As the forums have been a little quiet for a while, and to stop Bertie getting bored, I thought I’d drop in a naughty little problem I’ve been wrestling with recently. It’s rather like someone got three separate jigsaws each featuring a different picture of an old cottage, and threw all the pieces in the same box with no picture on the lid, and the dog then chewed some of the pieces. Lots of bits fit together mechanically speaking but the pictures don’t match. With others, the pictures appear to match but the pieces don’t fit very well. Oh, and did I mention, I think quite a lot of bits got sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

The question is: who were Alice Gore’s parents?

These are the facts I am reasonably sure about: Alice Gore married John Jackson in St Mary’s, Edge Hill on 14 April 1884. She was 18 and a spinster. She said her father’s name was Thomas and his occupation was labourer. The parish register doesn’t say if he was deceased or not. Both bride and groom signed the register and the witnesses do not appear to be family members. Alice’s address at the time of the marriage was Lilly Grove, Cherry Lane (the image of the marriage register entry is on Ancestry if anyone needs to look at it). All subsequent census /1939R entries for her are fairly consistent about her year and place of birth, namely 1866 and Liverpool or Walton. The 1921 census puts her age one year out (ie she is shown as a year older than in all the other entries) but the month accords with her date of birth in the 1939R which is 28 Feb 1866. She died in the first quarter in 1947 (Liverpool North 10d 235) aged 81 which suggests that she died in March just after her birthday. I don’t yet have her or John’s death certificates, but I believe she died before John, his death probably being in 1949 (Q4 1949 Liverpool North 10d 141 age 87).

The first problem is that there is no birth in the Liverpool region which was registered in either of the first two quarters of 1866 in the name Alice Gore, or any reasonable variations of both names. The nearest is in Q4 1866 (West Derby 8b 469) with the mother’s maiden name McComb. The only Gore/McComb marriage which fits is that of Joseph Gore and Ellen McComb at St Peter’s on 27 Aug 1866. Joseph and Ellen can be found living with Joseph’s mother and father in Greenfield Lane, Litherland in 1871 along with daughters Alice 5, Margaret 3 and Ellen 1, all born Litherland. So definitely a possible for the parents, if we accept Litherland=Liverpool and Alice getting her father’s name wrong. That might be excusable since Joseph died in 1877 when our Alice would have been 11. However the mother Ellen doesn’t remarry and there appears to be no Thomas who might have been a stepfather-like figure. But Joseph did have an older brother named Thomas (who was married to Eleanor Balshaw) also living in Greenfield Lane, Litherland in 1871. Thomas and Eleanor had two sons at that time. There are also no relevant baptisms over the period.

There are six other Thomas Gores around the Liverpool area who the right age to be candidates for Alice Gore’s father, but unfortunately none of them appear to have a daughter named Alice at the time of the 1871 census.

It’s now time to examine a couple of pieces that the dog has chewed. That means turning to that most reliable source of inspiration when all else fails: other people’s Ancestry trees. There’s one entitled Rimmer Family Tree which does look promising. It has a 5 year old Alice’s parents as Peter and Martha Gore living at 9 Lilly Grove in 1871, along with son Thomas 12 and daughter Margaret 8, with Alice and Maragret born in Walton. So we have a Lilly Grove link, the correct age and place of birth; it’s just the father’s name which is the problem. Except that when we look more closely at Peter and Martha there’s a rather bigger problem. They are not man and wife, but brother and sister. Their parents are James and Martha Gore who can be found living at Back Lane (Eaton Road today), West Derby from 1841 to 1861. In the 1881 and 1891 censuses Peter and Martha are still at 9 Lilly Grove but are now shown as brother and sister. In 1881 Alice is no longer at home but her sister Margaret aged 17 and single is at 9 Lilly Grove and shown as Peter Gore’s neice. There’s no sign of Peter Gore ever marrying although it is obviously possible that the Thomas, Alice and Margaret shown in the 1871 census were his children, but equally they might have been Martha’s. So if Margaret in 1881 really was Peter’s neice, who was her father – one of Peter’s siblings perhaps? He had 3 brothers and a sister. William born 1823 and John born in 1824 were older than Peter. Next came Martha who was two years younger than Peter and is the one who lived with him at Lilly Grove until he died in 1896 and she then died in 1898. Peter’s youngest brother was James born 1833. All three of Peter’s brothers married in the period 1850 - 1856. Both John and James can be accounted for until at least 1871 and neither had a child named Alice or Margaret. Unfortunately the oldest, William, goes missing, along with the rest of his family, after the birth of his daughter Elizabeth in 1853. There are no other Gore children registered with his wife’s maiden name of Padley (or the variant Pedley) after Elizabeth.

