Recently we hosted a
new-found cousin for a week. We had met via ancestry.com, got acquainted through email and skype, and formed an eternal bond during our visit. Like my
mother-in-law, she grew up in Jamaica, but now lived and worked in Germany. I
had extended an invitation to her that if she was ever in the States to visit
with us, and she took us up on it in February.
The family name we have
in common is Robinson from Jamaica. Her great-grandfather, Rose Bingham
Robinson and my mother-in-law’s great grandfather Charles Robinson were
brothers. His first name of Rose is a family surname, and yes, it does cause a
good bit of confusion regarding his gender, but several documents confirm him
as a him.
On our last night
together, I was introducing her to the joys of familysearch.org. We were able
to find several documents for which she had been searching for some time.
Above are the christening record for her grandfather Earnest, and the death record of Rose Bingham Robinson.
Almost as a
post-script, I mentioned another website that she might find helpful,
findagrave.com. I wasn't too sure there were many memorials from Jamaica, but I
thought I’d enter Robinson as a search term without a given name just to see
what turned up. The search results showed nine Robinson memorials in Jamaica,
including an R.B. Robinson, died 15 April, 1899. We held our collective breaths
as we double-checked the death date from the document we’d just found on familysearch.org.
Then the collective hooting began! It was him, the great-grandfather whose
burial place had always been a mystery to her. And more amazing that he was
found in a cemetery in Port Maria, so very close to the village where she grew
up.
How did we ever do family
history before the internet?
(Many thanks to Scooter T for the photograph and findagrave memorial!)
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