Still on the trail

Having exhausted the information about Lt H Jervis at the Army Museum, I moved over to St Catherine's House where the registers of births, marriages and deaths used to be kept. I know by then that the man I was looking for was Henry Jervis, not just plain H Jervis. I also knew when he had retired from the army - he had obtained the rank of General by then - and that his death must therefore have occurred after that date. My object was to find when he died and then look up his will in the hope that it might contain details of his family. This was before the days of the internet, and at St Catherine's I had to heave out the register summaries - one for each quarter of each year - and look to see if Henry Jervis's death was registered. Those summaries are ledgers up to three inches thick and measuring about 30 inches high and 24 wide. They are not lightweight paperbacks! Anyway, I found his death registered in 1879 and his age given as 82. From this I calculated that he had joined the army at the tender age of 13. Having obtained a copy of his death certificate, I now knew where he had lived (Bloomsbury Square, London) so I was able to search the census returns kept at the Records Office in Chancery Lane, but not until I had obtained another reader's ticket. I also searched for his will at Somerset House.

The end result was that he appeared not to have married, so could not have been a direct ancestor of Mrs S, and he left his entire estate to another retired army officer who had been living with him. There was no mention of any family. Of course, it was still possible that he was an uncle or distant cousin, albeit several generations removed, but further research makes that seem most unlikely.

The question remains: what were the sketchbooks doing in my late father-in-law's possession and how did he come by them? Did he spot them for sale at a car boot sale or similar and think, as we did at first, that there might have been some familial connection? Who knows - we never will!