Off to Canada

An idle few moments saw me look at a web site mentioned in the Huddersfield FHS journal for October 2010 (automatedgenealogy.com.) Always on the lookout for sightings of the PITCHFORTH name I went to the site and entered the name. Up came Martha Pitchforth living with her daughter Ellen, in the household of her grandson Laurence Wilson (Ellen’s second son) in Waterloo, Ontario (west of Toronto) according to the 1901 census. The usual details were available and these told me that Martha was 65 and a US citizen.

Not much to go on I thought, so I sketched a possible tree. As I drew, up popped an eMail from my fellow researcher of Wakefield Pitchforths, Laurence Chase. We correspond intermittently when we find something of interest. His eMail, the first for a year or two, contained details of his search of the Canadian census held by Ancestry. An amazing co-incidence. He had searched earlier census records and discovered that Martha was the wife of one Joseph Pitchforth, born 1824, a carpenter. In 1861 there was 6 year old Ellen and a similar story was told in 1871. By 1881, Martha is with her daughter who has named her eldest son Jospeh. So the evidence is growing stronger. Ancestry has Joseph’s (born 1824) death in 1872.

A Google search of Rootsweb entries showed a Wakefield Journal story in Feb 1851 that told of an accidental shooting of J DYSON by John HEMINGWAY and J Pitchforth at Crigglestone after a day’s shooting. FreeBMD suggests that Dyson died of the wound. So here is a motive for Joseph disappearing without trace after 1851.

A very helpful person at Wakefield library has told me its an interesting story and I've asked them to print it. 

An update next week.