EDWARD COMING TO AMERICA

I always assumed that my Great Grandpa Edward Sherlock left for America from Queenstown, Ireland.  Well, today, I located a document -- Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 -- that tells me differently.

According to this document that I found on Findmypast.ie, Edward Sherlock departed from Liverpool, England on 21 Oct 1891 for New York.  I guess he could have still left from Queenstown but went to Liverpool first.

Edward Sherlock, who was 21 years old at the time, sailed on the ship Majestic.  He was one of 1181 passengers.  The SS Majestic made its maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in April 1890.  The trip took 6 days and 10 hours to complete.  On a west bound trip back to Liverpool, it set a record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic.  The record was short lived when a sister ship completed the crossing faster 2 weeks later.

TICKET FROM QUEENSTOWN

I am finally creating a scrapbook of my trip to Ireland in August of 2012.  I noticed that the ticket that I saved from trip to the Cobh Heritage Center had the following wording on it -- see above photo.  It was a reproduction of a ticket from 1892 from Queenstown to New York.  I had never noticed that before.  Of course, it is now going in my scrapbook.

So, if I had taken this imaginary trip in July 1892 what would I have found?  Well, you know what that means, yes, stopping the scrapbooking and doing a bit more research.  And I wonder why my scrapbook is not completed!  In my research today, I found 2 more documents for my great grandparents Edward and Bridget that I hadn't seen before.  Good thing I did the research!  

According to the documents, Edward Sherlock actually left from Liverpool, England and not Queenstown, which makes sense since he was in County Meath at the time. He departed on 21 Oct 1891 from Liverpool aboard the ship Majestic, headed for New York.

Bridget Chambers left Queenstown, Ireland in 1892 aboard the ship Samaria and arrived in Boston, Massachusetts on 10 May 1892.  Her brothers were already living in Chicago so I am guessing she decided to join them there.  Why Edward went to Chicago vs. going to Boston (where his brother was) is a mystery to me, except perhaps since Edward was a butcher he thought there would be more work there.  It is a good thing he did go to Chicago because there he met Bridget and as they say "the rest is history"!

I KNOW HE'S RELATED BUT WHERE'S THE CONNECTION?

          For those of you who have been following the story of Charles Sherlock, in this post, I am going to discuss his father Edward Thomas Sherlock (who was my great grandfather).  

          Edward was born on January 6, 1869 in Navan, County Meath, Ireland to Bryan Sherlock and Margaret Caffrey.  I had very little information on Edward, except that he was a butcher, came to the US and lived in Chicago and then died at an early age in 1901, when my grandfather was just a baby.  Edward died of tuberculosis, which according to his death certificate he had for six months.  I did have the above photo of Edward.  I also knew my Dad’s cousin who somehow was related to us on the Sherlock side – his last name, in fact, being Sherlock.  What I didn’t know was where his branch intersected our family tree?

          I will readily admit that I am not very experienced in family history research outside of the U.S.  In fact, I am still learning how to do family history in the U.S.  But thanks to Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org, I was able to locate some birth record information that listed Bryan Sherlock and Margaret Caffrey as parents to Edward’s siblings.  So, I found Irish birth/baptism records for the following of Edward’s siblings – Mary (born in 1865), Bernard (born in 1867), Bridget (born in 1871), John (born in 1873) and Patrick Joseph (born in 1876).  However, none of them were my dad’s cousin’s grandfather Christopher Bartholomew Sherlock.  I couldn’t find a baptism/birth record for Christopher, but I did find 2 marriage certificates for Christopher that listed his parents as Bryan Sherlock and Margaret Caffrey.  I also found an Australian death record for a Nicholas Sherlock (also with his parents listed as Bryan Sherlock and Nicholas Sherlock) but no birth/baptism record for Nicholas.  It is puzzling to me why I can’t find a birth/baptism record for either Christopher or Nicholas.  

          I do also wonder what happened to the rest of Edward’s siblings since the only descendants I ever knew of were from Christopher.   I guess I have a lot more research to do.  Thanks to the online class on Irish Research that I took through Family Tree University, I do feel more prepared to tackle this quest to find the connecting branch of our family trees. 

Charles Zola Sherlock -- His Early Childhood

          I remember Grandpa Charlie telling the story of how when he was about to be punished for misbehaving that he would ask his mother (Bridget Elizabeth Chambers Sherlock), “Are you going to punish your only living child?”  Now, I thought that was rather strange but then again Grandpa Charlie was the family’s originator of the 2% rule (stories only needed to be 2% true – yeah, that legend has carried on even until today). 

          I started researching Charles Sherlock and his mother Bridget Elizabeth Chambers and his father Edward Thomas Sherlock in the 1900 US Census.  Since Charles was born on July 9^th of that year, he wouldn’t appear in the census.  I did find both Bridget (although, she was listed under the name Elizabeth B, probably due to the fact that Edward also had a sister named Bridget) and Edward Sherlock, as well as their child, Edmund, who was 1 years old.  In the 1900 census, one of the questions that was posed was “You are the mother of how many children?”   Bridget answered, “2 children”.  When asked, “what is the number of children living now”, she answered, “One.”   Well, a look into the old family bible lists “,  Edward and Thomas” as siblings of Charles. Further research showed that Edmund Bernard Sherlock and Thomas Gordon Sherlock were twins and were born in November 1897.  Luckily, I found the death certificate for Thomas Gordon Sherlock, which showed that he died before his first birthday on Oct. 17, 1898 from meningitis with dysentery as a contributing cause for his death.

 Then Grandpa Charlie was born on July 9, 1900.  Grandpa’s father Edward Thomas Sherlock died on December 9, 1901 when Grandpa was only 17 months old. His death certificate says he died of phthisis (which is a word that means tuberculosis).  According to his death certificate, he had this disease for 6 months. It also said that catarrh of the stomach was a contributing cause of death.  Edward was a butcher and the family lore was that he caught the disease through his work, but we will never know exactly how he caught this disease.

In 1905, when Grandpa Charlie was about 5 years old, his mother Bridget (I’m calling her by that name since that is what he called her by) braved the open seas and took her two sons to Ireland, probably to visit her homeland and family but also to bring her mother back with her to America.  Grandpa Charlie’s maternal grandfather Thomas Chambers died in 1889. 

Can you imagine at the age of 5 years old (kindergarten age in our time) spending 6 weeks each way on a ship on the rough seas (and we are not talking about cruise ship here)?  So, Ann Kilroy Chambers (grandmother to Grandpa Charlie) came back to Chicago and lived with them until her death on February 2, 1908.  The cause of her death is listed as gastritis and a contributing cause was debility from starving because of the gastritis.   

I am thinking I need to stop here with all this cheerful news and continue on with this story in the next post, but just imagine this early childhood of Charlie Sherlock and how this would affect him for the rest of his life!