Something will go here one day soon...Gaiety, merriment and dancing, etc.

Regular visitors here will have noticed the refurbishment is taking longer than expected.  This is mainly due to me getting very hooked on tracing my family history, which seems to have more skeletons than a medieval plague pit, and as many black sheep as a farm with several black sheep. 

Read about it here.

Martin and the Forebears. When I was 10 in 1967 my grandmother, Kate Watson, nee Loughborough, died. She was 84 and had been ill for quite a long time, finally passing away in a care home outside north west London. I didn't go to the funeral, but I have  memories of a plaque to Kate in Breakspear Crematorium, Ruislip, but I visited recently, spring 2015 and the plaque had  been removed probably after fees lapsed in the mid seventies.

I often visited Breakspear Crematorium in South Ruislip with my parents as a child.  I was fascinated to know that her original name was Loughborough, and that she was the devoted wife of James Sedcole Watson, who had died over 25 years earlier.  My father was only 14 at the time, so I often tried to imagine what it must have been like for him growing up without a dad.

I was fascinated by the middle name Sedcole, as I'd never come across it before, or even since.  I even thought of adopting it myself.  In 1914 a man called Gavrilo Princip fired a shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, sending Europe headlong into four years of war. One year into that war a man named William Medhurst was shot as he jumped from a landing craft on to the beach at Gallipoli.  100 years later this was reported in a local paper, and the article was read by several people, including my Alice.

These people got together and held a family reunion event in the spring of 2015, 100 years after William Medhurst's death.  One of the centre pieces of this reunion was a very large family tree, 75 feet long.  It motivated me later that year to start digging deep into my family history, trying to find out things that I had never asked as a child.

As part of my research I mentioned Kate Loughborough and James Sedcole Watson on my website, and a couple of months later a lady, Carol, in Australia, searching for those names, found my website and made contact with me.  She told me that James and Kate were her great grandparents!  We became regular correspondents, and eventually found through her research that, rather than Kate and James having two daughters and the son , (my father, Harry), they'd actually only had the two daughters, May and Connie, and that May, Carol's grandmother who she never knew, gave birth to my father!!

Although this didn't change who I was, it did come as a bit of a surprise, to find out that May, who I had always thought of as an elderly aunt in my youth, was actually my grandmother, something I shared with my new friend Carol in Australia.  Carol had been researching her family history for 10 to 15 years , and was able to tell me much that I didn't know. James's father, Thomas Christopher Watson, died in police custody after being arrested one time too many for drunken wife beating.  James himself had 5 brothers.  Kate, whose twin brother died in infancy, came from a very large family, and was brought up by her grandfather, George, after her mother, Anna Maria Ballard, died while Kate was only a year old.  Her father, John William Loughborough remarried, while Kate grew up with her grandfather.

Please contact me.  More details.

The following is a timeline of what I believe I know.  Some data is from FreeBMD.org.uk.  In bygone days families often had secrets...

My Resources

1815 Birth of Jane Gray

1816 Birth of Robert Smith Watson

1832 June 10th Birth of George Loughborough

1836 Birth of Elizabeth Mowbray

1844 Marriage of Robert Smith Watson and Jane Gray

1845 March, Birth of Thomas Christopher Watson to Robert and Jane Watson, Sunderland.

1847 Birth of Joseph Henry Watson to Robert and Jane Watson, Sunderland.

1847 May 19th, Birth of Isabella Frazer.

1850 Birth of Robert S. Watson to Robert and Jane Watson, Sunderland.

1855 July 8th Marriage of George Loughborough and Elizabeth Mowbray

1861 Birth of Anna Maria Ballard to William Henry and Catharine Ballard

1861 Census

1866 January 21st, Marriage of Thomas Christopher Watson and Isabella Frazier, Sunderland.

1867 Birth of William Holmes Watson to Thomas and Isabella Watson.

1870 Birth of Robert H Watson to Thomas and Isabella Watson.

1871 Census

11 Bramwell Street, Bishopwearmouth, Thomas and Isabella Watson, and William and Robert

1871 November 2nd, Death of Robert Smith Watson.

1872 Birth of Thomas C Watson to Thomas and Isabella Watson.

1874 Birth of John Frazier Watson to Thomas and Isabella Watson.

1876 31st October James Sedcole Watson born Sunderland, to Thomas Christopher Watson and Isabella Watson.

