Leonard/Storey Heir Hunters

Today, the Heir Hunters take on a case that keeps on growing.

There were 15 brothers and sisters.

From a little case we weren't quite sure of into a very long one.

Another team uncover a sporting celebrity in their research...

He is now listed as being a professional footballer

for Hull City.

..and are left searching for a long-lost family.

I see where we're going with this one.

My grandmother was separated from him and she didn't want to talk about it.

It's a day... Wow! ..full of family secrets and surprises.

I was aware of eight cousins

and it looks like I've got something like 70 cousins!

Across the UK every year, thousands of people die without making

a will and with no known relatives.

In these cases, the deceased's name goes

on the Government's Bona Vacantia list, which means "vacant goods".

Estates can remain unclaimed, sometimes for years.

It's a treasury estate that's just kind of slipped through the net.

In London, Dave Slee,

case manager at heir-hunting firm Fraser and Fraser,

is working one such case that's been on the

Government's list, unresolved, for four years.

From our point of view, because this looks like an estate that's

slipped through the net, the chances are, though you can never tell,

that there are no other companies researching the matter, so we've got

the luxury of being able to take our time a little bit on this one.

Which is just as well, as senior researcher Roger Marsh...

And that only because it's a different name, that's Harry, not Henry...

..is struggling to work out the correct name for the deceased.

We've got this job of a lady called Beryl Joan, or possibly Joanna,

and her surname is either Leonard spelled L-E-O-N-A-R-D

or Lennard, L-E-N-N-A-R-D.

Or Leonard-Halliwell.

The team have ordered Beryl's death certificate to glean as much

information as possible.

This shows she passed away in a care home in Chelmsford, Essex.

The team need to work out her birth name before the case can progress.

That's all the live, I should have said, up to there. Yeah.

Working various combinations of Beryl's name, the first thing

the team do is determine

whether she was born a Leonard or married into the family.

Looking at the births for that quarter,

there were three or four names, double-checking them to Leonard,

there was a Salter married to a Leonard.

So what we had then was Beryl Joan Salter as the birth

and she married a Leonard.

The team now know she was born Beryl Joan Salter

and can order her birth certificate.

And her mum was a Winifred Mary Jane Hudson,

who was born in Stafford, which is Manchester area,

which is where Beryl was born.

Beryl's father's name was Charles Salter

and both her parents had died.

So the team needed to find out if they had any other children.

She was an only child, so then we had to go back to cousins

and the side I was working on was her mum's side.

To do this, the team refer to the census,

which lists the occupants of every household at that time.

Put a four-day order on that...

Beryl's mother grew up in the Edwardian era, having been

born just before the turn of the 20th century.

So the 1911 census was the one the team turned to.

This included much more information than previous censuses

and also gives the Heir Hunters a good indication about

Beryl's mother's family life at that time.

Robert Hudson, the deceased's maternal grandfather,

initially started his working life as an engine cleaner and worked

his way up to become an engine driver at the turn of the century.

As the family lived in Stafford,

it's likely Robert Hudson worked for the Midland Railway Company.

I think Robert's career is fairly typical

for an engine driver of the period.

They all started as cleaners, they progressed to firemen

and then to engine driver.

It could take a very long time

and the express engine drivers often didn't make it to that position

until they were in their fifties, so they didn't do it for very long.

I think we all know that every boy wanted to be an engine driver.

They were almost the rock stars of their day.

As well as his profession, the census also reveals that

Robert and Selina had a very large family.

There were 15 brothers and sisters.

So it suddenly went from a little case

we weren't quite sure of into a very long one.

This is just the maternal side,

because we're still waiting for the marriage of the parents to come

back so we can work out the father's side, see how old he was

and work out which is the correct birth for him.

Because there's so many what we would call "top line" aunts and uncles...

Let's just have a quick look through this top line.

..each stem that we contact doesn't particularly know

about the other stems, so we have to research each individual stem.

Although the team are finding potential heirs,

the lack of family information means they have to work each aunt

and uncle separately. They need to find someone who knows more.

