Ancestry have an army record with the following information on it which could possibly help knock a chink in one of my brickwalls:
GEORGE BEAUMONT born 1879/1880 at Emsworth,Hampshire enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps at Aldershot 12th July 1898. He was 18 years and 7 months old. His occupation was "Groom".
His next of kin are
Father: T (or it might be J) BEAUMONT.
Mother : M. BEAUMONT
both of King Street,Emsworth,Hampshire plus
Y.brother: ED. BEAUMONT ( I take this to mean younger brother).
It isn't clear when the next of kin details were entered as he served until 1910 and then again in WW1 until 1918 and they are in totally different hand writing to anything else on the document.
My problem is that I can't find any other record of this family anywhere. They aren't on the '81,'91 or '01 censuses (although George himself was in S. Africa in 1901). Emsworth is on the outskirts of Havant in the enumeration district of Warblington. I have been through every page of the Emsworth returns for '91 and '01 (and I found King Street on both) but there is no-one called Beaumont in the entire village.
The only Beaumont birth registrations around the right time that I can find in the Havant Registration district which included Emsworth are for GEORGE BERTIE BEAUMONT in March 1886 and EDWARD CHARLES V.BEAUMONT in Dec 1887. This pair were indeed brothers as I've found them on the 1891 census (
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/browse/...=Beaumont&st=g) where George Bertie is listed as Bertie. They were with their parents.... who were George and Emma. Not the family I'm looking for then! Anyway,by 1901 the whole family, including George Bertie, had moved to Sussex and,as I said, the George I'm looking for was in S. Africa then.
This lot are proving to be as big a mystery as the great grandfather (also called George Beaumont) I'm hoping they might shed some light on. I have never found any record of his birth or early life. The reason I'm interested in these Emsworth Beaumonts is because my George gave "Woodlands, Havant,Hampshire" as his intended address when he left the army in 1877. I have never known why as there has never been any other connection with Havant. Woodlands is a hamlet and a large house near to Emsworth and in the same enumeration district. The George who joined the army in 1898 is the same generation as my grandfather and his brothers so I'm wondering if his father was my great grandfather's brother. I need to find him before I can work on that theory though!
Is anyone up for a challenge please?