Another Hall marriage found?

As my descendancy progresses, I’ve come back around to my own line, the Halls. Because the name is so common, sorting out the marriages and children of the siblings of my 2 x great-grandmother Mabel Hall is proving tricky.

The first one I found, a long time ago, was Mona Hall’s marriage to Stanley Arthur May, and the births of their two children, the unusually named Monica Urania May and Stanley Errol May. I got lucky with this one, because family friend Brenda, who provided me with most of my starter info for this line, was able to remember Mona’s married name, and knew of her son, whom Brenda believed to be called Errol. Armed with this info, it didn’t take me long to unravel the May mystery – though it wasn’t helped by Mona having decided to sometimes go by the name Edith, her middle name!

After that I stalled slightly, until I found actress Amy Hall on the 1911 census, which informed me that she was married, despite the fact that she was still using her maiden name (probably because this is the name she performed under). With nothing else to go on, I’m still no closer to tracking this one down, but at least I know that there is something to be tracked down, which is a start! I also know from the 1911 census that the final sister, Marion Hall, was unmarried in 1911. There is a possible late marriage for her, but this is still speculative until I order the certificate, so I won’t go into it here.

The last, and only male, sibling, Henry V Hall is something of a mystery. The V is presumed to stand for Victor, as it is this name that he uses on the obituary message that he, Amy and Marion write for their father in the Stage in 1922. The only other leads I have also came from Brenda. When I was initially gathering info on this side of the family, she told me that my great-grandmother Victorine had a cousin, Matt Hall, who, she believed, lived in or around Bristol. However, it’s only today that I’ve made a breakthrough using this information.

First I searched on freebmd for all the births of a Matthew Hall between 1905 and 1925 – the choice of dates was fairly arbitrary but seemed a realistic starting point. Then I opened a separate tab and search for all the marriages of a Henry V Hall between these same dates. Unfortunately this only produced one marriage, of a Henry Voss Hall. So, I started again, just with Henry. Then I began cross-referencing the spouse’s and mother’s name looking for anything that remotely paired up.

There were a couple of names that cropped up across both sets of data, but these were fairly common names and the places and dates didn’t particularly match up with one another. Nor did they strike a chord with what I know about this branch of my family. Many of the Halls seemed to be born around the North East, which wasn’t a particularly strong location for my family, although Matthew Hall senior, Mabel’s father, lived there for a time from his childhood, and presumably some of his siblings would have settled there, particularly those from his father’s second marriage to a local woman, Mary Ann Wimbles.

I hadn’t completely discounted it though, because Henry Victor Hall is in fact staying in the area at the time of the 1901 census – I assumed it was because he was travelling as a performer, but I suppose it’s possible that he could have been more rooted in the area. In fact, it occurs to me as I write this that he might even be staying with a relative of his father’s...  I’d never thought of that before, I must investigate further. You see, this is what I mean about how blogging helps me think more clearly!

Anyhow, without anything particularly strong to go on, I decided that the next thing to do was to check the 1911 census for Matthew Halls with a father named Henry, on the assumption that it must be one of the earlier marriages and births for which the spouse and mother’s surnames aren’t given.

However, I was then struck by another thought – that I should check for marriages of a Victor Hall – after all, if this was how Victor signed himself in 1922, then he might have used this name on his marriage as well. And this was when I struck gold.

I quickly identified that there was a marriage between a Victor H Hall and a Mary J / Josephine Rooney in Stoke on Trent in 1922 (to clarify, there are two separate entries, one for a Mary J Rooney, and one for a Josephine Rooney – both give Hall as the name of their spouse, but a quick check confirms that there is only one Hall on the page), and a birth for a Matthew V Hall to a Rooney mother in West Derby in Q4 1923. It struck me as a strong possibility because

1. The initials make sense – Henry Victor has reversed his name to become Victor Henry (and of course we have an example of him going by the name Victor that same year), while the V following Matthew must surely also be for Victor, after his father?

2. There are both Stoke on Trent and West Derby connections in the family line – Stoke on Trent was where Matt Hall was based for many years, and where I suspect Marion married that same year. And West Derby crops up time and again as the registration district across the Geoghegan line, suggesting strong family connections in the area.

I’ve suggested previously that I believe the Hall children kept in contact with their mother’s family even following the divorce of their parents, based on the fact that Charles Bennett (son of Kathleen Birchall Geoghegan’s closest sister in age, Annie Birchall Geoghegan) was staying with his cousin Marion on the 1911 census.

