pity

does that mean that he was estranged from Jane as presumably he left his (rather large) amount of money to the rest of his offspring?

No joy on his will I'm afraid. He did leave (to a distant half cousin) a family bible which had notes of the deaths of his first wife and of four of his infant children (three from his first marriage, one from his second) . He died in 1937and hadn't made a note of the death of Jane - not sure what if anything to read into that.

the Sharples / McKeand marriage was ' register office or registrar attended' which means it was actually in a register office, RC or non-conformist church,. Very few of these registers are on-line and I don't think any are for the Blackburn area.

Lancashire Marriage indexes for the years: 1912
Surname Forename(s) Surname Forename(s) Church / Register Office Registers At Reference
MCKEAND Janet SHARPLES John Joseph Blackburn Register Office or Registrar Attended Blackburn RM/183/49

there isn't a connection.

Gins posted a marrieage where there was a wife missing on the index

I posted the name of the missing wife using a different site (Annie Jones) to prove it was not the marriage for your Jane

we do it fairly fast because experience has taught us where to look

lancashire Ann
Thanks for finding the image of the Donnelly mckend marriage. As you say that looks wrong on all counts! But it helps to rule it out so conclusively.
Would it be possible to get an equivalent image of the Janet McKeand/ Sharples marriage that the others found?I have no idea how you folk do this - and so quickly too - it makes my head spin!

have you got John Smith McKeand's will

it might help to identify Jane under a married name

Gins/Lancashireann
Again I'm struggling to underrstand your code! What's the connection between these 1904 marriages and jane mckeand?
If you've found children with mother's maiden name Mckeand , father's name macGregor in West Derby that's more likely to be my grandmother, Rachel McKeand who married John MacGregor - but not until 1914. Their children were Mary, Ian and Don. If it's them I'd love to know how you did that!

you can see the parish register image for the Donnelly / McKend marriage here

https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-12448-31454-97?cc=1788853&wc=MMGS-HKC:n2086448102

unless Jane lied about everything her father was Henry and she was only 22 years old so definitely eliminates that marriage

Yes we posted that as a possible marriage etc for her if she called herself Janet.

Shirley/Potty/Safc
Ah - do you mean you found a record that a Janet McKeand married a John Sharples in in Blackburn in Sep1912? Her father was posted to work in Blackburn from 1909 until he retired in 1923, so that might tie in. Sorry to be a bit slow!

the missing spouse on that 1904 marriage

Lancashire Marriage indexes for the years: 1904
Surname Forename(s) Surname Forename(s) Church / Register Office Registers At Reference
MCPOLIN Francis JONES Annie West Derby, Register Office or Registrar Attended Liverpool REG_WD/216/47

I did find a possible marriage record in 1914 to Ernest P Digges - but it was at St George's Hanover Sq London. That sounds too upmarket to me for a girl who was working as an attendant on the insane at age 19 in Liverpool! Plus that was Jane M Mckeand and the family I'm researching had so many children they didn't splash spare middle names around! (Having said that, there was a later half sister in the family called Ann Jane born in 1892 - and I keep finding possible marriage records for her when looking for my Jane!) AAARGH! :-S