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Alice Jemima SCOTTER was born in Runton, Norfolk and died in Acle. If she ever left the county, she may have headed north to visit her cousins in Filey. Her father was John, an elder brother to Mark, captain of the yawl Susie – and father of Jemima (AP 1015 · marriage · 15 June). Filey Genealogy & Connections takes us back several generations to Christopher Scottow and Lucretia FISH but doesn’t name Alice Jemima’s maternal grandparents. The Shared Tree takes a couple of extra steps back to Thomas Scotto born in 1550 and offers five generations of her LOVE forebears. To find anyone in the pedigree born outside Norfolk you have to look more closely at Alice Jemima’s aunts and uncles. Even then, all seem to cling to Norfolk and only Mark indicates a broader horizon with his death at sea. Opening his record brings you to Filey.

FG&C presented Ada Jane LISTER as yet another newborn brought many a mile to Filey to be baptised. But the listing of her birth in Halifax less than a month earlier has proven to be misleading. The West Riding city was the “abode” of groom Henry Lister and his wife Jane.

Later census returns would consistently give Ada’s birthplace as Filey. Her mother’s maiden surname is not given on the Shared Tree and FG&C says it is HECKINGTON. The GRO Births Index prefers FOSTER.

In 1881, Ada was working as a worsted twister in Southowram (Halifax), boarding with Joshua PARROTT and his family. In 1890 she married James Henry THORNTON, a stonemason, and the following year they were enumerated at New Street, Southowram, with an infant son, “Walsh” aged 5 months. The boy is “Walter” in the GRO  and in the 1901 census when the family is living at Thorntree Cottages, Southowram. In 1911 Walter is twenty and working in a stone quarry with his father. He has a three-year-old sister, Emma. (A third child, Hilda, had died aged two in 1900.)  Ada’s husband seems to have died in 1915 and I haven’t been able to follow this Filey girl to the end of her days.

Betsy Emma BELT is the wife of Percy Fred William AVISON (AP 567 · death · 4 April). Her earliest forebear on FG&C is Thomas Danby Belt, born in Nafferton in 1825 and a veterinary surgeon in 1881. Her mother’s side is a little more populous, with FOX and SUMPTON appearances. She currently has no ancestors at all on the Shared Tree but Emma BROWN, her mother, could change the picture in a heartbeat. Emma has a couple of Shared Tree IDs that are at odds with each other. The registration of Betsy’s birth in the same quarter as the marriage of her parents may be responsible for her being out in the Shared Tree cold.

Elizabeth Spry GEATCHES is the mother of Minnie Maud Charlotte Geatches TOUT (AP 927 · baptism · 1 June). Her representation on the Shared Tree is every bit as eccentric as you might expect. Her father is Robert Geatches and his father is Robert MEMORY. It seems her paternal grandmother’s family name – GATSIAS – morphed into GEATCHES. A strange loss of Memory.