Monday 30 November 2020

An update on Henry Turle (1848 ~ 1862 or 1868?)

This is just a little update following my last blog post back in October before I went on a little hiatus and did some, what I call rabbit hole research! 

As you may recall from my last post, I wrote about Henry Turle, 3rd son of Henry Turle and Jane Hobbs, and the question mark over this year of death. I had concluded at that time that on the balance of probability and with the available documents, I believed that Henry Turle had died in the United States of America on 2 August 1868 and updated the Turle family tree accordingly.    

I was unable to find a birth entry for Henry on the General Register Office website although I did find an entry for his baptism [1]:  



For his death being on 2 August 1862, I had only one document, an entry on the Albany Rural Cemetery Burial Cards [2] on Ancestry. (You can also search through the Albany Rural Cemetery records, listed by surname, on the Interment.net website for free although not all records have yet been completely transcribed.) 

For his death being on 2 August 1868 in either Connecticut or New York in the United States of America, I now have a few sources that point to this being when Henry passed away. I do not have a record of death however as state records for Connecticut did not start until 1897 and in New York although they started in 1866, I have been unable to locate an entry for Henry. Instead, along with the probate entry [3] I previously found for Henry, I have now sourced two newspaper entries.  

The first was during a search of the Chronicling America website which provides free access to information about historic American newspapers and select digitised newspaper pages. There was an entry about Henry's death on page 7 of the New York Herald on 5 August 1868 [4]  as follows:

TURLE -- Suddenly, at Stamford, Conn., on Sunday, August 2nd, HENRY TURLE of Taunton, Somersetshire, England, aged 20 years. 

I followed this up with search on the British Newspaper Archive, a paid subscription website to see if I could find an entry in a Taunton, Somerset, England newspaper, which I did in the Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser on Wednesday 12 August 1868 [5] which stated the following:

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Although, I searched for Henry Turle with just his surname in the search functions on both the Chronicling America website and the British Newspaper Archive website, I did not get any matches returned due to the way the newspapers are scanned. I therefore limited my searches to newspapers in the geographical location where the event most likely happened or might be reported and, in this instance, to a two week time period after the time Henry's death occurred and scanned the newspapers for the information I was hoping to find. In many instances with web searches, sometimes less is more.      

So with these additional newspaper sources and on the balance of probability, I believe that Henry died on 2 August 1868 in Stamford, Connecticut, United States of America and was buried at the Mascord and Hobbs lot in the Albany Rural Cemetery, Albany, New York, United States of America. 

I will be writing a part three (and possibly a part 4!) regarding the 3 youngest children of Henry and Jane Turle, sons Edward and Walter and daughter Jane. 

In the meantime, I hope that you have enjoyed reading this little update on my One Place Study. It would be wonderful to hear from you via the comments section on this blog or via my Facebook pageIf you would like to see the tree that I have been building for my One Place Study for each individual house, it is on Ancestry under 1 The Crescent Taunton One Place Study. This study is also part of the Society of One Place Studies

[1] Ancestry.com. Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1914 ~ Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Reference Number: D\P\tau.ht/2/1/1 page 27
[2] Ancestry.com. Menands, New York, Albany Rural Cemetery Burial Cards, 1791-2011 - Turle, Henry
[3https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills - 1868 - Turle, Henry
[4] The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]), 05 Aug. 1868. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030313/1868-08-05/ed-1/seq-7/>
[5Britishnewspaperarchvie.co.uk, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, Wednesday 12 August 1868 - Image (c) The British Library Board - All Rights Reserved.