Llangennech/Carson Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracing beneficiaries

who are entitled to money from people who have died without leaving a will.

The Treasury update their list of all their unclaimed estates every month.

Sometimes the deceased has become estranged from their family.

Sometimes the rightful beneficiary isn't even a blood relative.

Either way, the heir hunters make sure any unclaimed money goes to the right people.

If we don't do the work, it's money which is going to go to the Government.

It involves painstaking research.

I've just got the marriage of the deceased's parents.

But it can reunite people.

Nice to meet you both.

It's all about getting an unexpected windfall.

So could the heir hunters be knocking on your door?

Coming up...the story of a Victorian couple who attracted the world's media.

They're mobbed in their carriage. Terrific media attention.

And I think that was a first.

A story of enduring friendship...

She would do anything for my mum, she really would.

Plus, how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

It's early morning in London,

and at heir-hunting firm Fraser & Fraser,

case manager Gareth Langford and researcher Emily Talbot

are working a very unusual case.

Sometimes you feel like you're going round in circles.

They're trying to trace a man called Rupert Speyer,

who is the final beneficiary in an extraordinary investigation.

But Mr Speyer is proving hard to find.

It's such a good name.

It should fall out, but it's not.

Progress is slow.

The team thinks he may be living abroad.

-Is Prince Albert a place?

-Mmm.

-Oh, right.

I was wondering if it was a pub!

But today's investigation is one of the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

that stretches back more than 100 years.

Unlike most investigations,

which start when a person dies without leaving a will,

this case is about an acre of land in southwest Wales,

a school and a Victorian Act of Parliament.

You have to be very alert as to when an event happened,

as to who the beneficiaries are going to be.

And the investigation has taken the heir hunters around the world.

A lot of the things that have happened in this estate are overseas.

We're looking in Italy, possibly France,

and America.

The case centres around an acre of land

in Llangennech in Carmarthenshire.

It was donated in 1887,

so the village could build a school.

And the benefactor was Algernon Sartoris.

Algernon Sartoris was a product of his father's money and his mother's celebrity.

He was a minor member of the landed gentry.

His father was a Member of Parliament for Carmarthenshire.

His mother was Adelaide Kemble.

And she was quite a famous person in 19th-century Britain.

She was a member of a famous acting dynasty.

Following in her family's footsteps,

Adelaide became a celebrated opera star.

After she married, she became equally famous as a hostess in Victorian society.

People like Frederic Chopin, Charles Dickens,

Frederic Leighton, all were close friends of Adelaide's.

So Algernon would have grown up surrounded by celebrity and glamour.

Algernon Sartoris donated the land to the village of Llangennech in Carmarthenshire

in 1887, to build a school.

And that sparked a community effort

to raise money to complete the project.

That school has long been demolished,

and all that remains is the land and a derelict canteen building.

The present-day head teacher

has always been fascinated by the school's history.

After being given the land,

the local industry - the tinplate works and the miners -

worked very hard and donated a lot of money

towards the building of the school,

together with some very rich, supportive people in the area.

So, really, it was a village venture

that built the school.

Well, I've lived all my life in Llangennech,

did attend the school...

..and had a good time in the school.

The school was well attended.

The little garden in the school,

where we were given gardening lessons and what-have-you.

Um, it was a community school.

And it was a very happy school.

The original school was built just two years after Algernon's donation.

It closed in the early 1970s.

All that's left is this building,

which was the canteen.

The original school has been replaced by two new schools in the village.

Both are thriving today.

We have 236 children in the school,

all aged between...coming up fours to seven.

When they are seven, they move to the junior school

and there's over 200 pupils as well

in the junior school.

All the staff work very hard, and the children are very important to us.

If the children are happy and receive a good standard of education,

I think the numbers that attend the school reflect on that.

Partner Charles picked up the case

after the heir hunters spotted an advert looking for Algernon Sartoris's relatives.

This is a typical Schools Sites case for us.

They are unique, in that they are specific pieces of land

that were given away for the creation of a school.

The Victorians were very philanthropic

and it was a great philanthropic era,

where people were giving money, or land, in this case, away for specific purposes,

for the benefit of the wider population.

And Victorian politicians made sure

that benefactors who donated land for the creation of schools were protected.

There's a specific provision in the Schools Sites Act legislation

which says that once the land has stopped being used for the purpose of the school,

then the land goes back to the original person who gave it away.

