[Merry]

This is driving me nuts!

Francis William Phipps b 1830ish Kent (Woolwich/Greenwich? I forget!). Married 1858 to Elizabeth Williams in Westminster, lived after that first in the Hounslow area and later in Braintree Essex. No children. His wife's niece, also Elizabeth Williams, lived with them until her marriage in 1900 to Charles Daniel Parsons.

Francis W Phipps died 1898 and his executors were his wife's niece Elizabeth and her future husband Charles D Parsons, an engraver (as he was on the census) and finally Robert Leslie, also an engraver if the probate is to be believed.

In my tree I have John Leslie Gosden b 1857 in Hounslow. He married my g-grandmother in 1881 in Battersea and one of the witnesses was Francis William Phipps.

John Leslie Gosden was an only child. His mother was also an only child - she was Mary Elizabeth Leslie b 1832 St Geo in the East. Her parents were Robert Leslie b Orkney 1808 and Alice Brown b 1812 in Whitechapel - they married in 1831 at St Geo in the East.

Robert Leslie was a cabinet maker not an engraver, but more importantly, he died in 1887, so he cant be FWP's executor.

It made sense to me that the two families could have known each other when they were all living in Hounslow and it seems likely to me that, as there must have been two men named Robert Leslie, they were related as the name isn't that common (around 40 in England in 1891) and of those one in Essex and half a dozen around London. What's the chances of knowing two unrelated men with the same fairly rare name?

Of course, having looked at FMP and UK census online, none of them are engravers or similar!

I'm off to work in a minute, so won't be back until 5 or so....