Ancestry Magazine

As I have researched family history over the past few years, I have discovered three things that make the research process both interesting and rewarding: 1) solving a difficult problem, 2) locating new information about ancestors that no one knew was available, and 3) meeting new people who share a common interest in family history. I have rarely encountered all three situations in one research project, but in the autumn of 2003, I did.

One September day, my wife Susan and I drove to a courthouse in a neighboring county, where I wanted to spend the day searching land records. I had just started my research when Robert Taylor introduced himself to me and said that he was doing land title searches.

I told him that I was trying to locate information concerning my great-grandparents from their land records. As we talked, he explained that his family was also interested in family history but that he and his wife Patti were having difficulty locating information about her grandfather, Herbert Stanley Stark. All they had were a few photographs and a marriage record. They had little information about Herbert because he had not remained close to his family after he and his wife were divorced.

Robert and Patti had used the information on the marriage certificate to try to trace Herbert’s birth record in England, but they had not been able to locate the city or county of Herbert’s birth. Their goal was to find any living relatives in Herbert’s homeland in England since they knew of no relatives in America other than his three surviving children.

I knew a little about British research and told Robert that if he would send what information he had, my wife and I would try to help him and his wife with their research.

A few weeks later, Robert sent me a package containing a letter, a copy of a marriage license, and a picture of a World War I-era military unit. Herbert was a very tall man who towered over his military unit. If we could locate his military unit we thought his height might be a good way to identify him.

The letter stated that the Stark family believed Herbert came from a place in England called Shipley or Shipsea, but the family could not locate it on any current maps. An old map listed a Shipsea in Lincolnshire, but no other information could be found. The family also thought that the information on the marriage license might not be correct. Parents named John and Jane? A city that did not exist? Perhaps Herbert had tried to hide his identity when he came to America.

The marriage license stated that Herbert was born 25 August 1885 in England. His parents were John Stark and Jane Dyson. The Taylors knew from the death certificate that Herbert died 3 June 1960 in Hooper, Utah. We proceeded to research from the known to the unknown, hoping to gather some clues.

The Marriott Library at the University of Utah has an extensive collection of old local newspapers, and I located Herbert’s obituary while I was there on a research trip. The obituary stated that “Harry” was born in Shipley, Ireland.

My wife found Harry in the 1920 and 1930 U.S. censuses but not in the 1910 Utah census. In the 1920 census, Harry stated that he came to America in 1907 and had been born in Northern Ireland. We searched the Internet and maps for a Shipley, Ireland, but without success. In the 1930 census, Harry stated that he was from England. Our search then expanded to both countries.

My wife and I continued to gather information from a variety of sources. We searched the major genealogy websites, including some British and Irish sites. We could not locate a credible birthplace, nor could we locate any other researchers on the Stark family. We wrote to the funeral home and the cemetery where Herbert was buried, but the documents we received did not give us any ancestral information. We also obtained a copy of Harry’s divorce decree and learned more about Harry’s life and personality, but the divorce papers did not give us any significant genealogical information. Finally, we took a closer look at the picture of Harry in his military uniform.

We could tell from the uniforms that it was taken in the World War I era, but was it was an American or British military unit? We searched the Internet for military uniforms and decided that the picture was probably taken in England. We then thought that the insignia on the hat of the uniform could be a good clue so we tried to enlarge the photo, but we could only make out the shape of the insignia, not the words.

We looked for that insignia at our local library but could not find a match in either Ireland or England. Sinc e the books we searched were not a complete reference, I decided to write to some British museums and include a copy of the picture of Harry and his regiment. A few weeks later, I received a letter from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London stating that the museum did not have military information in its collection, but that my letter would be forwarded to the National Army Museum in Chelsea.

When a letter arrived from the National Army Museum, much to our surprise, the museum personnel were able to identify the military unit by the insignia on the soldiers’ hats. The regiment was the Green Howard or Alexandria, Princess of Wales Own (Yorkshire Regiment). The letter also included an address where we could write to learn more about the Green Howards. A website was also noted.

Harry would have been a member of the regiment in 1917, well past the immigration date of 1907 he had stated in the U.S. census. He certainly was a mystery.

The turning point in our research came when we learned that the regiment was from Yorkshire. We located a parish called Skipsea in East Riding, Yorkshire, England, and read about it on the Internet. My wife searched the 1891 and 1901 indexes of the English census online. She could not find a Herbert Stark nor his parents, so she broadened the search criteria and came up with Harry Stork with his parents, John and Jane, and an older sister. The family was living in Skipsea, Yorkshire.

The place was right, Harry was the right age, and the parents’ given names were correct. We were sure we were looking at the right family. Could Harry’s grandparents, the Dysons, be living nearby? My wife then searched the census and found William and Elizabeth Dyson living in the neighboring parish of Hull along with a niece, Gertrude Stork. The families had been found!

Armed with the parish information, we could trace the Dyson and Stork families in the parish registers and other British census records. We searched the British mi litary records, but Harry’s documents must have been among the many that had been destroyed during the German blitz. My wife also found another researcher in England who was tracing the Dyson family.

My wife and I had given Robert and Patti Taylor regular updates on our research, and we were excited to finally share our success with them. Once we had located the researcher in the Dyson family who lived in England, we were able to help the Taylor family reach its goal of connecting to family in England.

There are still many unanswered questions. Why had Harry listed Ireland as a birthplace? We could not find any record of him in Ireland. Was his name Stark or Stork, and why had it changed? We still cannot find an immigration record for him. Why had he immigrated alone to a small Utah town?

A few weeks after we sent the Taylors our final report, a letter arrived from the headquarters of the Green Howards in England. The letter verified that the picture was from World War I and that it was one of their military units, although they had never seen that particular picture. They also included a photograph. It was a large group of soldiers in dress uniforms. There on the back row was Herbert Stanley Stark.

Gordon Hall Wright has been interested in family history since he was a boy and heard his grandparents tell of their life experiences and people they had known. Over the years he has done extensive research and writing concerning his ancestors who came from Norway, England, and Denmark.