I'm trying to make contact with

what would be a maternal first cousin once removed.

While Dave is still calling the heir on the mother's side,

the certificates they need to tackle

Beryl's father's side of the family have now arrived.

We've managed to locate the paternal side of the family

by going through the marriage certificate.

We managed to get the dad's name and his occupation.

The grandfather of the deceased, Beryl Leonard,

was actually a William Salter, who was a prison warden in 1921.

We've actually matched it up with a family living in Stafford

in the 1911 census,

which does have her father on the census with them.

So we know we have the correct family.

And Dave's phone-bashing has helped cut down some of their research time

on the mother's side of the family.

That's a good example, really, of an heir being able to provide me

with an address of their brother,

which means that we don't have to undertake

the research in America to find them.

So it cuts down a lot of work.

Ewart is one of the team's senior travelling researchers

who can carry out investigations on the ground

and hopefully visit any potential heirs.

But before he can go anywhere,

he has to get to grips with the family tree.

There's two first cousins and a cousin once removed. Okey dokey.

While Ewart plans his investigation,

Shannon is finding the father's side may be smaller

but is just as challenging.

So the grandad of deceased was born in Sydney, Australia.

So we've got an Australian grandad

and a grandmother from Devon,

who end up in Stafford

and go to London on the way.

It's kind of already slowed down before it's really begun.

Back on Beryl's mother's side,

the team have managed to speak to some of the descendants

of her many siblings.

The research has revealed some fascinating history.

One of the interesting facts is one of the deceased's aunts, Ada Hudson,

it appears she married a chap called Arthur Cook.

Who, in the 1920s,

was a professional footballer with West Bromwich Albion,

The Baggies, in the year, the only time they won the league.

So the family were understandably very proud of their grandfather.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, that's him there.

That's him there, isn't it? Yeah.

Arthur Cook, there he is. Arthur Cook.

Research now is reaping results.

And one of the heirs they've found

is Beryl's first cousin once removed.

John Cook is the grandson of the West Bromwich Albion footballer,

Arthur Cook.

This is my grandfather's league medal.

Division One Championship, with a presentation watch and chain that

he was given at the presentation by West Bromwich Albion.

You can still read all the inscription,

but it is nice and shiny.

The only thing I ever learned about my grandfather

was that he was a professional footballer.

It's been a very big talking point over the years.

Not only did he win the League Division One Championship,

he also won the runners-up medal in the FA Cup.

When my grandfather played in the FA Cup final,

which was at Crystal Palace,

the evening before the FA Cup match,

he was on a night shift at Seamans.

So he had to work the night shift

prior to playing in the FA Cup final.

Be interesting to see if Rooney would be able to perform as well.

John knew all about his grandfather,

but he hadn't quite realised how large his extended family was.

From the information I've had, there are quite a number of heirs involved.

I was surprised to find it's approaching 70.

So it shows how large the family is, or was.

In the office, the team are making contact with many of John's cousins.

Would you like me to come and see you?

On Beryl's father's side, a cousin who grew up with her

has given Ewart some idea of the type of person she was.

Perfect. Thank you. Take care now. Bye-bye. Bye.

She said she became quite strange in her later years

and they lost contact.

So she hasn't seen her for about ten years.

And she thinks she remembers her becoming, you know, quite reclusive.

Across the office, Dave thinks he's finally got to grips

with the huge family on Beryl's mother's side.

Trying to make contact with

the last few remaining maternal beneficiaries on Leonard.

Shannon has completed Beryl's father's side of the family

and Dave is preparing the final tree

that they hope will confirm all their research.

The computer system we use congratulates me on 100 names

being added to the family tree.

It goes without saying that means inevitably, it's a huge family

that we're researching and there's a lot of beneficiaries.

So if you're doing your own family tree, you'd welcome seeing that.

From my point of view, I hate it.

I was aware of eight cousins

and it looks like I've got something like 70 cousins.

And they most probably weren't aware of me either.

In the business of probate research, finding living heirs is the goal.

