Family Matters - 6. O Laura where art thou
There can’t be many surnames which can, in themselves, tell you exactly where a person’s ancestors came from but Goninan (however spelt) is one of them. We can say immediately to anyone with this name, wherever they live in the world, you or your spouse are descended from the Goninans who were living in Breage Parish, Cornwall in the 17th century. This is a great help when researching the family tree. Back in 1998 when I first extended the search to overseas I was able find addresses of Goninans in the US (and Australia) using telephone directories on the internet. I was then able to send off letters hoping to make contact in the sure knowledge that these people would be family members. Of course the reply rate with this sort of exercise tends to be low. Not everybody is interested in, or has the time for, family trees or family history and we have to respect that.
One of the replies that I had was from the late William Albert Goninan then aged 89 and living in Butte, Montana where he had been born. I still have his letter and it is a prized possession. William was the son of Edward J Goninan. William’s daughter, Sandra, has attended all three of the Global Gatherings, in Cornwall, Tasmania and Wisconsin.
William told me that his memory of his aunts and uncles was somewhat sketchy but he was able to give me various bits of useful information. His grandparents were William and Margaret Goninan and recently, with the Wisconsin Gathering coming up fast and with more and more information becoming available on the internet, I thought I would re-open my research on the family of William and Margaret to see whether I could uncover any more of the Goninan descendents in the US.
Little did I realise that I was about to open a pandora’s box full of red herrings, blind alleys and restless nights puzzling over the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. I started this a few months ago and went around in so many circles that I cannot remember now the exact chronological order so what follows is my best effort at a reconstruction of the saga.
It started off well enough. I already had the basic building blocks – William (the grandfather of William in Butte) was born in Cornwall in 1847 and his parents were William and Grace Goninan. William was a miner all of his life. At some point he moved to Cumbria in the north west area of England presumably to seek work in the iron ore mines there, as many Cornish did. He married Margaret Grenfell in Cleator Moor in 1872. Margaret was also Cornish. They had four children in Cumbria, Grace (1873), Elizabeth Ann (1874), Margaret Jane (1876) and Thomas Henry (1878). The family then migrated to the Upper Michigan where they had four more children, Edward John (1880), Richard (c1883), Minnie (1887) and William (c1888).
Unfortunately the 1890 US census was lost in a fire but we already knew that the family spent time in Canada so my first port of call was the Canadian census for 1901 (via ancestry.com). This proved successful. William and Margaret were in Rossland, British Columbia and with them were Edward, Richard, Minnie and William. William snr was a gold miner and gave his religion as Methodist. He had arrived in Canada in 1896 perhaps attracted by news of two new and important gold strikes in the Rossland mining area in 1895. Edward was also gold miner and there were three lodgers in the household. Missing are Grace, Elizabeth Ann, Margaret and Thomas Henry.
The next step was to search the 1911 census for Canada but there was no sign of William or Margaret, in fact there were no Goninans at all. Then I found an entry on a death index for British Columbia for William. He died on the 22nd April 1902. Still no sign of Margaret though so I turned my attention to the children.
The eldest, Grace, married James Goodman in 1893 in the Upper Michigan. In 1900 they were living in Butte, Montana and living with them was Grace’s sister, Elizabeth Ann James (nee Goninan). At least I think it is Grace’s sister but the details shown are not altogether correct. Her date of birth for example is out by a long way and she claims to be single which is odd. But then we have to allow for human error and in any case, as we shall see, Elizabeth Ann enjoys giving me the run around.
In 1910, Grace and her husband were still living in Butte and they have a child, James A Goodman. Grace’s brother, Richard, is living with them. We believe that their son married Agnes Dunlap but there were no surviving children. Butte is famous for its copper mines and would have been well known to Cornish miners.
The next child of William and Margaret was the Elizabeth Ann referred to above and she is our main interest here. She married Charles James in the Upper Michigan in 1891. As we have seen, in 1900 she was living (maybe) with her sister, Grace, in Butte but her husband was not with her and there is no sign of any children.
If you have got this far, well done. I should take a breather, make a cup of tea or something because it’s going to be a roller coaster ride.
Subsequent searches for Elizabeth Ann James were fruitless until I struck lucky and, in the process, learnt a valuable lesson. Being at all times interested in the places that cornish miners went to around the world, I thought I would surf the internet to see what I could find out about Rossland in British Columbia and found this site http://www.rosslandmuseum.ca/ but even more important I also stumbled upon this site - http://automatedgenealogy.com/index.html This is a free site with an index to the 1901 and 1911 Canadian census being worked on by volunteers. We might think sometimes that the data on a pay-to-view site like ancestry.com is going to be more reliable and/or extensive than a free site. But this is not necessarily so. Volunteers wouldn’t be volunteers unless they were interested in what they were doing and concerned about quality. With commercial sites, however, I guess they pay people to do the digitising, probably on a piece-rate basis. These people understandably are going to be more interested in earning a crust than anything else and would be unlikely, for example, to spend much time puzzling over a name like Goninan. I am saying this because I found more Goninans on the free 1901 census site than I did on ancestry.com, including Elizabeth Ann. I have worked out since that the problem is that on ancestry.com Elizabeth’s name has been indexed as Gonerian which I would never have found.
