My 2x great-grandfather Arthur Woodcroft disappeared. He was in Luton in 1906 when his daughter Beatrice married Thomas Dellar, but by the 1911 census he is gone. The story that has come down through the family is that he legged it to Canada with his new son-in-law’s sister, Flora May Dellar. Think about it...that would be pretty scandalous even now. According to her niece, Auntie May was a tall, attractive and vivacious woman, one of the renowned, or rather notorious, Dellar sisters of High Town (more on them later). May is pictured below (center) as a bridesmaid at the wedding of her elder sister.
The other half of the story is that a woman name Edith Summerton showed up in the fifties claiming to be Arthur and May’s daughter. Visiting from Montreal, she said she wanted to get to know her family. She visited England once or twice and then lost touch again. What exactly became of Arthur and May has remained a mystery and Auntie Madge has repeatedly expressed a desire to learn the truth before she passes on. Mum has been searching for Arthur for 40 years, and in the last few years I too have joined the hunt. We want to do right by Auntie Madge, and of course, solve the mystery. Mum mentions Arthur all the time, and I’ve tried several searches but always came up empty handed. Until yesterday that is.
I had a hunch in the bath (such a great place to think) that I needed to look again, this time for Edith’s husband, Nelson Summerton. New records come online every day, and up popped my marriage record, on the 6th of May, 1936 at the Montreal Salvation Army, a Nelson Summerton married Edith Marion Dellar Ward, daughter of Albert Ward and Flora May Ward. Edith Marion Dellar W. and Flora May W. are a dead give away. Albert Ward is a pseudonym (same initials as Arthur Woodcroft), no wonder we couldn’t find him, the crafty so and so.
We had figured he must have travelled to Canada under an assumed name, and as soon as I put this new name into a search of ship’s passengers I came up with Albert Ward, 45 year old straw hat manufacturer (the ubiquitous Luton profession), who sailed on the Corinthian for Montreal in Nov 1909. May must have followed on shortly after as she is living with him as his “wife” on the Canadian census for 1911.
So the stories were true, and Edith Summerton was, as she claimed, Madge’s cousin. Of course there’s more to find. Did Arthur/Albert and May actually marry (making Arthur officially a bigamist, not just a bit of a scoundrel)? Were/are there more Canadian cousins? And why did he choose the pseudonym Ward? Beatrice Woodcroft's daughter Doris Dellar, my grandmother, became a Ward when she married; it’s my mother’s maiden name. But Doris wasn’t even born when Arthur and May ran off together. It’s just a funny little coincidence. Right?