maureenpontefhs@aol.com wrote: > Who Do You Think You Are? starts on Monday 19th BBC1 9pm with BRUCE FORSYTH < I have to say that, personally, I cannot stand the man and I want to chuck hings at the creen when he's on! However, I intend to grit my teeth and watch because his tory ounds very interesting from what I've read about it in the papers, and there as lready been considerable coverage (a major feature in today's Daily Mail eekend agazine). His great-grandfather JOSEPH FORSYTH JOHNSON (the 82-year-old entertainer's eal name is Bruce Joseph Forsyth Johnson) was born at Sheffield in 1839 according o the 1861 census but I can't find a birth record) and married ELIZABETH ROWSDALE at Helmsley registration district in the March quarter of 1861 FreeBMD, 9d 549). They are found as man and wife in 1861, living with lizabeth's arents, John and Alice Trowsdale, at Gilling - and this was clearly Gilling ast in the yedale district, between York and Helmsley, since the entry is for Helmsley egistration district. The reference is RG9, piece 3638 folio 42 page 14. There s also Gilling West but that is farther to the west, near Richmond. Elizabeth was eight years older than her husband, she being 30 and he 22. They ventually had six children. Joseph Forsyth Johnson was a gardener who became quite an eminent landscape rchitect. He was curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Belfast, for a number of years, ran a horticultural shop in Bond Street, London, and then went to America where he became much in demand for designing gardens and parks. However, in his rivate life he was a bit of a rogue and left Elizabeth and their children some ime in he 1880s and shacked up with a woman called Frances Clarke, who apparently also worked in Bond Street in a draper's shop. They had three children together, ossibly orn in America. Though Bruce Forsyth is quoted as saying his great-grandfather as lmost certainly a bigamist, I can find no marriage and the Wikipedia entry for oseph orsyth Johnson says he never married Frances. The programme reveals that Johnson abandoned Frances and their children as well nd was reported to have died, there being an obituary in a newspaper. But assenger ists revealed he was still travelling backwards and forwards between England nd merica up to 1903. He died in penury in New York in 1906 and is buried in an nmarked grave in a Brooklyn cemetery. Forsyth says he is now going to erect a eadstone for his ancestor. - oy Stockdill enealogical researcher, writer & lecturer ewbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, nd that is not being talked about." SCAR WILDE ome useful websites - REECEN - http://www.freecen.org.uk/ REEBMD - http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ REEREG - http://www.freereg.org.uk/ Want to know where a place in Yorkshire is - Try Genuki ttp://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ ------------------------------- o unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ENG-YORKSHIRE-request@rootsweb.com ith the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of he message