But sometimes, they uncover family stories lost for generations.

He was born at the workhouse and left there.

One case that revealed plenty

is from the village of Roberttown in West Yorkshire.

Doreen Storey lived there until she was 86.

She died on 20th February, 2012 with no known family.

Come on, let's have a look at you.

Neighbour Christine Allen knew Doreen for 42 years.

She loved animals.

She always sent cards with dogs on, birthdays and everything. Yeah.

She was a lovely lady. You could tell her anything

and she listened. You knew it wouldn't go any further.

I miss her. Yeah, I do, I miss her.

I just miss her stood in the window and not waving, or anything.

Doreen's house remained empty for some time after she died,

so a concerned neighbour contacted London heir-hunting firm, Finders.

If I can find her with a family, then you know she's wrong.

Case manager Amy Moyes began

the process of trying to find out if Doreen had any family.

The neighbour that referred this case to us was able to tell us

quite a bit about Doreen, which gave us a head start, really.

For instance, she knew Doreen had lived at the property for some time.

As far as she's concerned, she'd never married

and she'd never heard of her having had any children either.

The first step was to locate the names of Doreen's mother and father.

Doreen's birth certificate was again the key.

This gave her mother's name as Esther McQuillan

and her father, Herbert Storey.

We can do a birth-index search.

That threw up the possible siblings

that the neighbour had referred to.

We had a sister, Mary Ann,

and two bothers, an Edward and a Thomas McQuillan Storey.

And neighbour Christine remembers they all lived together.

All the four of them were lovely people.

They all looked after one another.

Tommy, the oldest, he did all the gardening.

But they were all together. Never went anywhere,

never went shopping to Huddersfield, or anywhere like that.

They just liked their home.

We needed to work out what had happened to them,

whether they might still be alive, having all been born in the 1920s,

or if deceased, whether they'd had marriages and children of their own,

who, if the children were alive, they would then be potential heirs.

And, of course, when one died and the other died,

it was very, very upsetting for them all, it really was.

And then when Molly died and just left Doreen, um...

she went downhill a bit, she really did.

Searches confirmed that all of Doreen's siblings had died.

None of them had ever married or had children.

But something on her parents' marriage certificate...

I see where we're going with this one.

..suggested there may be another avenue worth exploring.

It indicated that Herbert had been married previously,

so we needed to then look into that

to make sure there weren't any children from that marriage

which would be half-brothers or sisters to Doreen

and potential heirs to the estate.

It's very important to get all the documents

and certificates in place for the family that we're researching

in order to prove all the entitlements correctly.

The team found out that Doreen's father, Herbert,

had previously married a Mary Ellen Lee.

A search was done of the birth indexes with those parental names.

And discovered they'd had one child together,

who unfortunately passed away when he was about one year old or so.

And so that terminated that line of enquiry, as well.

So the Heir Hunters now knew for certain

that Doreen had no living siblings and no nieces or nephews.

It's certainly difficult.

This meant the team would have to go back one generation...

Do you know what the daughter's name was?

..to look for aunts and uncles in the hope

they might have descendants who were still alive.

It's in connection with a cousin of your mother's.

From the 1901 census records,

the team found Esther McQuillan's parents.

We've got the head of the family is Doreen's grandfather,

James McQuillan. He is a coalminer.

He is working at the Boldon colliery.

With him are his children. We've got Esther, Doreen's mum,

we've also got some other daughters

and then the sons, Thomas is young,

but John and Jonathan are also both working at the local mine,

as well, along with their father.

At the time of the 1901 census,

like many other families who worked in the collieries,

James and his sons were risking their lives daily deep underground.

We're now looking across towards the Boldon colliery.

In them days, the late 1800s, early 1900s, the main danger for them

was falls of stone, which would come from the roof

and falls of coal, where they were working.

Them falls would come, maybe trap them by the head.

But a lot of the deaths wasn't killed instantly,

they were actually what you call suffocated.

Because they couldn't breathe with the weight of the stuff on them.

And that happened a lot.

