Thank you for taking the troubleWHITE / FLANNERY / HARDWICK (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Saturday, July 27, 2013, 17:11 (3948 days ago) @ heatherblockley

Hi Heather,
thanks for your message, we're only too pleased to try and help.
Are you a subscriber of Ancestry or suchlike ?. I'm not but I can still run a free search. Hopefully this link will take you to the results, if not you can search yourself of course.
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gl=ROOT_CATEGORY&rank=1&new=1&...

These marriage results shows that altho the name Thomas Flannery is not at all rare country/world wide (altho not a typical Forest name), and there are a few Flannery/White marriages around the UK (tho White is relatively commonplace I think), it only suggests ONE to a GRACE White.

This single Record is reflected within the FreeBMD results, which altho don't cover the whole UK arepretty true for our region:

Surname First name(s) Spouse District Vol Page
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Marriages Dec 1916 (>99%)
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Flannery Thomas White Monmouth 11a 33
White Grace Flannery Monmouth 11a 33

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

Even before seeing these results, I too find it hard to believe there were two such marriages, if so why wern't they apparently recorded ?. It seems even more unlikely there were two within the same Regiment, altho I'm unsure as to why you think this a possibility.

Re-searching the CWGC site shows a few Thomas Flannery casualties. Repeating the above free search on Ancestry's "Military" section shows sets of WW1 Records for several Thomas Flannerys. If you have access, either as a subscriber or from a public library, you might like to try and read all these records. Some of them (ie Pension/Service Records where available) will carry more detail including next of kin, so this is a way you MIGHT find out if there's more than one Thomas/White marriage or other family link. However this is a long shot I think.

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Would Grace & her Flannery inlaws in London have been very religious, I don't know but if they were strong Catholics would that affect whether Grace would/could re-marry soon after 1919 ?. I've seen a few cases of WW1 war-widows who do re-marry into the same family (indeed Grace did in later life), sometimes as a marriage of platonic companionship or perhaps more than this especially if between young friends, neighbours or even cousins ?...
I GUESS if living in postwar Holborn MAYBE life was tough and the extended family were living in quite close proximity ?.... Alfred could have been born out of wedlock, and possibly the father's name on the Certificate is an attempt by Grace to maintain "respectability" etc if only to remember Thomas's name to the baby Alfred, it wouldnt be the first birth certificate to contain slight untruths.

To me it seems equally possible that Alfred's father was another Thomas Flannery, it was clearly a popular/common name at that time and perhaps especially within their local "Irish" community #. Could Grace have been living with her father-in-law, also Thomas it seems. I don't know, was he still alive in 1926, if so where ??. I ask as I've seen cases where widowed mothers move-in with their equally bereaved father-in-laws, in fact they could already have been living under the same roof while Thomas was away in the Army. In some cases such people become more than companions, "like father like son" perhaps...

# pure speculation maybe ?, but communities amd families did stick together as we know, particularly in very difficult times such as post WW1. I've lived in Greater London since the mid80s and know the Irish traditionally stick together and why not of course, but I'm sure you have a much better idea as to whether these circumstances are likely for Grace way back when ?. I'm sure whatever she did was in the best interests of herself and her young family. Hopefully you know her circumstances better than I can guess, such as when & why she eventually found herself back in the Forest, maybe back to her White family; this may hold some clues.
I've tried searching FreeBMD & Ancestry for Elsie & Alfred to get an idea of their adult lives & localities, I presume you've done this too and with hopefully more luck than me. Ancestry does have a private members tree for Alfred, apparently with Leicester links, if not already your tree perhaps they're worth contacting.

Anyhow, enough of my speculation, I do hope at least some of it is of interest or even help, and wish you well in your search.

atb J