Today I found another branch of the family.
Every now and then every Genealogist hits a brick wall. Over the years I have hit many. One that has taken a very long time to break down is what happened to the siblings of Percy Bean. One married a Mtichell, one married a Brown and Horace of course kept the Bean surname and married Elsie Maude Payne. None of these surnames is exactly uncommon and try searching for Bean on most databases and see how many types of edible beans you have to exclude.
Many years ago through round about methods I found one child, Valerie, for Horace and Elsie. Unfortunately because of when births deaths and marriages get released I could find no details for this family other than the name of the daughter. I found that through a newspaper cutting of Elsie Bean nee Payne’s fathers death. It happened to mention his granddaughter Valerie, daughter of Horace and Elsie Bean.
I looked for Valerie and for a death for Elsie but without the relevant birth, deaths and marriages available I just wasn’t getting very far. So I left it. Last night I started looking again on Ancestry. I came across a family tree on Ancestry.com that had some limited details of Elsie and even a photo of her and her family from when she was young.
Family portrait of the Payne Family Front row in order: Florence , Hilda, Ada, Walter snr Back row: Walter jnr, Vera, Elsie and Violey.
Shared by trishandjeff 16 Jun 2013 on Ancestry.com
On contacting the family that had shared the original photo they were able to get me a death date for Elsie Bean nee Payne. Interestingly enough it was right there easy to find on Ancestry but somehow I had managed to miss it repeatedly. However, for some reason that death was what I needed. It didn’t give me much information but it helped me search outside the box. I started looking for Valerie and her husband who had an unusual surname. I came across more and more and finally found Valerie’s death and that for her husband who died just last year in 2015. I even found a photo of him receiving an Honorary Doctorate.
Honorary Doctorate UTS August 1988 newsroom Ronald Werner.
From there I was able to locate and contact a son of Ronald and Valerie and I have sent them lots of information about the Bean family in the hope that they will also have some information to share that will help me shed some light on this family.
After such a success with Horace’s family I went searching for Lily and Ethel’s family. My search has not been as successful but I do have additional information coming for both families and I did manage to build up my family tree further. It is amazing how sometime just going at things from a different angle can make so much of a difference to what we find.
Good luck finding your ancestors- remember sometimes searching for siblings or children can be more enlightening than searching for the person themselves.