> Message: 4 > Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:31:52 +0000 > From: "Janet C" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [ENG-YKS-BRADFORD] Experienced help wanted, please > To: [email protected] > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed > > Hi Barry > Have you tried asking Barbara & Linda of the Todmorden site - I think they > must be THE experts in that area (and both are very very helpful) > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~todmordenandwalsden/ > > Other than that, I can't offer any help or bright ideas, sorry! > > Best wishes > Janet C > > >>From: "Barry Emmott" <[email protected]> >>For a long time now (nearly 2 years) I've been using every facility I can >>think of to trace my maternal grandfather, John Greenwood. According to >>such >>records and family hearsay that I've been able to harvest he was born >>around >>Todmorden on May 8th 1875. > Thanks for the suggestion, Janet. I have tried them but they have been unable to help. When I say that the area was awash with John Greenwoods I wasn't joking. If you have access to the censuses just take a look or look around the graveyard of the old church at Heptonstall. I went right through the Familysearch 1881 entries for Todmorden & Walsden from end to end and every 3rd or 4th entry was a Greenwood but none of them matched up with mine. The GRO couldn't find him either. I could believe that he wasn't registered but how could they all miss two censuses ? Regards, Barry Emmott

From: "Barry Emmott" > > > Thanks for the suggestion, Janet. I have tried them but they have been > unable to help. When I say that the area was awash with John > Greenwoods I wasn't joking. If you have access to the censuses just > take a look or look around the graveyard of the old church at > Heptonstall. I went right through the Familysearch 1881 entries for > Todmorden & Walsden from end to end and every 3rd or 4th entry was > a Greenwood but none of them matched up with mine. The GRO >couldn't find him either. I could believe that he wasn't registered but how > could they all miss two censuses ? > GREENWOOD is by far and away the most common surname in the Calder Valley. Walk through the town centres of Halifax, Hebden Bridge and Todmorden and just about every third person you meet will probably be called Greenwood. If not that, Sutcliffe, Crabtree or Horsfall. Forgive me for making what may to you perhaps be an uncomfortable suggestion, but have you consider the possibility that your grandfather may have been illegitimate, possibly brought up by relatives or even in an orphanage, and when he married he simply invented a set of parents to cover his embarrassment before his new bride? I am afraid it happened quite a lot! -- Roy Stockdill Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org Newbies' 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, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE