Johnston | Seeking Susan ~ Meeting Marie ~ Finding Family

Is there a more satisfying feeling when you’ve gone that extra mile, checked that extra record, about to “throw in the towel” and then SUCCESS???… I’m smiling 😀

My dad’s “Crout family”, from Hampshire, England, are a complicated bunch but so so interesting. After much hunting and searching I reckon I’ve finally located all of my Great Great Grandfather’s 10 siblings. Takes a heck of a lot of time to do even a quick search of each of them, especially if they too have large families… and some of them sure do… puff puff puff.

Well, I’ve been slowly working through Great Great Grandad’s siblings and finally got to one of his 5 younger sisters, Frances Sophia Crout. Her second son, fathered 15 children!!!. By the time I worked through all that lot, their marriages and their children, Frances Sophia’s next child was a bit of a relief, in some ways, as no documentary evidence jumped out at me. With a sigh of relief I was about to put Henry Frederick to one side with the thought that maybe he’d died young and I just hadn’t found the evidence yet. Something stopped me and how happy I am that it did for, to my delight and surprise, another fascinatingly interesting part of my family “came to light”.

BDM indexes, census reports, passenger lists etc. show that my 1st cousin 3x removed, Henry Frederick Johnston… the fourth of my 2nd Great Grand Aunt’s children married Mary. They had 2 sons and then in 1902 Henry “scarpered across the pond” to Canada without his wife and children just like my own Grandfather did 10 years later. However, much to my surprise, instead of this Henry setting up with a new wife and family… his wife Mary and sons; Keith Stewart and Jack Murray joined him 10 years later.

Like my Grandfather, Henry (Harry) Eden Crout, young Jack also joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and fought in France throughout World War 1, although in different regiments. I wonder if they knew each other? My Grandfather migrated to Montreal, Quebec… whilst Jack, his brother and parents moved to Winipeg, Manitoba.

More work to be done yet, of course 🙂 … but what an amazing journey it’s been with these Crout’s, of mine. Despite the family stories, I’ve found not a drop of Scottish blood in any of them. At least my Grandmother Marie Ogilvie’s dad, James, was Scottish. You can read about that here and a little about her Grandfather who was born, and died, in Elgin Scotland here.

However, I now know where my fascination with sailing ships comes from and that certainly is not just from my Grandpa, Frederick Alexander Allan.