Ema – Page 2 – Ancestors

Wood Family: San Francisco Connection

Peter’s family are off to San Francisco soon so I thought I would add a post about one of the Wood family (my paternal grandmother’s family) who lived in San Francisco. Any text that is underlined has a link you can follow for more information.

Early Life in Greenock

Thomas McNaught was born in Greenock, Scotland (near Glasgow) in December 1862 to Peter McNaught and Grace Wood. Grace Wood was the daughter of George Wood and Grace Marshall; my generation’s 4th great grandparents. Making Thomas my generation’s first cousin 4x removed; for my dad’s generation he is their first cousin 3x removed.

At age 18 in 1881, Thomas was working as a Railway Clerk in Greenock and living with his mother Grace at 30 Nelson Street. His father had died when he was just seven years old.

30 Nelson St, Greenock

At age 28 in 1891 he was lodging in Greenock at 13 Brisbane Street and working as a Mercantile Clerk. His mother had died in 1888.

13 Brisbane St, Greenock

Just one year later he emigrated to the USA.

Living and working in San Francisco

We first pick him up in the USA in 1896 in the San Francisco City Directory where he is listed as a clearing-house clerk for the Anglo Californian Bank living at 529 Post which is in Lower Nob Hill. Some 20 years later Raymond Chandler worked for the same bank.

He subsequently lived for quite a few years at 708 Hyde and is listed there in the 1900 United States Federal Census living with the Meyer family who had previously lived in NY and whose parents hailed from France. By 1903 he was working for the International Banking Corp as a Paying Teller.

In 1903 he makes the news in the San Francisco Call as a hotly tipped competitor in the Scottish Bowling Tournament although he didn’t win. There are numerous reports from matches involving Thomas over the next few years. The club he was a member of is America’s oldest lawn bowling club. The club, now known as the San Francisco Lawn Bowling Club, is based in Golden Gate Park with a beautiful Edwardian club house. This website has some more fabulous photographs from the time when Thomas was playing, unfortunately we have no way of knowing if one of them is him!

Scottish Bowling Club 1910

The Club’s first treasurer was James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Jr; Mayor of San Francisco from 1912 to 1931 and Governor of California from 1931 to 1934.

The Great Earthquake

Thomas was resident in San Francisco during the great earthquake of 1906. The earthquake struck at 5.13 am on 18th April and is estimated to have been around 7.8 in magnitude. It damaged buildings and killed many people, but it was the fires that raged for four days that meant that two-thirds of the houses in the city went up in flames. It is estimated that about 3,000 people died and between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of 410,000.

Makeshift camps in the parks and beaches were set up, and over 5,000 wooden shacks were built for the homeless. Many still operated up to two years later.

Wooden huts in camps

As a result of the devastation, trade moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles which took over the role of premier city of the west coast of the US.

Prior to 1906 Thomas was still at 708 Hyde but afterwards in 1907 he had moved to 2018 Sutter and again to 445 Page. This US Geographical Map shows that Hyde was in the area of the fire. We can also see photographic evidence of the devastation of Hyde that forced him to make this move.

Remains of cable cars on Hyde

Ruins of cottages on Golden Gate near Hyde

Latter Years

From a few records we know that Thomas was a registered Republican voter.

In the 1910 United States Federal Census his immigration year is given as 1892 and he is living at 1753 Pine Street in the Lower Pacific Heights. He is listed as a single boarder, age 47 and working as a Bank Paying Teller. He is listed as naturalised. The building appears to be still there.

Pine Street

In the 1920 United States Federal Census he is listed as retired, still single and is boarding at 1390 California Street in Nob Hill. The building is still there and now houses a ‘dive’ bar called the Wreck Room and a hotel called Cable Car Hotel.

1390 California Street

In September 1929 Thomas died in San Francisco aged 66. Just one month before the stock market crash brought devastation to the financial sector he had worked in since arriving in America.

Kelly and Wood Family: Origins within the British Isles

I had the idea for doing a chart to show from where in the British Isles the family was born going back a few generations. So here it is. The chart starts at my father’s generation on the far left; with the top section representing his mother’s (Wood) side of the family and the bottom his father’s (Kelly).

The far right of the chart represents for my father’s generation their great, great grandparents and for my generation our great, great, great grandparents.

