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IS THIS MAN MY GREATGRANDFATHER?
READER PHIL POOLE WRITES:
My grandfather Albert Henry Hudson (1890-1919) was the illegitimate son of Julianna Hudson (1870-1951). Julianna also had another illegitimate son Alfred Hudson (1897-1988). My family had no clues as to who the father(s) of either Albert Henry or Alfred were, nor whether they had the same father. Both boys were born in rural south-west Shropshire, where their mother was living with her parents at the time of the 1881 and 1891 Census.
Family folklore was that Julianna left the boys in Shropshire and moved to the Manchester area and possibly had no further contact with the boys. This is backed up by the 1901 Census which finds Julianna (recorded as Julia) working as a domestic servant in Swinton. It was only after my mother passed away that I discovered that Julianna married a widower, Richard Ensor Lees, in Barton-upon-Irwell in 1906, that Richard died in 1929 as a result of a mining accident and that Julianna died in Swinton in 1951. I have done a search of the GRO and FindMyPast websites and cannot find any children for Julianna and Richard after their wedding.
I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never discover who Albert Henry's father was. Then couple of
