I've just been reading the story of the unfortunate Austin Brown/Blind Jack and the wonderful efforts made by various members of this Forum to identify him and his family. Remarkable, considering how common the surname must be. I'd just like to mention the problems my elder brother had in the late 1980s (pre-Ancestry.com and all the rest) pursuing just that same name in the city.
Unlike all my friends, I never had a grandmother. Or at least one that I knew anything about. I knew that my father's mother died in 1918 despite having moved out into the Warwickshire countryside to help her health which had been ruined by an adult lifetime in the middle of the city following a childhood in Old Hill. My mother's mother, on the other hand, I knew nothing about – she was dead and was not talked about, ever. I and my siblings always felt sorry for our mother, having lost her own whilst still an infant, and a bit brassed off that we never had a grandmother to indulge us. My brother's researches revealed our grandmother's identity as Rebecca Brown, of Gem Street, who was born in 1871 and - and this was the shocker to us - didn't die until 1945. (All a complicated story!) Rebecca and my grandfather (George Thomas Tovey, 1871-1949) had four children, only two of whom survived infancy.
Rebecca was the daughter of James Brown, a thimble maker: he had married Eliza Fenney and the result was my grandmother Rebecca Brown and her sister Clara Brown (b. 1868). In the absence of searchable indices, but with the faint hope of such miracles appearing in the future, my brother got as far as he could in pinning down these Brown/Fenney families but soon faced a total brick wall. And so almost nothing is known about Rebecca's origins - either the Browns or the Fenneys - and the assumption was that it was possibly Irish.
All I'm asking really is whether, in all these investigations into the background of Blind Jack, any of these names – Rebecca Brown later Tovey, Clara Brown, James Brown and Eliza Fenney - or any of these places - Barford Street; Great Colmore Street (it seems it did); Main Street, Aston/Sparkbrook; Gem Street: Sherlock Street - cropped up.
Thanks and sorry to go off-topic.
Chris
Unlike all my friends, I never had a grandmother. Or at least one that I knew anything about. I knew that my father's mother died in 1918 despite having moved out into the Warwickshire countryside to help her health which had been ruined by an adult lifetime in the middle of the city following a childhood in Old Hill. My mother's mother, on the other hand, I knew nothing about – she was dead and was not talked about, ever. I and my siblings always felt sorry for our mother, having lost her own whilst still an infant, and a bit brassed off that we never had a grandmother to indulge us. My brother's researches revealed our grandmother's identity as Rebecca Brown, of Gem Street, who was born in 1871 and - and this was the shocker to us - didn't die until 1945. (All a complicated story!) Rebecca and my grandfather (George Thomas Tovey, 1871-1949) had four children, only two of whom survived infancy.
Rebecca was the daughter of James Brown, a thimble maker: he had married Eliza Fenney and the result was my grandmother Rebecca Brown and her sister Clara Brown (b. 1868). In the absence of searchable indices, but with the faint hope of such miracles appearing in the future, my brother got as far as he could in pinning down these Brown/Fenney families but soon faced a total brick wall. And so almost nothing is known about Rebecca's origins - either the Browns or the Fenneys - and the assumption was that it was possibly Irish.
All I'm asking really is whether, in all these investigations into the background of Blind Jack, any of these names – Rebecca Brown later Tovey, Clara Brown, James Brown and Eliza Fenney - or any of these places - Barford Street; Great Colmore Street (it seems it did); Main Street, Aston/Sparkbrook; Gem Street: Sherlock Street - cropped up.
Thanks and sorry to go off-topic.
Chris