This was a huge carrot to encourage people to give land away,

on the basis that, if the school failed, and they decided to close it,

then the donor would get it back.

The heir hunters' starting point was Algernon and his family.

But they were going to have to delve deep into records,

because Algernon died more than 100 years ago.

Now, if the case can be solved,

the land will be passed to his heirs.

And only if the heir hunters crack the case will they earn a percentage of the estate.

These cases are quite complex.

Firstly because we're looking at people who were alive

and giving land away in the 1840s, 1850s,

so we're often now looking at beneficiaries

who are perhaps five, six or seven generations down.

There is going to be a mixture of wills

that we need to find, to find who the beneficiaries are.

So we're not necessarily just looking at the blood lines.

So the heir hunters will have to look at wills and who inherited from various estates,

as well as following Algernon's family tree.

The team have already unearthed a marriage certificate for Algernon,

and the document told them something remarkable about the Englishman.

Algernon led a privileged life growing up in Victorian Britain.

But when he turned 21, his family sent him across the Atlantic to make his fortune.

In 1872, Algernon was travelling to America.

He'd been sent there by his father to go and make something of himself.

He was an Army officer and he was travelling to America to join the British Legation in Washington,

to take up a post in the Diplomatic Corps.

America would have been a fascinating place to arrive in 1872.

It was seen as a place of opportunity,

seen as a place where a young man like Algernon

might be able to make something of himself.

On the other hand, it would also have been a place which,

compared to England at the time, might not have featured the same kind of high society,

the same kind of glamour, the same kind of social life.

And it was while he was on the ship the Russia, destined for America,

that he met and fell in love with a 17-year-old girl called Nellie Grant.

And by winning her hand in marriage,

his own place in American history.

When they leave to go on their honeymoon, they're mobbed in their carriage.

Terrific media attention.

Heir hunters trace the relatives

of people who have died without leaving a will.

It's their job to track down relatives to make sure they get the money.

Otherwise, it goes to the Treasury.

We're responsible for proving the claim

and to make sure the heirs get their rightful assets.

And this was the challenge for Saul Marks from heir-hunting firm Celtic Research

when he picked up the case of Sarah Carson.

This case was very, very difficult to solve,

simply because the surnames involved were so common.

The deceased's surname was Carson, the mother's maiden name was Sharp...

These are very common names.

Carson is an Irish surname.

There's lots of Irish families and descendants of Irish families in the Liverpool area,

so there were lots of Carson families, lots of Sharp families

and it was really tough going.

Sarah Carson, known as Sheila to her friends,

died in a nursing home in Bootle, north of Liverpool, in 2007.

She was 84.

For the last 30 years of her life,

Sheila's best friend was Elsie,

and Elsie's daughter Irene recalls that it was a shared passion

that brought the two women together.

Sheila loved to play the piano and the organ.

She had an organ at home.

And my mum loved music.

My mum played the violin in the Liverpool Youth Orchestra

when she was young.

Sheila would always be playing on the organ.

If you mentioned a tune, she would sit down and just play it.

If she'd heard it before, she could play anything.

My mum loved dancing.

They had about two or three evenings a week

that they used to go out dancing.

They were as different as chalk and cheese.

Sheila didn't care about clothes.

She didn't... My mum loved clothes.

My mum loved jewellery. Sheila never wore any jewellery.

Sheila wasn't bothered whether her hair was styled or anything.

She was really interested in her music more than anything else.

Sheila was included in all of Elsie's special celebrations.

She was my mum's friend and constant companion,

so if it was a birthday party or Christmas,

we would always include Sheila, and ask Mum to come along with Sheila.

I think she would have loved a family of her own. She did love my family.

She loved my daughter and my son-in-law and my grandchildren. She was really fond of them.

She really did. She would do anything for my mum.

She really would. Anything at all for my mum,

because...Mum was such a...

such a good friend to her.

Heir hunter Saul Marks picked up the case in 2009.

And like a lot of investigations, he started with very little information -

just Sarah's name and her date of birth.

We were able to establish quite early on that Sarah Carson had not married

and didn't have any children.

So the next step was then to look for siblings.

So Saul would have to look deeper into Sarah or Sheila's family tree.

If she had brothers and sisters,

they or their children would be heirs.

If she was an only child,

then Saul would have to look at her parents' family to trace living beneficiaries.

Saul had a breakthrough early on.

He found Sheila's birth certificate,

which gave the names of her parents -

Thomas Carson and Elizabeth Sharp.

