Botham/Davies Heir Hunters

Every year, thousands of people die with no close family

and without making a will.

If no relatives come forward, their money will go to the government

and that's where the Heir Hunters come in.

They married in December, 1927 in Fulham.

They're experts in tracking down long-lost family members

who have no idea they're in line to inherit.

We believe, sir, that you will be entitled to a share

in your cousin's estate.

It's a competitive industry, often with thousands of pounds at stake.

At the moment, we're fighting quite a big battle with lots of heirs,

lots of competition.

But their work also uncovers hidden histories...

Basically, we're half Jewish and we didn't know.

..and can often reunite long-lost relatives

and bring families closer together.

To try and build up a picture in your mind of really how they lived

and what they did. It's really interesting.

Above all, it's about giving people news of an unexpected windfall.

I, sort of, just froze.

Unbelievable!

Could the Heir Hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up... The heir hunters get a confusing tip-off...

I'm not 100% sure the half-sister comes from the mother or the father.

..and one search uncovers the remarkable story of a family's

link to Britain's waterways.

Some of them stayed here and lived here

and then started to produce a dynasty of people who worked the river.

Late afternoon in the central London offices of Fraser & Fraser

and the team are sorting through a new list of unclaimed estates

that has just come in from the Treasury's Bona Vacantia department.

Want another?

That's down to Ben.

How many have we got? Five each?

Coming at the end of an already hectic day,

the team are totally stretched to their limits.

There's so much work, it's ridiculous. It's just...

There are about 30 cases that appear to have come up, so...

And, as the long list is divided up, case manager Gareth Langford

gets straight to work, with the first name he is given.

Mavis Botham.

We don't know anything about her at the moment,

apart from, she was born in 1922 and passed away in April, 2013.

Aged 90, Mavis Botham died in Nottinghamshire.

Despite living in the area for years,

it seems neighbours saw little of her.

I've lived next door to Mavis for about 15 years.

She loved cats.

She really did love cats, but I didn't know that much about her.

Although Mavis was a private person,

Glendys Hughes still remembers her fondly.

She was always in a wheelchair so she never came out on her own,

if you know what I mean?

So, it would be on the street, talking.

I used to like to talk to her when I got the chance.

With very little information to go on,

the team start by finding her address and then it's up

to Gareth to work out whether her estate has any value.

What we are trying to establish now

is whether the deceased owned her property or not.

That is the best starting point, really, because, obviously,

if the deceased did own the property, then we work it.

Heir hunters work on a commission basis, earning money by taking

a percentage of the estate, which is agreed with any heirs they find.

When an estate appears on the Treasury's list, the heir hunters

have no idea of its value,

which means that finding out whether there is any property involved

is always their first priority.

If we can find that the deceased owned property,

we know we are dealing with a valuable case.

We know we're dealing with a case that should be worth

at least £20,000, which is our minimum cut-off.

To add even more pressure to the team, they know that

any number of rival heir-hunting firms could be working the case.

Whatever the value of Mavis's estate may be, if a rival firm reaches

and signs up the heirs first,

Gareth and the team won't make a single penny.

He wastes no time and gets researcher Dan to start looking

to see if Mavis had any husband, children or brothers and sisters

who could inherit.

I'm trying to identify the deceased's birth at the moment.

I think I have in Shardlow district.

So, it looks like she's a spinster.

Dan's research suggests that Mary had no close family.

-Spinster, only child.

-She was a spinster?

Only child?

But Gareth isn't convinced just yet.

-I think she's been married and divorced.

-Then gone back?

-Yeah.

Reverted back to her maiden name.

I think you might possibly be right, mate.

Married in Ilkeston.

It turns out that Gareth's hunch was, in fact, right.

Mavis married Polish man Joseph Menkavitch in Ilkeston

two years before the end of the Second World War.

Together the couple had one daughter, a little girl called Christine

who was born in 1946, but who tragically died the same year.

Shortly afterwards, Mavis and Joseph divorced

and Mavis went back to using her maiden name.

As Mavis was divorced and had no living children

nor any siblings that the team have found,

the next job is to look for aunts, uncles and cousins of hers.

But this means more research and the investment of more time

and resources.

It is a bold move to make on a case where the value is unknown.

But these are the kind of risks that company boss Neil

must weigh up every day.

We're dealing with a relatively small estate,

maybe £15,000-£20,000 and we suddenly start getting hundreds

and hundreds of cousins, then we've got a problem.