The proportions they represent are:

English 37.5%
Irish 31.25%
Scottish 12.5%
Manx 12.5%
Welsh 6.25%

Some of these proportions may change slightly if you go further back, in particular some of the names from the Irish ancestors such as Harrison do not seem to be native to Ireland. But in the main the proportions would probably hold for a large number of generations before the ones shown on the chart.

Wood Family Map

Click on the pin menu (the square on the top left) to see the list of markers by family. Or just click on a pin.

The information on the map is largely taken from census data from 1841 to 191

Married to British Film Industry Royalty: Wood Family

I have been enjoying some exciting discoveries in the Wood family. In the box of documents I inherited from my Nan, Ailsa Joyce Kelly nee Wood, are many notes about the family tree. So many notes that it has been a bit overwhelming. I remembered reading something about people in the film industry who were in some way related but then could not find it again. Until last week….

So I was expecting to have to do some research into some obscure part of British film making, way back when… oh how wrong I was ….

So here is the context. The notes were from my Manx family. My Nan’s paternal grandmother was from Lezayre in the Isle of Man. Nan’s grandmother’s older sister, Alice Corlett, married William Quayle. They had a daughter Alice Maud Mabel Quayle known as Maud who married another Quayle, Robert. They moved to London and had two daughters Alicia and Thora.

These two daughters ran a restaurant in Elstree called ‘The Manx Cat’ before the outbreak of WWII. It became a favourite with the film industry and the rooms upstairs were rented out to various directors and actors. It was here that the two sisters met their future husbands.

Often an extended lunch would be taken at a restaurant known as the Manx Cat, about a half a mile from the Studio.

Source: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: Ronald Neame, an Autobiography

Just for clarity Alicia and Thora are my (and my cousins) second cousins twice removed. For my dad’s generation they are second cousins once removed. Another couple of points of information’ Quayle and Corlett are very Manx surnames and Elstree (and neighbouring Borehamwood) was where the major film studios were in England from 1914 through to the 1980s.

Alicia Quayle and Frank Launder

The eldest sister married Frank Launder in 1931 when she was 20 years old. They had two children but were divorced by 1950 when Frank Launder married the actress Bernadette O’Farrell.

Frank Launder (1906-1997) was a British writer, film director and producer who made more than 40 films, many in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat. He was working as a screenwriter in the 1930s when he met my cousin. He wrote screenplays with Sidney Gilliat including Oh, Mr Porter 1937 and the Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes 1938.

Pause … yes … my second cousin’s twice removed’s husband cowrote the Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes….

They founded their own production company Individual Pictures. They were best known for comedies including The Happiest Days of Your Life 1950 and most famously the St Trinians series.

Thora Quayle and Edward Michael Smedley-Aston

Alicia’s younger sister married Edward Michael Smedley-Aston in 1935. They did stay together until death did them part. They were married for 70 years until Michael’s death in 2006 and had one son Brian Smedley-Aston; a film editor. The Smedley-Aston’s and Launder’s were close, often living in the same or neighbouring houses from the 1930s through to 1950.

E M Smedley-Aston was known as Michael Smedley-Aston or Smed in the film industry. He was working as an assistant second director when he first met Thora and later became a film producer. According to Ronald Neame, his friends doubted his ability to ‘get a girlfriend’ and were plotting to intervene…

But as the saying goes ‘Watch out for the quiet ones.’ Smed in his own inimitable, upper-crust style had already discreetly found himself a girlfriend, whom he later married without assistance or interference from his chums.

Michael went to Elstree at age 18. At the beginning of his career, Michael Smedley-Aston worked with Alfred Hitchcock and was assistant director on Dance Band, Royal Cavalcade and Drake of England all in the same year he married Thora. In 1939 he worked on Goodbye, Mr Chips. During the war he was stationed in Canada in the RAF and Thora accompanied him there. After the war he worked on the production of David Lean’s Great Expectations.

With Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, he was brought in to oversee the newly formed British Lion Films Ltd in 1955 after Alexander Korda could not pay back a loan taken out for the British Lion Film Corporation. They produced a large number of films including I’m Alright Jack in 1959.

Michael Smedley-Aston was known for giving aspiring actors their first break including Michael Caine, Oliver Reed, Peter Sellers, Glenda Jackson and Sean Connery.

He was born in 1912. His father William Smedley-Aston 1868-1941 was a leading photographer in the Arts and Crafts movement. He was also instrumental in encouraging and financing early moving films or ‘Biographs’ through his firm the British Biograph Company.