Once we established

that the names we were researching were Carson and Sharp,

really, my heart sank, because no genealogist wants to be dealing with names as common as that,

especially together in an area where, you know, Carson is a very common Irish name.

Saul's next step was to find Sheila's parents' marriage certificate.

Once he had that, he quickly discovered the names of her grandparents too.

Sheila's paternal grandfather was Thomas Carson

and her grandfather on her mother's side was Harold Sharp.

But although Saul had quickly gone up

two generations of Sheila's family,

he also realised he had to look further into her family tree

to find living relatives.

We also established, eventually, after a lot of hard work,

that there were no brothers and sisters,

so we had to start looking for cousins of the deceased, who might be heirs.

Census records showed that Thomas Carson Senior, Sheila's grandfather,

was an Irishman from County Down,

who arrived in Liverpool some time in the 1870s.

He was one of tens of thousands of Irishmen who fled Ireland and its economic hardships.

Liverpool's huge sea port was full of job opportunities.

Although the potato famine saw a tremendous influx -

I mean, the worst year, Black 1847,

at least 300,000 Irish arrived in Liverpool -

but if you go back before that, the 1841 census,

you've got nearly 50,000 already in Liverpool.

Which indicates, actually, that Liverpool really is almost like the capital of Ireland itself,

in terms of its population.

Liverpool was the obvious choice for Irish people seeking work.

Liverpool, in many respects, is the nearest place that wasn't Ireland.

But people stay in Liverpool precisely because it's a thriving port,

and a thriving port has got a great demand for labour.

Newly arrived Irish migrants like Thomas, who might not have specific skills or qualifications,

but if he's got some physical ability,

and is there at the right time when the ships are there,

there's a likelihood that he might get some work.

There's no job security. There's no guarantee of labour,

but other the other hand, to a certain extent, you're your own boss.

The Irish immigrants dominated work in the docks,

and that was something that was welcomed by other groups living in the city.

Liverpool, I think, is a good example

of the way that migrant labour can really work rather well,

precisely because the Irish are prepared to do the heavy, the dirty work.

Other people could go higher up by saying, "Well, I don't do that because I'm not Irish."

Typical jobs would have included loading and unloading tons of cargo from the great sailing ships.

The work would have been gruelling,

but there were plenty of attractions

for people who had arrived from across the Irish Sea.

Every street corner, there's an Irish pub.

Every block, there's a parish church - an Irish Catholic church.

The music halls are full of Irish delights.

Liverpool is the capital of Ireland in England

and certainly there is a degree of economic prosperity there.

Even though you might be at the bottom of the ladder, you're at least not starving.

For heir hunter Saul, other records began to help build up a picture of the Carson family.

The 1911 census revealed to us

that Thomas Carson, the deceased's grandfather,

was born in Kilkeel in County Down in Ireland

and his wife Mary, Mary Brown,

she was born in Clontibret in County Monaghan,

which is quite some distance away from Kilkeel.

The Irish couple almost certainly met not in their homeland,

but in Liverpool.

And it's likely the Catholic church played a vital role.

The church is putting on a whole range of social activities,

again to make sure that people stay within the faith.

So, Thomas and Mary could well have met at dances,

sports events, a whole range of social activities,

which were part and parcel of keeping people Catholic,

keeping them Irish, keeping them together.

For heir hunter Saul,

his job was far from over.

He knew Thomas and Mary had settled down in Liverpool,

but did they have more than one child,

Thomas, who was Sarah's father?

If the answer was yes, their offspring would be heirs to Sarah's estate.

But it wasn't going to be straightforward.

There were a million John Carsons and James Carsons

in the area, all born around the same time,

so...one step forward and two steps back.

Heir hunters track thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year.

But not all cases can be cracked.

There are thousands of estates

on the Treasury solicitors' unclaimed list

that have eluded the heir hunters and remained unsolved.

So we'll administer the estate

and when the administration is completed,

we'll put the case on the unclaimed list,

so that people may still come forward and claim it.

But today we are focusing on two cases

that have come from another list of unclaimed estates,

known as the Queen's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer List, or QLTR.

This list is published in Scotland,

and unlike the bona vacantia, it includes values.

Both of the names today have confounded the heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they're looking for?

First...

Heir hunters have tried hard to trace his relatives

but so far, they've drawn a blank.

If his beneficiaries are not found,

his £2,798 estate

will go unclaimed.