Young John McQuillan, one of Doreen's uncles,

was only 15 at the time

and worked as a driver of pit ponies.

Of all the jobs underground, this was one of the worst.

At that time, a pony driver, it was a dangerous job.

A lad at that age shouldn't have been.

He's in charge of a pony, who's in a seam maybe 2'6"-3' high.

He's got no headroom, he's working in

and he's actually riding in-between the tub and the pony

on what we call limmers.

That's the part which connects the pony to the tub.

He's only got to look up at the wrong time

and he gets his head squashed,

which happens a lot of times to pony drivers.

So it was a very dangerous job

and it depended on what type of pony you had.

It's no surprise that when young John McQuillan wasn't down the mines,

he was doing what many young boys loved best.

When I was 15, we used to play football.

You couldn't wait to come out after work.

You played until you couldn't see, it was dark.

You could hardly see the ball.

And can you imagine, especially in the early 1900s,

when families were large,

imagine the amount of kids in this back lane playing football.

And that's what every street was like.

Back lanes, especially, in colliery villages.

And it seems every spare moment John put in

on the colliery football ground over the years

paid off, as the family record on the 1911 census shows.

Interestingly, by 1911, although the majority of the family

were still based around the coal-mining profession,

John McQuillan had changed professions.

And he is now listed as being

a professional footballer for Hull City.

At the time John McQuillan was playing,

the clubs were just beginning to start scouting systems.

Particularly in places like mines in the north-east,

which were well-known for producing lots of professional footballers.

John initially played for a very short period for Jarrow Town.

He was spotted there by Everton.

And Everton were one of the best teams of the day.

The year that he was spotted, Everton won the FA Cup.

They finished in the top five almost every year.

So this was one of the big clubs.

Although John did a month's trial at Everton, he wasn't taken on.

Instead, he signed up for Hull City

and stayed with them for eight years.

I think John was certainly a good player.

To become a professional player for so long,

John must have been a very good footballer.

Going off to the last one?

All right, good luck with that and I'll speak to you in a bit.

The Heir Hunters have been looking for possible heirs

on Doreen's mother Esther's side of the family.

The McQuillans.

So Esther was one of seven children.

One of them passed away in 1916 as a bachelor.

Another passed away married, but never had any children.

And then, obviously, there was the infant death.

So there were three lines to look at.

It looks as though they were all coalminers in the Durham area.

Doreen's mother had three brothers and sisters

who could have had children.

If the team can find them, they could be heirs.

If they do a same-day service, we'll send something.

They really need to speak to someone

who can help shed some light on the family tree.

Unfortunately, with Doreen's family, all the first cousins have died,

so we really have no-one of any great age that we can speak to.

So the research went on and on, um, and became very extensive.

The first family they had any luck with

was that of Esther's brother, John McQuillan,

who'd escaped the mines and become a professional footballer.

The line of John McQuillan was a little easier as we'd already found him on the census

with his sister, Esther, the deceased's mother.

So we already had a bit of a head start with this stem.

We knew he had two children.

We did a search for any further

and it just looked like it was the two of them.

So we could carry on our research into that line.

And the first heir they were able to locate

was John McQuillan's estranged grandson, David Milne.

I know very little about my grandfather,

other than he was supposed to have been a footballer.

He was supposed to have played for, I think it was Hull City at that time.

And he was apparently earning something like ?8 a week,

which was a lot of money in those days.

But that's all I know. Nothing else was ever mentioned.

My grandmother was separated from him and she didn't want to talk about him.

Ah! My grandfather.

This is fascinating, looking at him.

Yes. I've never...

..never seen a picture of him before.

And David is grateful his grandfather changed professions.

Football must have saved him from the mines and I suspect

it may have helped save him from fighting in the war as well.

Probably saved the line of the family and, er, why I'm here today.

And not having worked down a mine, or anything like that.

In the end, seven heirs were found on Doreen's mother's side of the family,

but the team still had to look into

the side of her father, Herbert Storey.

He had been a cloth-wringer and a greengrocer.