Michael and Thora’s son Brian was a film producer and editor working on movies including Tom Jones and Rollerball. He encouraged his children to go into the City, however, stating there’s no money in films.

Michael and Thora retired to the Isle of Man and she set up the Pets Aid League in 1975. She remained president of the charity until her death.

Thora lived to 102 and died in January 2016 in Ramsay in the Isle of Man just two months before her 103rd birthday.

Source: Lancashire Evening Post

Other sources

Thora Celebrates 102 Years and a Life in the World of Movies

Life with the stars in movie heydey.

IMDB: E M Smedley-Aston

Wikipedia: William Smedley-Aston

Wikipedia: Frank Launder

Imdb: Frank Launder

A brief outline of the Wood family

This post gives a brief overview of the Wood line … there is so much more behind all this but I hope this helps give context to my later posts. The Wood family line comes from Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cheshire and Flintshire in Wales.

My grandmother was born in Birkenhead in 1921; Ailsa Joyce Wood. She married Stanley Francis Kelly in 1949 in Birkenhead.

She was the daughter of Gladys Nelson and Benjamin Wood; who married in 1914 in Birkenhead. They had 5 children; 2 of whom died as children. Benjamin was a Clerk at the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.

Gladys Nelson (nan’s mother), the Johnsons and the Hibberts

Gladys Nelson was the daughter of Eleanor Johnson and John Nelson, a boilermaker. However, she and her sister Bessie were bought up by their grandfather John Johnson and his second wife Eleanor Tyson. Gladys and Bessie were both born in Redcar, on the north-east coast, but then moved to Birkenhead with their grandparents (who had been in Sheffield despite being born in Cheshire). What happened to Eleanor and John is a mystery; as is quite why their children were born in Redcar. Although John is listed on both their birth certificates I have not yet found a marriage record for Eleanor Johnson and John Nelson.

Eleanor Johnson was the daughter of John Johnson from Hawarden, Flintshire and Margaret Hibbert from Hoole, Chester, Cheshire; they married in 1864 and had 3 children. John Johnson was a boiler maker. Margaret died in 1875 and John remarried a widow with her own family – Eleanor Tyson.

The Hibberts come from Hoole in Cheshire which is now part of Chester. We can trace their line back a number of generations. They were agricultural labourers and one of them was the Gardener for Hoole Hall (now a hotel and spa).

The Johnsons come from the welsh border near Chester. They lived in Hawarden and went to the same church as the Gladstone family (as in prime minister Gladstone!). You can still see our direct line’s gravestones in the church graveyard. They went from agricultural labourers to working in collieries and iron.

Benjamin Wood (nan’s father), the Woods and the Corletts

Benjamin Wood was the son of George Wood from Paisley in Scotland and Ann Jane Corlett from Lezayre, Isle of Man; they were married in 1874 . According to the family George Wood moved from Scotland to the Isle of Man at some point in the early 1870s; Ann Jane then moved from the Isle of Man to Liverpool to work in service where she appears in the census in 1871. They were married in Liverpool in 1874 and then lived together in Birkenhead. They had 12 children; 10 of whom survived childhood. George was a grocer and general smith. They had a shop on Borough Road in Birkenhead.

Anne Jane Corlett came from a long line of Corletts from Glen Auldyn in Lezayre in the Isle of Man. The Corlett’s owned/leased a farm in the glen the ownership/lease of which has been traced back to the late 1600s passed down from father to son until 1908 when Ewan Thomas Corlett sold it. The Glen has archaeology dating back to prehistoric times so our ancestors could have been living in this part of the world for 1000s of years.

William Wood and Margaret McGeoch (nan’s great grandparents)

George Wood (nan’s grandfather) was the eldest son of William Wood and Margaret McGeoch both of Paisley, Scotland; they were married in 1848 in Paisley. They moved from Paisley to Greenock and had 10 children 5 of whom died in childhood; four in a fire. William Wood was a Caulker working on iron ships and his wife ran a grocers shop.

Margaret McGeoch was the daughter of James McGeoch and Margaret Craig both born in the late 1780s in Scotland. They were married in 1814 in Paisley.

