Can anybody find Amos?

[Mary from Italy]

I thought I'd put up a query about this guy before, but a search hasn't turned up anything, so perhaps I didn't.

The man I'm looking for is Amos Squire or Squires, born Woodhouse Eaves, Leicestershire in 1842, son of Samuel and Ann (birth registered as Squire).

I have him on the 1851 censuses with his parents:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?h...c=&pid=9684181

and in 1861, when he's an apprentice butcher, living next door to his future wife Elizabeth Tompkin(s) and her family in Leicester:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?h...=&pid=21605098

In 1865 he married Elizabeth at St. George's Church, Leicester (I have the cert). He was a butcher at the time of his marriage.

The problem is that I can't find any trace of him at all after the marriage.

In 1871, Elizabeth is living with her parents at the same address (132 Wharf Street, Leicester) as in 1861; she says she's married, but Amos isn't with her:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?h...=&pid=24450746

In 1880 she remarries, to my GG-grandfather William Wood North (who coincidentally had a butcher's shop at 134 Wharf Street in 1875). I don't have that cert, but I know it was the same Elizabeth who married both men, because her brother John Widdowson Tompkin was a witness to her marriage to Amos, and also William Wood North's executor.

I'm curious about Amos because I can't find a likely death or census entry, and I'm wondering if he actually had died when Elizabeth remarried. Haven't found an emigration either.

Can anyone find anything I've missed?

[Nell]

Mary


Have you tried looking for him with just his initials, he might be in some kind of institution.

[Mary from Italy]

Yes, that drew a blank too, unfortunately.

[Nell]

I thought you probably had! Well, he might just be one of those irritating chaps who just doesn't appear on censuses. Or he might have emigrated. Or he is badly mistranscribed.

Pity we don't know if Elizabeth describes herself as a widow on the 2nd marriage cert - not that it would mean she was of course!

Do you know if this is a connection:

Name: Henry Amos Squires
Birth: Jan 1869 - Grantham, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire

[Tom Tom]

Have tried on the 1871 but turning up nothing... sorry.

[Mary from Italy]

I don't think the Grantham one is connected, Nell, but thanks for the suggestion. Grantham is actally in Lincs; I've followed an Amos Squires born in Lincs c. 1847 through the censuses, and there seems to be no connection at all with my Amos.

Thanks for trying, Tom - isn't it annoying!

[Merry]

I tend to think the combination of a missing husband followed by a remarriage for the wife in combination with no death reg for the husband suggests one of these:

He emigrated

He went into the services and died abroad

He changed his name to avoid being found

He died with a different name or died out of the UK

He died with no name (ie the authorities didn't know who the body was)

He died and was thought to be somone else

Most of the above probably after being estranged from his wife/family

[Mary from Italy]

Yes, I'd already thought of some of those. Beginning to wonder if I've found yet another bigamous marriage in my tree.

[Merry]

Did he have any children with his wife?

[Mary from Italy]

No, not as far as I can see. There are quite a few Squire(s) births in Leicester, but I haven't found any baptisms, and there are no children with Elizabeth on the censuses, or with the grandparents, so I assume that if there were any, they'd died before 1871.