Anyway, in 1901, Elizabeth Ann was living in Kootenay, Rossland, British Columbia. She is with her sister, Margaret who married George Bridgeman in the Upper Michigan in 1894. George and Margaret had two children in 1901 and George was a gold miner. They came to Canada from the US in 1895. Elizabeth Ann Goninan is shown as divorced which explains why she has reverted to her maiden name. She gives her place of birth as England (which was right) but the date as 1876 when it was really 1874. None of this family seems to know their birth dates. Margaret gives hers as 1877 when in fact it was 1876. With Elizabeth Ann are two children (both born in the US) – Charles A Goninan (born 1893) and Myrtle E Goninan (born 1894) and these must be children by her first husband, Charles James.
After 1901, again I could find nothing on Elizabeth Ann (I can almost hear her chuckling) or her children. William, in his letter to me, told me that his aunt had married a Mr Astley and that they had two children, Warren and Myrtle. This could have been a second marriage although I am sure that Myrtle was a product of her first marriage. Thus next I tried searching for Elizabeth Astley but again to no avail. Really I needed to find the marriage as this would give me Astley’s first name which might help when searching.
Eventually I found it - Elizabeth Ann James married John Astiley (or Astley) in Wallace, Shoshone County, Idaho on the 17th Aug 1903. Wallace is situated in the famous silver and lead mining area in northern Idaho. Of course he would be called John. Searching the 1910 US census there are a lot of John Astleys and not having a birth date doesn’t help. I was tempted to give up at this stage but then thought it might help to search for the child that William had mentioned, i.e. Warren.
Initially I couldn’t find anything on the 1910 or 1920 census although there was a Warren W Astley living in California in 1930. However I did find a reference to a Warren Astley on the Ellis Island records and this was to provide a partial breakthrough :-
Ship manifest – Lusitania from Liverpool to New York, departed 1st Dec 1907. On this there are three entries which are of interest:-
Laura Astley going to Rossland, British Columbia to join her husband and with her,
Warren William Astley age 3 and
Margaretta Goninion (known to us as Margaret Goninan) age 54 and joining her son-in-law
They gave their address in England as Whitehaven which is not far from Cleator Moor in Cumbria where Margaret got married and four of the children, including Elizabeth Ann, were born.
Looking at this entry you would gather that Laura was Margaret’s daughter except she should be called Elizabeth Ann. Had Elizabeth died and John Astley remarried ? (Margaret would still be his mother-in-law). The other odd thing about the entry is that all three lines are crossed out. I have since concluded that these manifests were made out before a ship sailed and not on arrival in New York. Thus you sometimes find crossed out entries which are for people who, for some reason or other, didn’t sail. So what had happened?
Leaving that to one side for now, I decided to search for more on Laura Astley. I could not find her on the 1910 US census but I did find her on the 1920 census as Laura E Astley. She was living in Seattle, widowed, and two children are at home, Charles A Astley and Warren W Astley although Warren has been indexed wrongly on ancestry.com which was why I couldn’t find him. Both children are referred to as ‘son’ not ‘step-son’ and yet if Laura is Elizabeth by another name it does not altogether tie up – she gives her place of birth as Michigan not England and she says she is 38 not 46.
I decided to look again at the 1910 census. I could find a Charles Astley at his place of work in Seattle but not the family. Following a hunch that the name may have been indexed incorrectly, I decided to look at all Lauras living in Seattle born 1874 or later. After looking through several pages of Lauras I found her and the family, indexed as Adlery.
In a way though, the family entry just added to my doubts and confusion. John Astley gives his age as 40, he is a machinist and was born in England. Laura gives her age as 34 which is close and she says she was born in England and has 3 living children. The children are shown as Arthur C, Myrtle and Warren. Arthur I think is really Charles A (he is of the right age). He is in fact on the census twice. Once here with the family and once at his place of work as a hotel bellboy. The work entry has been indexed correctly. It was finding his work entry that encouraged me to persist in looking for the rest of the family. Just to add to my confusion though the children’s’ relationship to the head of the household (i.e. John) is shown as step-son or daughter for all three, including Warren whereas I think Warren is his son.
Going back to the ship manifest. I found Laura and Warren on their way to New York again a few weeks after the first cancelled journey. Margaret’s name is shown but without any other information and her name is crossed through. This got me to thinking, had Margaret been taken ill whilst in England and died ?. I decided to look through the birth, deaths and marriages and sad to say I found a death entry for a Margaret Goninan. I sent off for the certificate. She died on the 29th November, 1907. I was hoping that the death would have been registered by Laura as the certicate tells you the relationship between the informant and the deceased. In fact the death was registered by Margaret’s nephew, Sydney Hodgson of Arlecdon in Cumbria where Margaret died. This is very near to Cleator Moor where Margaret married William Goninan all those years ago. Further research showed me that Margaret’s sister’s married name was Hodgson so I think we can assume that Margaret was visiting her sister.
At this point I was convinced in my own mind that Laura was Elizabeth Ann but you could advance other theories, e.g. Elizabeth Ann died and John Astley remarried and Laura adopted the children as her own.
Two final pieces of evidence then came to light which settled the argument. On the California Death Index (ancestry.com) there are two relevant entries:-
Warren W Astley, born Idaho 7th Oct 1905, died Napa, California on the 26th Jan 1966, mother’s maiden name Coninan – this is Elizabeth Ann/Laura’s son and Coninon is clearly intended to be Goninon
Laura Astley, born Michigan 13th October 1874, died San Bernardino, California on the 17th Sept 1965, mother’s maiden name Grenfell. Margaret’s maiden name of course was Grenfell. The only thing wrong with this is that she was born in England not Michigan but it was only in the 1920 US census that her birthplace begins to be recorded as Michigan.
I wonder if there are any Astley’s in California now that are descended from William and Margaret……………………