Re: Grandma watkins

"Don Moody" <dpmoody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:aJGdnc_qq4guqtraRVnyhAA@xxxxxxxxx

I suspect that your only hope of a breakthrough is serendipitous
happening on one document which gives 'before' and 'after' names. Many
of us live, and many more have lived, under names with which they were
not born.

At the moment it does seem to be a very difficult problem. However,
there is a possibility that in the long run that the DoVE project will
actually happen (we can dream, can't we?). In which case, you may be
able to find another Watkins with mother's maiden name of Scully, and
have enough information to identify the family on a census.

I agree that it's quite possible that James's ancestry is fictitious.
My experience is different to Don's in that I find that scenario
extremely rare (and I've transcribed and sorted thousands of families
for various projects). More likely that both parents died, or that they
married abroad, or emigrated after James's birth. (Scully seems to be
an Irish name - perhaps the family is in Ireland in 1871 and 1881.) Or
perhaps that James changed his surname to or from a stepfather's, or
something similar, but these things usually have some logic.

Steven


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