I was optimistic at this point, but not fully convinced. I decided to search for further possible births from this marriage, and came up with four possibilities, two of which carry further weight in the argument.

The first was the birth of a Kathleen Hall to a Rooney mother in Q4 1922 in West Derby, a year before the birth of Matthew. Kathleen, as I mentioned above, was the name of Henry/Victor’s mother.

The second was the birth of a Josephine Hall in 1926 in Bolton –presumably named for her mother, but perhaps also tipping a hat to her grandfather Joseph Bryan Geoghegan. Bolton is another location with strong family ties.

The two other births that I suspect might belong to this family are Ronald Hall in 1930 and Maureen Hall in 1933, both in the registration district of Leeds North. At first I wasn’t convinced that these were connected, but I compared all the Hall-Rooney marriages and all the children born to Hall-Rooney parents, and there’s really no other marriage to account for these children. so, unless they were born out of wedlock, I have to assume that there’s a move to the Leeds area by the Hall family between 1926 and 1930.

This would have them moving to Yorkshire shortly before Henry/Victor’s niece Victorine moved with her family from Romford to Wakefield, just a few miles from Leeds, between 1933 and 1936. Victorine’s move would eventually bring her mother, Henry/Victor’s sister Mabel, up north as well. Victorine’s son was also named Victor, which I think speaks of the close family ties between the Hall siblings – useful perhaps, in that finding one should always lead me to the others eventually!

All in all, I’m convinced that I have got the right people here. There can be no question that Matthew, Kathleen and Josephine, at least, are the children of the marriage I identified between a Victor H Hall and Mary J/Josephine Rooney. (I would need to order certificates or find some further evidence to be sure that Ronald and Maureen were also their children.)

And the coincidences of children’s names and places are, I think, too striking for this not to be the marriage of Mabel’s brother Henry. What do you think?

L x

The teeny tiny fruits of a teeny tiny breakthrough

I was using the 1911 census on Ancestry a few days ago, when I noticed something: Occupations appear in the transcribed information.

This interesting for 2 reasons. For one thing, it isn’t always the case for censuses that it does, and I like having it there for easy reference. (Especially at work, where I can’t see census images due to lack of flash – most annoying when I’m trying to do a bit of research in my lunch hour.)

The real reason this intrigued me, though, was that if it’s transcribed then it will show up in a search, and this fact opens up new options for locating people whom I couldn’t find back when I was using the original 1911 census website. In particular, my Hall family have generally been most tricky to locate, because of their peripatetic lifestyle as music-hall performers. In 1911, I only had two out of the five children – Mona and what I believe to be Marion ­­– and had not found their father either.

So, I put the 1911 occupation search to the test on the remaining three: Mabel (my 2x great grandmother), Henry Victor and Amy, as well as their father Matthew. No luck with either of the first two, or with their dad. But, with Amy I came up trumps.

Now Amy has always been a matter of some frustration. Of all the siblings she does seem to have had the most prolific career, which I have tracked steadily through mentions in the Stage publication.

Born in 1879, by November 1887, at the age of eight, Amy is already forging her stage career with performances as Jim in Saved From The Streets with the W. H. Sharpe company. She then takes up a position with the Rass Challis company from around 1893. There is a bit of a gap for her in the Stage archives between 1890 and 1892, but she was definitely still touring on the 1891 census. Between 1893 and 1895 – again, there’s a bit of a gap – she moves to the Leopold Brothers company, and stars in various production, including  the long-running show Frivolity. I have also found evidence of performances alongside her sister Mona between 1904 and 1906, and a slot in her father’s production Unknown in 1896 at his Music Hall. Her career stretches into the 1920s, when she would have been in her forties. But, despite all this, finding out anything about Amy’s private life has been utterly hopeless. Until now.

The 1911 census was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April. From the Stage archives, I knew that Amy was performing in Brighouse, just three days previously, but she certainly wasn’t there by the time the census was taken!

Now, searching for Amy Hall born 1879, Liverpool, with ‘actress’ in the keywords box, threw up the following: Amy Hall, born about 1880, Liverpool, an Actress. She is staying in Chorlton, Lancashire, in the household of a Mrs White, some of whose children and grandchildren have the surname Elliott (I have yet to unravel the relationships in this household). Also lodging there is a married couple, Horatio and Annie White, both also actors.

She gives her name as Amy Hall. But intriguingly she says she is married . So, it doesn’t give me much clue, and there’s no sign of anyone who might be her husband, but apparently she is married – I’d always wondered. Like her sister Mona, it seems she continued to use Hall as her (stage?) name. Now I just have to find the marriage record – no mean feat. However, it’s one of the very few tidbits of information I do have about her personal life, so it’s very welcome.