George Wood and Grace Marshall (Nan’s great great grandparents)

William Wood (nan’s great grandfather) was the son of George Wood of Paisley, Scotland and Grace Marshall one of the Marshall travelers or Romani who traveled from Scotland down the west coast to Wales. They married in 1826 in Paisley. They had two children and then at some point shortly after the birth of their second child Grace died and George married Janet Muir with whom he had a further four children. George was a hand loom weaver; quite probably making the famous paisley shawls.

So far I have been unable to find definitive information on exactly whom George’s parents were; although there are some likely candidates in Paisley. Around this time many people migrated to Paisley to participate in the early years of the weaving industry which had, some years before, been kickstarted by the daughter of a local laird who had smuggled out some silk thread making technology from the continent! I have also failed to find any record of Grace Marshall’s birth or parentage; family lore says she was the daughter of one of the chieftains of the Marshall clan… More of which later.

Kelly Family Map

Click on the pin menu (the square on the top left) to see the list of markers by family. Or just click on a pin.

The information on the map is largely taken from census data from 1841 to 1911.

A Wood family tragedy

Family lore has told of a tragedy in my father’s mother’s family whereby a number of children died in a fire. Today as I was seeking to fill in some of the blanks in the Wood family I found the records of this terrible event.

William Wood and Margaret McGeoch are my nan’s great grandparents. They were born about 1827 and lived in Greenock, Scotland. By 1863 they had six children.

The following report was in the Caledonian Mercury and the London Daily News on the 6th January 1863. There was a shorter report in the Glasgow Herald on 5th January 1863.

THE APPALLING OCCURRENCE AT GREENOCK

FOUR CHILDREN OF A FAMILY SUFFOCATED

The Glasgow Mail gives the following account of this painful accident alluded to in our columns yesterday:-

William Wood, belonging to Paisley, but for the last eleven years residing in Greenock, a caulker in the employ of Messrs Robert Steele and Co., shipbuilders, resided with his wife and five children at 5 Shaw Street, a few doors west from the Rue-End, south side. While he follows his occupation, Mrs Wood carries on a small green-grocery business. The premises consist of the shop to the front, a kitchen behind, and an intermediate apartment, where Mr and Mrs Wood slept, the children sleeping in a tent-bed in the kitchen. On Friday night, between eight and nine o’clock, Mr and Mrs Wood went out to a party, to the house of Mr Robert Simpson, spirit merchant, Suttie’s Land, Cathcart Street, within a few hundred yards of their shop, taking with them George aged 14 years, their eldest child. They left their four younger children at home in charge of the house, the shop being shut up. These children were – James aged 12; William 9; Lillias 5 and Grace 3 years; Sarah McGeoch aged 12, a cousin, who had come from Paisley on the previous day to visit them, was also in the house making five children in all. They were amusing themselves in the absence of their parents, and that to an extent that was noisy, inducing a neighbour to call them to be quiet. It appeared, however, to have been the ordinary amusements in which children will indulge when left alone under similar circumstances. About one o’clock in the morning George was dispatched from Mr Simpson’s to see that all was right with the children at home, and on going he found that Grace, the youngest, had been put to bed, the girl McGeoch was stripping Lillias to put her to bed also, and they were all on the eve of retiring to rest, and the fire in the grate was quite out; and this was the condition of the house when he left to return to Mr Simpson’s, after remaining only a short time. Being the holiday season, the party sat long, and on Mr Wood returning to his house about 5 o’clock in the morning he knocked, but could not gain admission. He went to the back window, which is stanchioned. On getting the sash up a little he felt the wood work inside quite warm, and the kitchen densely filled with smoke. Aided by some neighbours he soon obtained admission by forcing in the front door. Nothing was wrong in the shop, or in the intermediate apartment, where lay the girl McGeoch in bed, unharmed. He found the door leading from that apartment into the kitchen shut, and on forcing it in he found the kitchen filled with smoke. The gas had been screwed out, but fire had been smouldering on the floor, a little to the right side, and in front of the fire place; and this fire had communicated to and charred all the front of a chest of drawers, on top of which stood a bookcase filled with books. The floor was burned through, forming cavity of about thirty inches in diameter; and this seems to have been the seat of the fire. The introduction of fresh air into the apartment caused the hitherto smouldering fire to blaze up, but a neighbour pulled down the bookcase and drawers and a few buckets of water arrested any danger. Opposite to the fireplace stood the bed, in which lay the four children of Mr Wood, and on rushing to ascertain their condition, he found them rigid and dead, having every appearance of having died convulsively from the smoke. The four bodies were instantly removed to the house of Mr Simpson. Drs McFee and Lochhead were soon on the spot, but though a slight pulsation was discernable in the boy James, he was past recovery. The feelings of the bereaved parents, who are industrious, well-doing people, may be better imagined than described. The origin of the fire may have been a match thrown on the floor among some clothing, but this is merely conjectural. The circumstances cast a deep gloom over the whole town. This is not the time to moralise on the subject, but we may say that he awful occurrence affords a solemn lesson to parents. The Procurator-fiscal was immediately put in possession of the facts, and will make the usual examination which devolves on him.