And a copy of his birth certificate told us

that he had been the son of an Edward Storey and a Rosina Rose.

Herbert Storey was born in 1893,

so the team looked at the 1911 census

to get an idea of the size of his family.

There were seven children on the census, seven living.

To double-check that, we went back to the 1901 census and 1891 census

and in fact, we found there were actually ten.

So this family seems to be getting larger than we originally thought.

And the investigations were revealing that

five of Herbert's nine siblings

went on to have children of their own.

These nieces and nephews of Doreen's father,

or their descendants, would be beneficiaries to Doreen's estate.

We have paternal uncle Ernest Storey,

who probably had the largest family of the entire paternal side.

He had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven children.

Um, of those seven, five have living descendants.

The other two passed away either in infancy,

or without having had any issue.

There are quite a number of heirs on this stem.

They're all traced and they're all a couple of generations down

from Doreen's own generation itself.

Their research found that four of Doreen's father's siblings died

with no living descendants.

We also had an uncle Alvin Storey, born in 1899.

But he was sadly killed during World War I.

The team needed to find contact numbers and addresses

for all of the living children or grandchildren

from Doreen's aunts and uncles.

These would be cousins and cousins once removed of Doreen.

With the paternal research, it turns out

that the vast majority of the heirs were all second generation.

Aside from two, none of them were direct cousins of Doreen's.

It's not unusual, particularly when you have a large family,

and in this instance, Doreen is coming from a father

who was one of the youngest of his brothers and sisters.

So if you can imagine the ages of her cousins

right through the family tree,

there's probably a 20-30 year age gap.

So the majority of her cousins have passed away.

And the relatives we're looking at are much further down the line.

With so many aunts and uncles on the father's side,

there were a lot of families to trace.

After our research was complete,

we discovered there were 29 beneficiaries.

And these were on six of the lines, as three of them died out

and the last one was, of course, the deceased's father, Herbert.

One of those heirs is Alan.

His father Fred was Doreen's first cousin.

My mum remembers Doreen.

She said she was a very quiet lady, never married.

Went on to explain exactly who Doreen was,

where she fitted into the family and everything.

And she actually said that there was quite a bit of contact

between our family and theirs right up to my father passing.

My father passed when I was 18,

so that side of the family has disappeared,

apart from the cousins I know of.

The inheritance has given Alan more than just financial gain.

What a very large family I have!

Wow!

So there must have been 11 brothers and sisters on my grandma's side.

I'm not surprised I don't know half of the family.

It's like a shroud has been lifted.

It's absolutely amazing.

I never knew my grandma and grandad got married in 1905.

How wonderful!

But the detail of the death of his great uncle Alvin in World War I

is particularly poignant for Alan.

And here he is listed.

"Storey, Lance Corporal, Alvin.

"2nd and 5th Battalion Sherwood Foresters.

"Died of wounds on 21st April, 1918.

"Aged 19, son of Edward and Rosina Storey

"of Tenner House, Watergate, little town in Liversedge."

How so sad. And only months from the end of the war.

I've been in the military myself and I've seen some good men pass.

Well, I'm sure it must have been a great loss to the family.

They must have felt a great bereavement and sadness.

I think it's going to be absolutely wonderful and intriguing

finding out about this.

And I'm pretty sure my mum down the road, at 91,

is also going to be intrigued.

But I think it will also spark some memories.

In total, 36 of Doreen's living heirs were found.

Just over ?116,000 from the sale of Doreen's house and belongings

were split between them.

With the Doreen Storey case, I think one of most satisfying aspects

is to be able to complete a huge family tree in good time

and to be able to tell the heirs a bit more about their family history

and to leave them with this, um, quite enormous heirloom.

I feel extremely honoured to be getting some inheritance from Doreen's estate.

It wasn't expected.

It's a great honour to receive it

and I will treat it with the respect it deserves.

I'm very grateful to Doreen because she's connected me with, er...

with my roots, really, as a family, you know, from the family tree.

And also connected me with my grandfather,

whom I knew nothing about at all.

Never mentioned in the family.