My First Brick Wall

  The story of my first brick wall, is also the story of my first foray into the world of genealogy. 

  When I started on this journey, one of the first people I tried to search was my maternal grandfather, George Kelly. All I knew about George was his name, he was Irish, he died of cancer before Mom was 2 and Granny had cared for him at home, in Nuneaton, (Warwickshire, England) until his death.

George Kelly

  After Mom passed away, I found this picture. My step Dad told me it was Mom's Dad... my grandfather. Why  had I never seen this picture before?

  George Kelly is such a common name, how would I narrow the search?  I decided to start with his death as it was the most concrete info I had on him.  No matter how I searched, I could find nothing on the death of a George KELLY in Nuneaton, between 1937-1940. I even widened the search to 1943. Still nothing. 

  Then one day I got into the 'death record index'. The index is sorted alphabetically, by quarters. I searched quarter by quarter, page by page.... then bingo - 3rd quarter (July to Sept) 1939- I turned a page and right on top was an entry for a George Kelly, in Nuneaton, 36 yrs old.  Could this be him?  I decided to order the death certificate to see what I would learn. 

  A couple weeks later I received this certificate.

Certificate of Death for George Kelly, obtained from GRO.gov.uk

  So, this looked like the right man... address and cause of death matched what I knew, and while I hadn't known the exact date of death, it was the right time frame. I learned he was 36 when he died, so he was born around 1903, and he was a Collier, more new information for me. The informant was Edward Rendall, stepbrother.  What a minute... Step brother? This was new, we'd never heard of a stepbrother! 
  I searched for Edward Rendall, but had no way to know which one he might be. Where do I go from here? For a newbie genealogist, I had hit my FIRST brickwall. 

 About that time I found the Nuneaton and North Warwickshire Family History Society. (NNWFHS) I reached out to them for suggestions. Pat and Jacqui replied and helped me learn so much. I learned we could search freeBMD.org.uk for a marriage using just last names. A search for a Kelly-Rendall marriage found one in the Mar QTR of 1908 in South Sheilds. Robert Rendall and Annie Kelly. And interestingly there was a birth for an Edward Rendall in Dec QTR 1908, also in South Shields.  So then we searched for George Kelly in South Shields, and got one result, in Sept QTR 1902.  Could we be on to something? Could this be my George Kelly?

 Pat and Jacqui told me a little history of the area. In 1930, there was a serious depression in the South Shields area, families were starving. The depression hadn't hit the midlands area as hard, so many men moved from the north east down into the midlands looking for work. Perhaps this is what brought George to Nuneaton, where he met my Granny?

 With the new information, I was able to order birth certificates which confirmed George Kelly and Edward Rendall both had the same mother- Annie Knox, who would be my great grandmother. This led to her first marriage and my great grandfather, also George Kelly. 

  With Pat and Jacqui's help, I had knocked down my first brick wall and added 2 generations to the family tree. If the informant hadn't been the stepbrother, I might still be chipping at that same brick wall.

  Behind one brick wall often lies another....

  This was my FIRST brick wall, but definitely not my last.