1880 Birth of Ernest Percival Watson to Thomas and Isabella Watson.

1881 Census

1882 January 12th Marriage of John William Loughborough and Anna Maria Ballard

1882 6th November, Kate Loughborough born, Hartlepool.  The adjacent record is for the birth of John Mowbray Loughborouh, a twin brother, who died soon after birth.

1883 December 6th Death of Anna Maria Loughborough

1889 October 14th Death of Thomas Christopher Watson, Sunderland, Dec, age 44.

1891 Census

1893 April 12th Death of Jane Bulmer

1897 February 11th Marriage of John William Loughborough and Emily Walker Henderson

1901 Census

1905 Marriage of Kate Loughborough and James Sedcole Watson, Hartlepool, 1st Qtr.  (Pelton????)

1906 July 1st Birth of Wilfred Peter Lampard.

1908 Birth of May Frazier Watson to Kate Loughborough and James Sedcole Watson.

1909 Death of Joseph Henry Watson, 62.

1910 Birth of Constance Anne Watson to Kate Loughborough and James Sedcole Watson, Hartlepool.  4th Qtr

1911 March 18th Death of John William Loughborough

1911 Census

1917 November 19th Record of new owner of 52 Kent Street, Jarrow.

1917 Birth of Cecil Milton Rhodes

1918 Death of  Isabella Watson, age 71.

1920???? Marriage of Frederick Young and Margaret Wilson ????

1924 Birth of Marjorie Young????

1927 Marriage of May Frazer Leggett and Thomas William Leggett.

1928 April 23rd, Birth of Harry, to May Frazer Leggett and Thomas William Leggett.

1929/30 Unofficial adoption of Harry Leggett by Kate and James Sedcole Watson, Hartlepool

1936 Marriage of Constance Anne Watson to Victor Hector Palmer, Shoreditch, 3rd Qtr

1939 Register

1942 Death of James Sedcole Watson, 65, of 48 Tristram Avenue, West Hartlepool.

1943 Death of William Mackenzie Watson.

1936 Birth of Derek to Constance & Victor Hector Palmer, Islington, 3rd Qtr

1939 Register

1942 October 4th Death of James Sedcole Watson

1943 Death of William Mackenzie Watson.

1950 Birth of Frank Palmer to Constance & Victor Hector Palmer, West Hartlepool 4th Qtr

1950 Marriage of Harry Watson and Joyce Young, West Hartlepool, 4th Qtr.

1951 January 13th, 48 Tristram Avenue for sale.

1954 March 18th, record of 48 Tristram Avenue.

1957 July 26th, my birth, Dartford, Kent.

1963 Marriage of Derek A. Palmer & Patricia A. Green, Hitchin, June

196? Birth of Keith Palmer, to Derek A. Palmer & Patricia A. Green

1967 January 6th Death of Kate Watson (nee Loughborough), Oxhey Heath, London

1973 February 13th Death of May Frazer Lampard, aka Rhodes.

1977 September 1st Death of Wilfred Peter Lampard

I would welcome contact from Derek Palmer or Frank Palmer, my cousins, sons of Connie and Victor Hector Palmer, (Hector Victor Palmer) from Stevenage, for any help they can give me.  I remember Derek worked in Dar-es-Salaam in the 1960s, and I was a page boy at his wedding to Patricia, nee Green.  My family tree research has lead me to discover information which contradicts things I remember as a child, 40-45 years ago.  I would also welcome contact from anyone listed here.

I started this web site in about 1998.  As of Autumn 2016 it is getting its biggest ever refurbishment. 

My goals are to include more current information, more pictures, no dead links, consistent format and typeface, better readability on more screens, and to get rid of characters that display badly.  But no free beer.

It is a bit untidy and experimental ...but just wait...

Text first, then pictures to be replaced.

Then the missing links.