Plus, I can add the Sinclairs to my list of connected theatrical people to look out for on my travels; you never know when they might come in handy.

I’m now wondering whether Amy might have had children as well, and also considering whether gaps in her career might tally with marriage and/or pregnancy. On the basis that Amy was about old enough to marry from the age of 16, anytime from mid-1895 onwards is plausible. Looking at gaps in mentions in the Stage, there are holes from December 1895 to Jun 1896; March to Aug 1897, Jun 1899 to Aug 1900 and Nov 1906 to May 1907. From late 1907 the mentions slow down radically – there are none at all in 1910, for example. There are, I think two possibilities her.

One is that Amy did indeed marry sometime in the period Dec 1895 to Jun 1896, at the tender age of sixteen, and perhaps gave birth to a child in the gap between March and August 1897, and perhaps again in 1899–1900. On the other hand, perhaps she was rather young for this to be a strong possibility. Also, in 1896 Amy’s parents divorced, when her youngest sister Mabel was just five years old, and her father moved from his post s stage manager in Lincoln to the managerial position at the newly opened Burslem Hippdorome, so perhaps it was these family difficulties that kept the young Amy busy out of the limelight. You might even conjecture that perhaps the Stage diligently chose to avoid mention of the family at this difficult and potentially scandalous time for them, well-known as they were in the Music Hall community.

On the other hand, perhaps the possible slowing down of reports on Amy’s career from 1907 onwards is because she had a new family and responsibilities that kept her from the stage. She would have been in her mid-twenties by now, a much more likely age of a marriage, especially in someone so career-driven.

Of course, it can’t be proved that just because there were fewer mentions of her Amy’s career had slowed down, or that gaps meant she had stopped performing. As I previously mentioned, in 1891 she was on tour at the time of the census, and yet I have found no mentions at all of her in 1891 in the Stage. However, when you look at the frequency of entries at other times, it is hard to believe that the gaps have no significance. For example, there are thirteen mentions of Amy in various performances in 1898, and eleven mentions in 1901 – and yet from mid-1899 to mid-1900 there was nothing at all?

Whatever the truth of the matter, it never ceases to amaze me how the slightest bit of new information can reopen a mystery that you thought was pretty much a closed case. This just highlights the importance of improving the information available online, both in terms of getting new records digitised and in improving on the digitisation of those collections that do exist.

You can read more about Amy and her career in Fearless Females 2012: Shining stars

L x

On Wedding Wednesday: Matthew Hall and Kate Birchall Geoghegan

As I noted on Twitter earlier, today is the 138th anniversary of the marriage of Matt Hall and Kate Birchall Geoghegan. As this happens to fall on Wedding Wednesday I thought I might just write what will be a very brief post about it.

The wedding took place on 11 July 1874, a Saturday, at St Peter’s Church in Bolton, Lancashire. The couples were married by banns by John Stott, Lecturer & Curate. The present church had been completed and consecrated just three years earlier.

Matthew Hall was aged 24 and a ‘Boiler Maker’, a bachelor of 20 Velvet Walks. His bride to be was Kathleen Birchall Geoghegan, aged 20, a spinster of 19 Portugal St. The clerk misspelt the bride's surname as 'Geoghean'.

The groom's father was John Hall, ‘Cloth Milliner’, and the bride’s father Joseph Bryan Geoghegan, ‘Musician’. Joseph Bryan Geoghegan is also given as witness to the marriage, as is Kate’s sister, Ann Birchall Geoghegan. This is unsurprising as the wedding took place in Kate’s hometown, while Matt’s family were far away in Middlesbrough and in Batley. I wonder whether any of them were present?

I tried, for fun, to find out what the weather might have been like (perhaps inspired by our rather changeable summer weather at the moment). I couldn’t find much for the Bolton area, but there was a huge thunderstorm in Tunbridge Wells that day and three inches of rain fell in two hours. In light of this, and given that Bolton is practically Manchester, I suspect it was most likely raining!

The couple went on to have five children together, between 1879 and 1891. But the marriage didn’t last - perhaps because, as the old rhyme says, 'Saturday brides will have no luck at all'.

Matthew Hall divorced his wife on the grounds of adultery in 1896. He then moved from Lincoln, where the couple had been living for at least five years to take up a post at the Gaiety in Hanley, where he remained until at least 1812. He died in Barnsley in 1922. I have found no trace of Kate following their divorce – a mystery yet to be solved.

L x