The Musgrave and Le Butt families lived and worked in Folkestone from around 1840. As part of our research into their lives and times, we visited Folkestone for a research trip from 3rd to 5th April 2013. We have described some of what we discovered in previous posts at ...
Tthis post describes the final, dramatic twist to our trip ... the Holy Grail. We were aware of the London Gazette entry describin the formal winding up of the Musgrave & Co business by Reginald Bradby's daughter, Sheila, on 26 August 1972. Sheila died in 2006, after her sister Patricia in 1998, so it appeared that this was likely to be a dead end. However, the address given in The London Gazette entry had been a Musgrave family home since 1938 so I had planned to call there on what I thought would be a highly spurious off-chance that I might find some sort of clue. Then, from one of the records that we found in the Heritage Centre, we came across a new name, P M Etchells. This was overstamped on to a Letterhead as a company director .. and was the signature on the letter itself (see: Part 2 - Photos, Docs and Ephemera). So, armed with this snippet, I called in at the address, still half-expecting to come away with nothing - but .. imagine my surprise when it turned out the occupants were the son and daughter-in-law (and his wife) of P M Etchells, formerly Patricia Mary Musgrave, Reginald Bradby's daughter, making thm my second cousins 1x removed, great grandson/daughter of William Robinson Musgrave and great-nephew/neice of George Clarke.
Well, feeling rather shell-shocked, we were invited in and spent about four hours with our new-found relatives going through the whole family tree and everything that had led up to our trip to Folkestone. They had actually lived at 26 Sandgate and both have distinct memories of the business and the family. More important even than theses memories, though, they also have a huge array of records, documents, memorabilia and photographs, including Joseph Robinson Musgrave's original parchment will .. and Joseph John Musgraves's family bible with it's handwritten introductory pages listing all the details of family births, deaths and marriages from 1853 to 1883.
In the realms of amateur genealogy, I don't believe that it actually gets any better than this ...
Tthis post describes the final, dramatic twist to our trip ... the Holy Grail. We were aware of the London Gazette entry describin the formal winding up of the Musgrave & Co business by Reginald Bradby's daughter, Sheila, on 26 August 1972. Sheila died in 2006, after her sister Patricia in 1998, so it appeared that this was likely to be a dead end. However, the address given in The London Gazette entry had been a Musgrave family home since 1938 so I had planned to call there on what I thought would be a highly spurious off-chance that I might find some sort of clue. Then, from one of the records that we found in the Heritage Centre, we came across a new name, P M Etchells. This was overstamped on to a Letterhead as a company director .. and was the signature on the letter itself (see: Part 2 - Photos, Docs and Ephemera). So, armed with this snippet, I called in at the address, still half-expecting to come away with nothing - but .. imagine my surprise when it turned out the occupants were the son and daughter-in-law (and his wife) of P M Etchells, formerly Patricia Mary Musgrave, Reginald Bradby's daughter, making thm my second cousins 1x removed, great grandson/daughter of William Robinson Musgrave and great-nephew/neice of George Clarke.
Well, feeling rather shell-shocked, we were invited in and spent about four hours with our new-found relatives going through the whole family tree and everything that had led up to our trip to Folkestone. They had actually lived at 26 Sandgate and both have distinct memories of the business and the family. More important even than theses memories, though, they also have a huge array of records, documents, memorabilia and photographs, including Joseph Robinson Musgrave's original parchment will .. and Joseph John Musgraves's family bible with it's handwritten introductory pages listing all the details of family births, deaths and marriages from 1853 to 1883.
In the realms of amateur genealogy, I don't believe that it actually gets any better than this ...
