His birth was registered as George Edwin DOWSLAND but some sources insist on Edward. The monumental mason who carved the headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard seems to have acknowledged an error, but one can’t be sure.

Long before this, when he joined the army…

A liberal supply of blue hints on the Shared Tree indicates he is solidly represented there with his wife Lucy.

John William BAILEY was the son of a fisherman and may have initially followed his father to the sea.  In his mid-twenties, however, he was a police constable in Scarborough. In 1911 he was back at sea, fishing for herring while his wife Louisa Maud ran a lodging house on Filey’s Crescent. They had three children, one of them Arthur, (death anniversary 17 May).

Beatrice PASHBY was the ninth of twelve children born to Thomas, a labourer, and Ann Jane McINTYRE. She married Filey grocer Henry STEVENSON in Middlesbrough but I think all their children were born and baptised in Filey. Henry was the son of Richard Jesse Stevenson and Mary Darnton HULLOCK (wedding anniversary 12 July) and has a place on the Shared Tree, where he waits for Beatrice.

John STUBBS doesn’t have a back story on the Shared Tree and FG&C introduces him as one of six children born to shoemaker Robert and Isabella RICKABY. His wife Elizabeth was five years old when her father died – but he was 46 years older than her mother. Searching the vital records and sifting through hints led to me think that Elizabeth died in her twenties and John perhaps a couple of decades later without having married again.

On FG&C she is Minnie Porteous Wyatt WINGRAVE 1867-1943. She died at No.16 Brooklands and was buried in an unmarked grave in St Oswald’s churchyard. I began a search for her as a single woman but things took a surprising and delightful turn. The Shared Tree has her as one of the three wives of Vitruvius Harold Wyatt WINGRAVE but fails to reveal her origins or her passing in Filey. Minnie’s Durham family needs to be handled carefully – all in good time – but I’m sure you’ll feel rewarded in the meanwhile if you spend some time with her husband.

Insect 52 · Flesh Fly