Red Herring in Black & White?

 Now just who does this remind you of?  Anyone at all?

When I saw this face quietly looking out of the computer screen at me this afternoon, I thought that it had to belong to someone with a bit more than a mere chance amount of shared DNA with Mum and Grandma W.  Look at that dear face.  I will find out exactly who you are, I said to myself.

But, I have ended up coming to a peculiar end to today's search after all.

Assuming that this person was Portland born, then I am almost certain that she is one of two people: either Isabella's first cousin, or, bizarrely enough, someone who lived in the house directly next to Isabella & Co., and was probably not a close relation at all.  The only two Elizabeth Pearces in the right age range listed on the 1851 census - and I checked the entire Isle - were these two girls.

The note that goes with the photograph on the "Portland Image Project" website is as follows:

Elizabeth Durston (Pearce)  

Taken in back garden 78 Weston Rd.  Age 89 11 October 1931.  Photo taken  31 October 1931.

**Skip this next part if you really don't care about the back-and-forth, logic game that ancestral research is.

**[So, to start with, I tried to find a record of an Elizabeth Pearce born in October of 1842 (which would be the date if she was 89 in October 1931).  There was no sign of her in the Portland baptism records though.  The closest, and only record I could find, was of an Elizabeth baptized 8 May, 1843, daughter of Simon and Elizabeth Pearce.  Perhaps they waited a few months to baptize her, for unknown reasons, or the photo note was just wrong.  Being the first route I took, and ever hopeful, I thought briefly that the person I was seeking was indeed Simon & Elizabeth's child (Simon being Abel's brother/Isabella's uncle).

Then I checked the FreeBMD catalogue and found the birth of an Elizabeth Pearce registered in Weymouth in September 1843, and a second one in December 1842 (no names of the parents though).  Rats.  This second one was probably the woman in the picture after all.

In the 1851 census, Simon & Elizabeth Pearce were listed at 24 Easton St.  And in the Village of Weston, there was an 8-year old Elizabeth Pearce living at 19 Weston Rd. with her family - parents being John and Elizabeth Pearce, but John being 5 years too old to be Simon's and Abel's brother John.

I performed the eye-aching search of all the census records for 1851 to see if there were any other Elizabeths besides these two living in Portland.  There were not.]

*****

Then, onward to the 1861 census, and what did I discover?  John and Elizabeth Pearce and their five children (including the aforementioned Elizabeth), lived next door to Abel & Mary and the three girls still at home!

What on earth were the odds, even for Portland?  So whoever it turns out to be gazing at us out of that photograph, she knew Isabella.  But is she Isabella's cousin, or the girl that lived next door?  It is an unsatisfactory end to the quest of the day, especially considering the family resemblance.  I so wanted her to be Simon's daughter.  I'll keep at it tomorrow.

As in science, geneaology is a continuous exercise in proving your ideas wrong in order to find the correct answers.

Anyway, it's the Witching Hour here now, and my head needs a rest, so I had better go and see if the hound needs to go out in the pouring rain once more, then to bed.

Photo credit: http://www.geoffkirby.co.uk/SurnamesP/html/pearce.html