Next, can you shed any light on this case?

The heir hunters have come to a full stop and need your help.

Are you related to Jeanie?

Or perhaps you knew her?

Perhaps you are an heir

who is entitled to a share of her £13,000 estate.

Both Robert Lyle's

and Jeanie MacGillivray's estates remain unclaimed.

If no-one comes forward, their money will go to the Scottish Government.

Do you have any clues that could solve these two cases

published on the QLTR?

If so, you could have a windfall coming your way.

Heir hunter Saul Marks from Celtic Research

is looking into the case of retired musician Sarah Carson,

known to her friends as Sheila.

She died in 2007

without leaving a will and with no known relatives.

She spent her life in and around Liverpool

and Saul has traced her family arriving in the city in the late 1800s.

Thomas Carson, the deceased's grandfather,

was born in Kilkeel in County Down in Ireland

and...his wife Mary, Mary Brown,

she was born in Clontibret in County Monaghan,

which is quite some distance away from Kilkeel.

So we came to the conclusion that Thomas and Mary had actually met in Liverpool

as part of the Irish ex-pat community in Liverpool.

Sheila's grandparents on her father's side,

Thomas and Mary Carson,

were Roman Catholics.

And faith played a huge part in their granddaughter Sheila's life.

Sheila never missed going to church on Sundays.

She always went to Mass on Sunday.

But...

she liked to go to where they had a Latin Mass.

So she used to get a taxi every Sunday morning to church.

But... And I know she gave quite a lot to charity.

And she was very pleased, because all my grandchildren have been christened

into the Catholic faith, because my son-in-law's Catholic.

So, she loved it when she came to the christenings.

Anything to do with them, or First Communions.

Sheila never spoke of her family,

But her love of music

did give Irene and her mum an insight into her roots.

I think the passion from music possibly came from some of her Irish background,

because when she was younger, she played in ceilidh bands.

She played Irish music. It was Irish bands

that she got into to start off with, with the accordion.

I presume that both her mother and father were from Ireland.

But she never really talked about ever having been to Ireland

or...anything about her family in Ireland.

Heir hunter Saul has established that by 1911,

one of Sheila's grandfathers, Thomas Carson, and his wife, Mary Brown,

had four children -

James, Thomas - Sheila's father - Sarah and John.

This was good, because there were clearly four children who had survived

most of their childhood and were likely to have lived out a good long life

and probably married and hopefully had children.

The bad part of this was they had one first name each,

and they were very common names,

and there were a million John Carsons and James Carsons

in the area, all born around the same time.

So...one step forward and two steps back.

Sheila's father, Thomas Junior,

married Elizabeth Sharp in Liverpool in 1922.

On their marriage certificate,

it states Thomas is a marine fireman.

The unusual job title is a clue to the massive change

the city's port was undergoing in the latter part of the 1800s,

as the great sailing ships gave way to steam power.

This has a major effect on the docks,

because accommodation has to be increased,

so new docks are opened

and older docks are rebuilt

to accommodate this increasing number of steam ships.

The steam ships become increasingly more economical,

with new types of engine.

They can compete with sailing ships on many of the long-distance routes.

The fuel improvements carry on

through into the 1880s.

So steamers are taking more and more of the trade off sailing ships.

Thomas Junior's job as a marine fireman

was to stoke the coal fire on board ships,

which produced steam to power them.

Working conditions for Thomas were pretty horrendous.

It would be hot and it would be dirty.

What he would be doing is not just shovelling coal

into the fire box of the boilers.

He would be regulating that fire.

He would be cleaning out the ashes and the clinker,

keeping the steam pressure at a regular level.

It was a skilled job.

And, of course, this was all done

while the ship was pitching and rolling at sea.

And this dangerous work may have taken him across the Atlantic.

We know where Thomas lived.

And we can make a deduction that his employment was close by.

In which case, it's possible that he was employed

on one of the Cunard liners that were based around there.

In which case, he would be sailing across the Atlantic,

principally to New York.

Back at the office,

Saul was pinning hopes on finding descendants of Thomas's siblings,

James, Sarah and John.

But it was not good news.

We looked first at James Carson, who was the eldest brother

of the deceased's father, Thomas.

He was born in 1894.

And he signed up with the Army in 1911, which was a few months after the census.

He joined the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.

But actually, perhaps James wasn't so loyal,

because he actually deserted in 1913.