The newspaper states that they had five children but my research has them with six children – four of whom died as reported from suffocation. The survivors were George, 14 at the time, and Margaret who was 8. George was attending the party with his parents but the whereabouts of Margaret are unknown – perhaps she was visiting and elsewhere at the time. She was born in 1855 and is on the 1861 census with the rest of the family. George is my nan’s grandfather.

William and Margaret had another three children after the fire; William, Lillias Grace and Robert Gosby. Tragically their daughter Lillias Grace named after Lillias and Grace who they lost in the fire also died as an infant. William and Robert lived to adulthood.

Their surviving children did not stay in Scotland. By the 1870s George and Margaret were living in Birkenhead. George had previously lived in the Isle of Man where he met his wife Ann Jane Corlett. They were married in Liverpool and are nan’s grandparents. Margaret then moved to Guyana and Brazil before her death in Birkenhead. Her descendants the ‘Millions’ still live in Brazil.

William who was born in September 1863 the same year as the tragedy emigrated to Chicago in the early 1890s where he married Mary F Callahan. He was a naval architect.

Robert Gosby who was born in 1870 was an Engineer Designer and he worked first in Greenock, in Belfast and briefly in London before moving to Rugby.

My DNA results are in!

My eagerly awaited DNA results have just arrived from Ancestry. I was hoping that the insights I have gained from the family tree research would be evident from my ethnicity profile.

I was expecting to see a profile with a mainly British and Irish mix – although I was not sure about the proportions! The research had lead me to suspect that I was much more British than Irish…

I was also hoping to find traces of the Romani heritage from my father’s mother’s side of the family and a trace of Scandinavian from the viking roots of the Leeming family (my mother’s maiden name).

The Results

My ethnic heritage is indeed mostly British and Irish. With just over 50% of my ethnic heritage coming from the people who have lived on this island for over 10,000 years and just over a third from Ireland.

The viking links to the Leemings might well be the reason for the 3% Scandinavian.

My family tree research and the DNA results are perfectly aligned!

Romani Heritage

The results show less than 1% from Asia South. Reading the information supplied by Ancestry to support analysis of the DNA results I noticed this text.

The Pashtun are a tribal society in the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Burusho, or Hunza, live in the foothills of the Hindu Kush and speak a unique language unrelated to any other. Legend says that they are descended from the soldiers of Alexander the Great, but scientific evidence shows that they are genetically linked to the European Romani, also known as ‘Gypsies.’

So perhaps the trace that is being picked up is due to the genetic link to the Romani rather than any particular link to this region?

Other traces

So everything so far is what I expected more or less but there are other traces in my results.

3% Western Europe

This relates roughly to the area of France/Germany and could reflect Celtic, Saxon or perhaps Norman forebears. I have not found any Norman names in my research as yet. I have found names with Anglo Saxon origins. Celtic is a definite possibility.

Less than 1% Finnish/Northwest Russian

A complete surprise this one… Not at all sure where it links in to what I know about my family. From the data on Ancestry 5% of Irish natives have links to this ethnicity but 0% in Britain so maybe this links to my Irish ancestors in some way.

Less than 1% Native American

If the last one was a complete surprise this is totally way out there. Maybe some of my viking forebears got friendly with the people on the atlantic seaboard? According to wikipedia there was contact between the vikings and native people’s in Greenland where there were permanent settlements unlike the temporary settlements on the coast of the US.

There is evidence of Norse trade with the natives (called Skraelings by the Vikings). The Norse would have encountered both Native Americans (the Beothuk, related to the Algonquin) and the Thule, the ancestors of the Inuit.

In summary

There are also links to 32 people identified as 4th cousins or less and 100s of people identified as distant cousins but more about that another time.