There is one other dog-chewed piece which may or may not be significant. In the 1891 census for 9 Lilly Grove (that is, some seven years after our Alice married John Jackson) the household consists of Peter Gore head, unmarried, 63, dock labourer (in previous years he was an agricultural labourer); Martha Gore, sister, widow, aged 61 whose occupation was laundress; Mary Moorecroft, daughter, widow, 36 also a laundress; and Richard Moorecroft, nephew aged 5. Beside the entry for Mary’s relationaship to the head of the household is the word sister which has been crossed out, apparently by the enumerator. Assuming that Richard is Mary’s child, his relationship to the head of the household should be grandson, rather than nephew. This Mary is almost certainly the same Mary who appeared in the household of Peter’s father Joseph Gore at Back Lane in 1861 where the relationship was granddaughter, born 1854. She went on to marry Edward Moorcroft at Holy Trinity, Walton Beck on 6 April 1878. At the time of the marriage Mary’s address was Lilly Grove. In the Banns on the previous 3 Sundays both bride and groom were recorded as of this parish. Edward died in early 1886 aged 36 and was buried at Walton on the Hill. The recording of Martha as a widow is a complete mystery. In all the previous censuses she was shown as unmarried except for the anomaly in 1871 where she was recorded as Peter’s wife. And if she married after the 1881 census she would have been aged between 50 and 60 and seemingly not in need of someone to support her into retirement since she was living with her brother. Needless to say there’s no obvious marriage for her.

For the sake of completeness, in the two years 1865 -1866 there were ten births registered in England with the name Alice Gore. Five of these were in London or Kent and so, even though one of them features a father named Thomas, I have discounted them for now. Of the remaining five, one was the Gore/McComb birth in the West Derby registration district at the end of 1866, and the other four were registered in Wigan. I have done some prelimimary work on these Wigan families and only one features a father named Thomas Gore. He was a widower in 1871, aged 36 and a pit labourer living in Ince-in-Makerfield with his daughters Alice aged 6 and Elizabeth aged 4. Both daughters were born in Ince, and their father in Orell. By 1881 there’s no sign of Thomas, and the two daughters are living in the household of their uncle Richard Gore and working as servants. Since the uncle was a shopkeeper, the nieces may have been helping out in the shop. But apart from that one family, I have no reason to look at the Wigan Gores in more detail at this stage.

I don’t think the whereabouts of our Alice at the time of the 1881 census is going to be much help in finding her parents. For what it’s worth there aren’t exactly many possibilities to choose between. The Rimmer Family Tree suggests that she’s at 49 Rimrose Road, Bootle cum Linacre in the Smith household, aged 14 and working as a domestic servant, born in Litherland. The age and place of birth suggests this is more likely to be the Alice who was the daughter of Thomas and Ellen (nee McComb) who was born at end of 1866. However the only other Alice Gores of the right age are mainly down in London or Kent and have families and places of birth down there also, so I am discounting them for now.

Sadly, there are no wills for any of the key players.

Can anyone solve this jigsaw or suggest a way of attacking the problem which I haven’t thought of?