But he had a change of heart, and signed up at the outbreak of World War I.

But tragically, James was wounded in France just a month later

and died in November 1914.

What it did prove to us was he wasn't married.

He'd had no children.

So that was one branch of this family

where there were going to be no heirs.

So that was a bit of a disappointment, but there were still two branches,

in that Thomas had a sister, Sarah, and another brother, John.

And the research into Thomas's other siblings, John and Sarah,

Sheila's uncle and aunt,

had been slow going.

And so far, Saul has not been able to trace any of their living descendants.

So once we put the Carson research on the paternal side to one side,

we moved from Carson, which is a very difficult name,

to Sharp, which is a very difficult name!

But Saul had more luck looking at the maternal side of Sheila's family.

We established fairly early on through the censuses

that there were actually nine children in the family.

Elizabeth was one of nine, so there were a number of different names

to combine with the Sharp surname.

And that really made our statistical probability of finding heirs somewhat higher.

Sheila's mother, Elizabeth, had eight brothers and sisters -

James, Sarah, Annie, Laura, Albert,

George, Mabel and Mary.

And once he had all their names,

he started to look at their marriages.

There was one in particular that was slightly easier than the others.

She had a sister named Mabel, who married a William O'Connor,

and the name combination of Sharp and O'Connor

was just about uncommon enough for us to be able to trace their children and grandchildren.

Saul has traced 28 heirs in all.

One of them, Anne Blundell,

is Mabel's granddaughter,

and Sheila's cousin once removed.

She will have a share in the £13,000 estate.

It was a massive shock.

Er...because although I knew that Sheila had died,

I know that she'd never married or anything.

But I didn't expect anything at all.

So, it was a massive shock to all the family.

Although Anne hadn't seen Sheila for many years,

she still remembers her.

Sheila had come with her accordion, and with an old tape recorder,

the old boxed type tape recorders.

And she'd record me and my sister singing nursery rhymes.

And she was full of fun.

Erm...quite a bubbly person.

But then, after that, I don't recall anything.

Anne and another of Sheila's heirs, Susan Getty, a cousin once removed,

are looking forward to meeting Irene,

who they hope will be able to fill in the missing years of Sheila's life.

It'll be lovely to find out what she was up to.

And...put all of the jigsaw together.

-Nice to meet you.

-Hello.

-This is Susan. Hello.

-Hello, Susan. Lovely to see you.

Nice to meet you both.

Irene explains how her mum, Elsie, and Sheila were great friends over many years.

-I think she had my mum on a pedestal.

-How did she meet your mum?

Well, because they danced.

-Oh!

-Yeah. My mum was the dancing queen.

Oh! OK.

And my mum really did look after... My mum was 11 years older than her.

-My mum did look after her.

-Did she?

-Yeah, she did look after her.

-She needed somebody to look after her.

-Yeah.

Well, why was that? What had happened to her?

Well, it was just that she didn't bother with herself.

-She wasn't really interested...?

-She didn't care, really.

But my mum wasn't like that.

My mum was the exact... They were chalk and cheese. My mum was the exact opposite.

Well, I can tell by you - you're a very glamorous lady.

I'm not as glamorous as my mother was, and I'm not as good a dancer.

Sheila lost touch with her family after her mother died.

And Irene is able to let them know what happened to her after that.

This is a really nice one.

Aw!

And in turn, Irene has found out about Sheila's earlier life.

That's her father.

And her mother.

And Sheila.

It's been fascinating. I've really enjoyed it,

because I had no idea what she was like when she was younger.

So it's quite enlightening for me, really,

to be able to pass on to my family.

I'm just glad to learn more about her.

Cos I didn't know that she danced.

So, erm...I'm taking away a lot more knowledge about her, her life.

-But I'm glad that she found what she thought of as family.

-Soul mates.

-Yeah.

-Like a soul mate, wasn't she?

-Yeah.

-Lovely, absolutely lovely to meet you.

-It was nice.

The heir hunters at London's Fraser & Fraser

are investigating the case of Algernon Sartoris,

who donated an acre of land in the village of Llangennech in Carmarthenshire in 1887.

Under the Victorian Schools Sites Act,

if the donated land stops being used as a school,

it must return to the benefactor.

But now, more than 100 years later,

it's a puzzle for the heir hunters to unravel.

We need to find out who that person's beneficiaries are,

either under a will, or where there's no will, on an intestacy.

