Monday, March 5, 2012

Hunting for Thomas Hughes

Clue #1: Free BMD

Since we are not exactly sure where or when Thomas Hughes died, the best way to find out is by searching the UK free BMD. Thomas Hughes is not a very uncommon name, so searching for him in Staffordshire would probably give us too many results. So we need to narrow it down:

Job, the last child of Susannah and Thomas Hughes, was born on 13 May 1855.
May 1855 MINUS 9 months (in case Thomas died while she was pregnant)= August 1854
Susannah left England on 1 June 1856 (add 6 months for good measure)= December 1856

The free BMD website separates the year into quarters. Here are the final search terms:
Event: Death
Surname: Hughes
First name: Thomas
Start Date: Sep 1854
End Date: Dec 1856
County: Staffordshire

And here are the results:



Now that we have some results, it is important to figure out which ones are logical by doing a search on Google Maps. It is also important to note that the UK free BMD separates the county into districts. Since we're not sure where Thomas died, we just need to figure out which districts are closest to Willenhall.

We can automatically rule out Wolstanton and Newcastle because they are more than 40 miles away from Willenhall. It's about 4 miles from Willenhall to Wolverhampton, 8 miles to Dudley, and 15 miles to Stourbridge.

Since Thomas grew up in Willenhall, it is most likely that he died there too, making Wolverhampton the most likely district by far. That means there are 3 possible Thomas Hughes dying in this time frame.

The real question is: Did Thomas really die? Let's find out!

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