Following the success in tracing Daphne's lineage, we turned our attention once more to my ancestors, the Eades and the Bullocks.
We still had very little to go on. I knew my grandfather was Thomas Eades and that he had been a glassblower - quite an unusual occupation for that time as the majority of poor working class people were farm labourers or nailers (people who made wire nails at home for a pittance). However, we do know that there were two glassworks in the Fairfield area where he lived, one owned by Thomas Evans in Brook road, and the other owned by George Fox, in Parish Hill, Bournheath.
We knew nothing about my Grandmother; even though I had lived with her for over a year, she was always "Gran" to me and I never heard anyone call her otherwise.
We discovered that her maiden name was "Pardoe" and my younger brother thought she was called "Lucy" or "Louie", but all searches on the genealogy sites found nothing until one day I searched for "Louisa Pardoe", and she appeared.
At about the same time I had joined..... Genes Reunited
....a web site that specialises in linking many thousands of independent researchers on one site. Once registered you can begin entering your family tree details, and then "search" all other registered users for names you are looking for. More often than not you are disappointed when the person you find is not the right one. But success does happen very frequently.
After many long weeks of frustration our perseverance paid off. Within a few days of each other we received several pieces of information that linked Thomas Henry Eades and Louisa Pardoe back to the previous generation. This information identified Thomas Eades and Elizabeth Waldron as the parents of Thomas Henry, and they were my paternal great Grandparents.
We also received a great deal of information about their siblings, not only confirming children of my Grandparents, but also children to Thomas and Elizabeth, along with marriages and links to other families.
We have had invaluable help from our contact and friend, Yvonne Moore, a research genealogist in England with links to the Eades family. Early on in our research, thanks to Yvonne, we were within a space of several weeks able to complete our reseach on the Eades family, right back to a Thomas Eades who married Rachel Green on 17th December 1785 in Belbroughton, near Fairfield, Worcestershire.
Since then Yvonne has on many other occasions found a "missing link" when we have ground to a halt, only recently resolving a problem with the "Green" side of Daphne's South African family that has led us to the "English" link in Manchester around the turn of the 19th century.
Along with Genes Reunited we found the following sites also invaluable in our research.
Family Search Genealogy Service
Family Research - 1837 census online