The old school has long since been demolished

and has been replaced by two new schools,

which are at the heart of Llangennech life.

It's a traditional Welsh village.

Schools are growing year by year.

Actually both schools, I would say, are full to capacity at the moment.

13 years before Algernon Sartoris donated land,

he was on board the ship the Russia,

when a chance meeting with a teenage girl

steered both their lives onto a different course.

17-year-old Nellie Grant was the only daughter of Ulysses Grant,

the 18th President of the United States.

Grant also had three sons,

but Nellie was his favourite.

Nellie Grant was born in 1855,

in what was essentially a log cabin in Missouri.

Her father had just resigned from the US Army,

and for the first years of her childhood, growing up,

the family experienced quite a bit of hardship.

Her father failed at farming.

He failed at business.

But the family's fortunes and Nellie's fortunes took quite a dramatic turn

when, during the Civil War, her father, Ulysses Grant,

rose to become head of the US Army.

And after that, he was elected as President of the United States for two terms.

So, from a log cabin in Missouri,

at the age of 13, Nellie went to live in the White House.

He served as President of the United States from 1869 to 1877.

But his reputation as a military leader and politician

is somewhat mixed.

Certainly, he lost a lot of men in the Civil War,

but so did others, and were less successful.

He finished the war. As far as his Presidency is concerned,

certainly, he did not drive things through.

Nonetheless, in many ways, for however weak he was,

and whether or not he was a poor judge of character,

certainly he did in many ways have a progressive agenda.

As Ulysses Grant battled to prove his worth as President,

his daughter Nellie was becoming something of a socialite.

One of the things that the American newspapers says about Nellie

is that she might have been slightly too fond of parties,

slightly too fond of the Washington social scene.

And also that she was surrounded by a number of eager admirers.

And so in 1872, both to remove her from her suitors

and also perhaps to enhance her education,

the decision is made

that Nellie should undertake a grand tour of Europe.

And it was on the return trip home she met the young Englishman.

Algernon would have known who Nellie Grant was, undoubtedly,

because of her tour of Europe and her meeting with Queen Victoria.

And so this was, in some respects, something of a coup for Algernon.

But Algernon wasn't without his own charms.

Apart from his own good looks,

he was also apparently worth 60,000 a year.

Um, which equates to well over a million dollars in today's money.

But the news was not entirely welcomed by the President and his wife.

One the one hand, they didn't want her to leave.

They wanted, actually, Algernon to become an American citizen,

so that they could all live together.

At the same time, the Grants believed that Nellie had done rather well for herself.

They thought that Algernon's family was rather a posh family

and that she was going to be leading the high life

in the English countryside.

So, um...

Grant was prepared to write to Algernon's father

to find out whether he was a suitable husband or not,

but he didn't put anything in the way of the marriage.

The Grants did insist on a long courtship,

and when the couple finally married two years later,

the event captured the imagination of the world's press.

They were so worried about the press camping outside the White House

that they insisted that all the curtains should be closed.

The wedding was conducted by candlelight, the light of loads of candles.

It was a very glamorous and lavish wedding.

There was a lot of news about how expensive all the dresses were,

how extraordinarily expensive and luxurious all the flowers were,

that they were married on a carpet that had been sent by the Sultan of Turkey...

So tremendous interest.

When they leave to go on their honeymoon,

they're mobbed in their carriage.

Terrific media attention.

And I think that was a first.

Back in the office, the team had built up a picture of Algernon.

They had found records showing he had four children -

George, Algernon Junior,

Vivien and Rosemary.

George died in infancy.

Algernon Junior, who would have inherited his father's estate,

had one child, Herbert.

Because this is a Schools Sites, it's all about wills.

That's the key part of information that we need.

Gareth is unable to find a will for Algernon Junior,

nor for his son, Herbert, or for Herbert's grandfather, Algernon Senior,

who donated the land for the school.

Herbert's father, Algernon Sartoris,

now he passed away in 1907.

I think he probably passed away in France.

It is almost impossible...

to obtain a copy of a will in France.

As Herbert's father, Algernon, died over 100 years ago abroad,

the search for living heirs is not going to be easy.

The team will have to delve further into his family.

Herbert had seven children with his first wife, Alix Jeuffrain,

and none with his second, Constance Poppy Richard.

Because the team can't find a will for Herbert

and cannot trace his children,

they looked at who Constance left her estate to,

because they would be beneficiaries.

If we can find his marriage, we can go through the wife's family.

