Who Do You Think You Are - Reggie Yates 25th Sep

[kiterunner]

On BBC1 at 9 p.m.

[ElizabethHerts]

I enjoyed that, it was very interesting.

George William Yates' probate is on Ancestry:

http://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/19...l=ReturnRecord

He is given as of Hayes End, Middlesex and also Broomasie, Gold Coast.

[ElizabethHerts]

Two of the children (Rose and Douglas) were born in Cape Town, according to the 1911 Census.

His wife was Ethel Rose Reid and they married 2nd quarter 1900 in the Brentford Registration district.

Yes I enjoyed that one tonight good to see how they find out about there ancestors re word of mouth

[kiterunner]

Episode synopsis.

Reggie Yates was born in London in 1983. He has an older sister Cerisse. His parents were both born in Ghana; his father Reginald Jojo Yates, known as Jojo, is of mixed race. Reggie's parents divorced when he was about 4 years old. They both remarried and also had children of their second marriages, Reggie's half-siblings.

Reggie didn't know much about his father's family, so he met up with him in North London to find out what he knew about them. Jojo is a musician who makes traditional African instruments. When he first came to the UK, he met Reggie's mother, Felicia Asante and the couple married and Cerisse was born. Jojo was then arrested for overstaying in the UK and was threatened with being sent back to Ghana. A campaign was organised to prevent him being sent back. Jojo showed Reggie an article in City Limits about the campaign.

The article said that Jojo was born in 1956 and that his grandfather was English. Jojo's father, Harry Philip Yates, was born in Ghana. His father was white and his mother was a Ghanaian. Jojo said that Harry came to England during the case to give evidence, but the tribunal ruled that Harry's parents' marriage (a customary Ghanaian one) was invalid and that Harry was illegitimate, and so Jojo did not have a valid claim to stay in the UK. But he was eventually allowed to stay as his wife, Felicia, had taken British citizenship.

Jojo showed Reggie photos of Harry and told him that Harry died in 2000 and his wife soon after. Reggie never met his grandparents.

Reggie went to Sekondi in Ghana, where his father was born and raised, to meet Jojo's adopted brother, JB. He took some documents with him which Jojo had given him - documents that Harry had brought with him at the time of the court case, including a signed affidavit giving information about the family. The affidavit stated that Harry's father was George Edward Yates, employed at Broomasi at the mine, and that his Harry's) mother was Dorothy Vardon, nee Lloyd, the daughter of E J Lloyd, an Englishman.

JB told Reggie that Harry worked in various businesses: timber, sugar, then as a farmer. His wife Diana was a seamstress. They had ten children together (two girls, eight boys), and Harry had about four to six children by other women. Harry's mother Dorothy remarried after George Yates's death, to a Mr Vardon. She worked as a market trader, supplying ships, and became quite wealthy. Harry was born in Broomasi, a gold mining settlement. George was working there as accountant for a gold mining company, in Gold Coast as it was then. The family story is that George was ill with malaria when Harry was a baby and he had to return to England. He wanted to take Harry with him but Dorothy insisted that Harry stay with her in Gold Coast / Ghana. George never returned to Ghana.

The affidavit said that George was born in London around 1870. Reggie met a historian who showed him that George W Yates was listed on a passenger list from 1902, travelling to South Africa with his wife and one year old son. There was no George Edward Yates on the lists, and George W Yates was shown travelling to Sekondi in April 1907 so they decided he must be Harry's father. The historian showed Reggie the 1911 census entry for George with his wife Ethel Rose and their two sons and two daughters.

The affidavit said that Harry was born on the 15th Nov 1915. The historian showed Reggie an article in the Gold Coast Leader newspaper from Jun 1915 saying that paymaster George W Yates was on the sick list and was to leave for England in July. A passenger list showed him then sailing from Liverpool to West Africa in Sep 1915, in time for Harry's birth. He went on to work in Nigerian in 1917 and then in Colombia, South America. A newspaper report about his death in 1925, age 44, said that he fell ill in New York on his way home, and died in England soon after his return.

Reggie and JB went to meet a local chief who said that Dorothy came from Dixcove, west of Sekondi, and her mother's name was Sarah. She moved to Tarkwa, near to Broomasi, and that was how she met George.

A report of a temperance meeting in Sekondi in Jan 1919 said that Miss Dorothy Lloyd spoke in favour of keeping the importation of alcohol.

Reggie met the historian again to find out about Dorothy's father, Mr Lloyd. The affidavit gave his name as E J Lloyd, but the only Lloyd she could find who was a commissioner in the colonial service in the area at about the right time was an A G Lloyd. His pension records showed that he was serving in Sierra Leone from 1896-1899, and Dorothy was supposed to have been born in 1898, but he did serve in Gold Coast in 1900, so maybe she was born then, or maybe he travelled to the Gold Coast while he was still stationed in Sierra Leone.

Reggie went to Dixcove and met distant relatives who had known Dorothy and had heard stories about her mother Sarah. Sarah was a farmer who grew oranges and traded at Sekondi. She was the daughter of local Ghanaians. She didn't marry Mr Lloyd and Dorothy was their only child.

[ElizabethHerts]

George William and Ethel Rose Yates must have only been 19/20 when they married. In 1901 they are living with their son William aged 30 months and Ethel's mother, Sarah Reed. Also with them is Ethel's sister, Rose.

At this time George was a Stockbroker's clerk.

[ElizabethHerts]

This looks like George William Yates with his parents when he was 6 months old:

http://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/75...l=ReturnRecord

Parents Charles W Yates, a railway clerk, and Mahala.

[ElizabethHerts]

The marriage of Charles William Yates and Mahala Jane Brooks:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin...iv=1&ml_rpos=1

[kiterunner]

They were making a big thing of how unfair it was that George and Dorothy's marriage wasn't recognised by the British authorities because it was a customary Ghanaian one, but surely there was also the problem that George was already married to Ethel? So his marriage to Dorothy would have been invalid in Britain in any case.
Also I noticed that Dorothy was calling herself Miss Lloyd in 1919 (when Harry was 3 or 4), not Mrs Yates.

[Olde Crone]

I enjoyed this, although I still don't know who he is.

I did laugh though, when the Elder told him off for waving his left hand about and gesticulating when talking, very rude apparently....then did exactly the same thing himself!

OC