American AcornsEliza, who was really Emma Lucy
A name that led nowhere
A family chart listed the mother of William Banton Clarkson as "Eliza L. Clarkson," born about 1836. Searching for an Eliza led nowhere. The records had not gone missing. The name was wrong.
Two church registers settle it
The answer came from two Liverpool parish registers, read from images of the original pages.
On 6 July 1854, at St Paul's Church in Liverpool, William Clarkson, a bachelor and spirit dealer living at Aigburth, married Emma Lucy Green, a minor living on Soho Street. The register names her father as William Green, builder, and his father as Thomas Clarkson, brewer. Documented
Four years later, on 22 June 1858, a baby named William Banton was baptized at All Saints, Liverpool. The register lists his parents as William and Emma Lucy Clarkson, of 32 Great Mersey Street, and gives the father's trade as brewer. Documented
Put together, the two entries show that "Eliza L." was Emma Lucy, and that her maiden name was Green. Documented
More chart errors, the same kind
Once the right name was in hand, other entries on the old chart turned out to be wrong in the same ways that charts usually go wrong:
- Wrong place of death. The chart had William Clarkson dying in Texas. He died in Liverpool and was buried at Allerton on 13 February 1915, aged 82. Probable He did visit Texas: a Houston newspaper reported in May 1901 that "William Clarkson of Liverpool" was visiting his son, W. B. Clarkson. Probable
- A famous namesake. William's father, Thomas Clarkson, is not the well-known abolitionist of the same name. This Thomas was a farmer at Poulton-le-Fylde in Lancashire when he married Nancy Banton in 1827, and a brewer by 1854. Probable
- Another woman with the same husband's name. The chart gave Emma Lucy's mother as "Sarah." That Sarah appears to belong to a different William Green. Emma Lucy's likely baptism, in Hertfordshire in December 1835, names her mother as Mary Ann, and a William Green married a Mary Ann Waller in the same parish in 1833. That is a lead, not a proof. Possible
What happened to them
William and Emma Lucy stayed in Liverpool. William worked as a spirit dealer and brewer Documented, and later as a wine merchant Probable. Emma Lucy died in the last quarter of 1910 in Toxteth Park, Liverpool, aged 74. Probable
Their son William Banton Clarkson, born 8 May 1858, is the only branch known in this research packet to have emigrated. Probable He was in Texas by about 1886 to 1888, lived in Houston around the turn of the century and later in San Antonio, and died on 8 September 1933. Probable
The lesson
The Clarkson line looked like a dead end because the key woman's name had been recorded wrong. The fix did not need new archives. It needed the original registers, read carefully, instead of the chart's version of them.
Sources
No public URLs for these sources are recorded in the research packet, so each is cited without a link.
- St Paul's, Liverpool, marriage register, 6 July 1854 (image read; cited by register and date).
- All Saints, Liverpool, baptism register, 22 June 1858, entry 989 (image read; cited by register and entry).
- Allerton cemetery burial, 13 February 1915 (transcription).
- Houston Daily Post, 29 May 1901.
- General Register Office death index, Toxteth Park, December quarter 1910.
- St Chad's, Poulton-le-Fylde, marriage of Thomas Clarkson and Nancy Banton, 1 February 1827 (transcription).