Records show that Constance left her estate to two friends,

Antony Speyer and Elizabeth Blammier.

Emily has traced one of the beneficiaries.

We have the death certificate of Antony Francis Carl Speyer.

It says he's born in South Africa.

And he dies in 2004.

So the team now has to trace Antony's son, Rupert Speyer.

Because he benefited from his father, he is now a beneficiary in the Schools Sites case.

We know that he was living in Bristol

up until about 2005.

After that, he disappears.

So we're thinking maybe he goes to South Africa.

Searching abroad is always expensive,

so Emily first turns her attention to Rupert's ex-wives.

I know that Rupert was married three times.

Um...and he's had children with two of his wives.

Can't find any of them.

So now I'm going to try and go through

either of the ex-wives.

But it is while Emily is looking for them that another member of the team has a lucky break.

They've stumbled across a business testimonial Rupert posted on the internet.

And there's a telephone number.

I think Dan's found an address for Rupert Speyer in Cape Town.

So Gareth's just going to get the phone and give him a call.

And, hopefully, that address will be right.

But the research looks like it may be a dead end.

So, the actual number is...

..is saying it's busy.

Um...from past experience today, that's not a good sign.

But the team has had more luck looking into Elizabeth Blammier,

the other friend Constance left her estate to.

Elizabeth died in 2010.

Her three children are beneficiaries to Algernon's land in Wales.

One of them, Simon Gould, was pleasantly surprised to hear the heir hunters' news.

Gareth explained the history, going back to 1870-something,

the fact that we weren't actually related to the individual concerned,

but that there was a connection via my mother.

One of the challenges I had

was that the name that he knew the lady as - Constance.

I knew her as Poppy, which was one of her middle names,

which was how we referred to her.

But once I'd made that connection, then it kind of made sense.

And Simon is grateful that a little-known Victorian Act of Parliament

will benefit him in the 21st century.

The act involved has certainly done me a bit of a favour,

although I don't think we'll be getting rich on it.

There's some financial benefit, that through that rather convoluted path, they've ended up with me.

And there's an added benefit too.

The fact that somehow I've suddenly become connected to the daughter of a President sounds very impressive.

I don't think genetically that achieves much for me, but it's a good dinner party story.

Back in the office, Emily and Gareth are still trying to trace Rupert Speyer,

whose father Antony was a beneficiary to Algernon's grandson's estate.

The team has found a number for him in South Africa.

Gareth hasn't been able to get through,

but he's going to give it one more try.

I am hoping that you a Mr Rupert Travis Speyer.

Excellent.

Finally, the search is over.

It looks like Gareth has got his man.

All done - yeah!

Woo!

I think he said it was half past five or six o'clock in South Africa.

He's out by the swimming pool, he's got a large glass of whisky.

He's very interested in what we've got to say

and hopefully, he'll come on board with us.

Finding Rupert is one of the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

And later, by email, Rupert is signed by the heir hunters.

So far, there are four heirs in total entitled to a share of Algernon's land.

The research is complete and has been submitted to trustees.

The case hasn't been valued yet,

but the heir hunters think it is worth between £20,000 and £40,000.

But what happened to Algernon Sartoris,

the Victorian gentleman who donated the land in the first place,

after marrying Nellie Grant, the daughter of a US President?

Cracks apparently started to show in the marriage.

Algernon, it became clear, was a drinker.

And also, there were suggestions, sometimes quite public suggestions,

that he was something of a philanderer.

Nellie and Algernon spent increasing amounts of time apart

and the fact that their marriage was not a happy one

became a matter of public gossip on both sides of the Atlantic.

In one notable example, in the summer of 1883,

Algernon travelled to America whilst Nellie stayed at home in England.

And during that trip American newspapers reported

that he was seen entering and leaving the house of a young English widow

in the middle of the night.

Algernon died alone on the isle of Capri in 1893.

And the American newspapers, at least, were glad to see the back of him,

some describing him as "a vulgar bore who was cruel to his wife and children" in their obituaries.

And so Nellie Grant was finally free from her unhappy marriage.

The papers may have been unkind about Algernon Sartoris,

but his act of generosity to a tiny village in Wales

more than 120 years ago

still has a lasting legacy today.

He did a good deed for the village.

And we have benefited, you know.

There was good education here

and we have inherited two lovely schools just up the road

from what was started on this spot.

If you would like advice about building a family tree

or making a will, go to...

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