You mean you might not be who you say you are?

The advantage (or disadvantage) of putting your family history research on the web is that any mistakes are there for all to see. Or they might not be a mistake after all!

In September 2005, Genes ReUnited introduced a new facility called Hot Matches. This generated potential matches in trees held by that site. One of them was for Frank Baker (my great grandfather) b 1857 Basford Nottinghamshire, a journeyman carpenter and joiner. I was on to it like a shot, suggesting that the contact look at the family history website I had just set up, for more information.

I then received a very nice message via my Visitors Book from Sheila saying that Frank Baker b 1857 etc was her great grandfather and that he had married someone completely different - a widow called Priscilla Harlow – in Clerkenwell in 1889. And that we must be cousins.

I had "inherited" this area of research from a cousin of my Dad's who had, in the 1980s, trawled through Nottingham records. There had been family discussions about the fact that no marriage certificate could be found for our Frank and Annie Langridge.  My mum (my dad was no longer with us) was explaining this to me and my future wife, who, laughing, said “you mean you might not be who you say you are?”.  Unlike my mum, I laughed too.

So when Sheila contacted me, quoting her great grandparent’s marriage register entry, I did seriously wonder if my dad’s cousin had got it all wrong. 

I consequently set off in pursuit to see if I could find another Frank Baker, born circa 1857 from the Nottingham area – there were indeed two of them: the Frank we thought was our man born in Carrington, Basford (parents John Baker and Phebe Woodward), and the other born in 1858 in Radford (parents Thomas Baker and Harriet Timms). If we were wrong about great grandfather Frank then I needed to look into the Radford one.

And I did extensively – and I started to feel it wasn’t him when I found he’d married a Mary Stevenson, and this feeling grew stronger when I discovered they had moved to Scotland, and he in fact died in Pollokshields, Glasgow in 1922.  

The one thing we could be sure of was that our Frank Baker died in Croydon in 1929 at the former workhouse infirmary.

So that meant I was back to where I started from. There was a possibility of course that the Frank Baker in a relationship with Annie Langridge was the same man as the Frank Baker who had married Priscilla Harlow, and he had led a double life, with 7 children shared across his two partners.  Intriguing, exciting, a bit fanciful, but not impossible! 

In the 1901 census there were two Frank Bakers, working as journeymen joiners and/or in the building trade born in Nottingham circa 1857, in the London area - at 26 Millman Street, Holborn with Priscilla and two daughters, and at 31 Strathmore Road, Croydon with Ann and five children. 

Frank and Priscilla 1901 census

Frank and Annie 1901 census

In 1891 there was just one such Frank Baker – with Pricilla and daughter plus Priscilla’s daughters from an earlier marriage at 10 East Street Holborn; Annie, described as married, was on her own at 36 St Hughs Road in Penge with her three eldest surviving children.

Frank and Priscilla 1891 census

Annie Baker 1891 census

So that’s where I had got to when the 1911 census was published: my known grandfather, Frank Baker, was at home at 265 Whitehorse Road, Croydon with Annie and their two youngest children. 

Frank and Annie Baker 1911 census

However the other Frank Baker was missing, leaving Priscilla with her two daughters at 21 Orde Hall St WC (Holborn).

Priscilla Baker 1911 census

But the 1911 census was the first England & Wales census where the householder completed the form and signed it.  So I could compare Frank’s signature on the census form with that on the marriage register.  Very similar!

Frank Baker writing  comparisons: Top witnessing Louisa's marriage 1911, under that his signature on the 1911 census form, then his completion of the 1911 census form, and, at the bottom, the signatures on the marriage register entry when he married Priscilla 1889

About five year’s later I did a DNA test and one of the descendants from Priscilla’s relationship with Frank was not only a match with me but also with two of my Baker second cousins in Australia. Further matches followed to reinforce the connection.

This outcome of course asked more questions, such as how did he get away with it? 

We do know that he described himself as a widower when he married Priscilla, so I would assume that’s how he introduced himself to her. That would also give him cover to visit his kids with his late wife (no doubt being "looked after by relatives" in Croydon) and also not contribute massively to the household fund with Priscilla (she appeared to be working as a Tailor all through this period).  And as a journeyman carpenter and joiner (and as a builder's foreman) he had “licence” to follow the work and stay away from home, close to where the latest job was.  But all the same this was a significant deception which could well have blown up on him; for example Frank’s second child with Priscilla, Annie, was baptised on the same day as Annie’s fifth child with Frank, Dorothy, was born.

His eventual bolt-hole was with Annie in Croydon.  The last documented contact I have been able to find with Priscilla’s side of the equation was when Frank was a witness at daughter Louisa’s wedding in May 1911 to William Steadman.  

Frank Baker making Propellors during the Great War

During the Great war he made aeroplane propellors in a works near Croydon Airport, and he and Annie lived in Brocklesby Road, South Norwood, Frank dying in 1929 at the Croydon Infirmary (formerly the Workhouse) in Eridge Road.  Annie moved to Pemdevon Road, Broad Green, Croydon, close to her eldest son (also Frank) and died in 1936.  

By 1921 Priscilla and family had moved away from Holborn to the Pentonville Road area, where she lived in the household of her younger daughter and her husband, plus her elder daughter and her children – Louisa had remarried, to Sydney Charles Goodall, after William Steadman died in unform (missing in action November 1916).  Priscilla later moved out to New Barnet where her daughter Annie lived, dying there in 1935 and identified as "widow of Frank Baker" on her death certificate.

The DNA matches I and my Frank Baker/Annie Langridge cousins have with the descendants of Frank Baker/Priscilla Aldridge via the children of Louisa from both her first and second marriages sealed the deal that, as Sheila suggested back in 2005, we were indeed cousins. I'm sorry that I took so long (about 15 years) to get there!