It may be that we have to drop the case.

So, we have to really be careful to evaluate and make sure we're not

just throwing money out of the window to solve a case.

Using the address that they found for her, Gareth decides to

contact some of Mavis's neighbours, to see if they know anything

that could help determine at this early stage

whether the case is worth working.

I don't know if these numbers ever work.

Good afternoon. I hope you can help me. My name is Gareth Langford.

I'm making enquiries about a former neighbour of yours.

It turns out that the neighbour might have a few leads

on Mavis's family, but before he can follow any of them up,

Gareth needs to know if her estate has any value.

OK. So, when did she sell the bungalow? Was that...?

That was about 20 years ago. And, what happened to Mr Start?

He's still there. Right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Well, slightly, erm... Confusing.

It would appear that Mavis did, own a property some years ago,

20 years ago, that was sold for approximately £40,000.

Gareth has discovered that Mavis sold her own home to move in

with long-term partner James Start and lived with him

until she passed away.

However, as the couple never married

and Mavis died without leaving a will,

James is not entitled to her estate.

If any family can be found, they will be the ones to inherit.

The big question is,

does she have any funds left or was that money used, you know..?

Apparently, they did up the property at number 21,

so there may not be any finances left.

Gareth's first priority, before following up any further leads

from the phone call, is to resolve this issue.

We need to talk to this Mr Start.

James Start.

Dan searches for contact details for Mavis's partner, James

and has no luck.

Ideally, what we want to do is to speak to Mr Start,

because he will know all the information that we need.

Unfortunately, he's not on the phone. Erm...

It would be a question of trying to get somebody around to see him.

The work of the heir hunters involves a huge team and encompasses

a variety of roles, as well as researchers

and case managers based in the office,

the company has an army of travelling researchers on the road.

Their job is to collect documents, make enquiries and, crucially,

sign up heirs.

I like the journeys across the country.

You see different parts of the country.

That's one of the enjoyable parts of the job.

Once you've made contact with the family,

that's when all the stories come out, you know.

I love that side of it.

To find out whether the case has any value, Gareth needs to send

one of these travelling researchers round to see Mr Start.

The drive is 64 miles... What about Ewart?

Unfortunately, the whole team,

including the guys out on the road, are stretched to the limits

working the long list of cases that have come in.

So, unless there's someone nearby,

it looks unlikely that James will get a visit today.

I was wondering where you are currently?

Tomorrow, I was thinking. Tomorrow morning.

It's late in the day and as the travelling researcher can't make it

to visit Mr Start in time, a meeting is arranged for the morning.

Half eight. Lovely. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye.

But there is still more work to be getting on with.

Now that Gareth's done all he can to establish the value of the estate,

he and Dan set about investigating

the other possible leads the neighbour has given them.

We've got information that there's a possible sister.

So, just checking to see if there's maybe been a transcription error.

While their initial research showed that Mavis was an only child,

it seems there is a chance she might have had a sister.

Put in different variants and see whether we get an answer,

but I can't find any at the moment.

With only an online record of Mavis's birth to work with,

the team are getting nowhere.

We found the birth record.

What we haven't found is the parents' marriage

so we need certificates to help us with that information.

And when it comes to ordering them, there is no time to waste.

We have a cut-off point of four o'clock

and we probably have 20 seconds, I would have thought.

Go, go!

Go on, you can do it. No pressure! Just type faster!

Go on. Don't make any mistakes, whatever you do!

-Get it in?

-Yeah.

-Yes!

With the research well and truly under way,

will some new information below the case wide open?

If all of these potential children from marriage are correct,

we're going to have an awful lot of heirs to trace.

While some heir hunts are relatively straightforward,

others can end up as tangled webs,

with layer upon layer of complications.

Although he didn't realise at the start,

for case manager Ben Cornish, the search for heirs to the estate

of Mary Davies could definitely turn out to be on the trickier side.

We first got the case of Mary Davies in late 2011.

It was released on the Bona Vacantia website.

We know that it had value

and enquiries confirmed that the estate was worth about £28,000.

Mary Davies died on 26 March, 2011 in West Bromwich.

Robert was her carer at the nursing home

where she spent her final years and remembers her fondly.

Mary was quite a friendly person and

she was quite open with everyone.

And Mary was quite good with the rest of the residents.

She was socialising with the rest of the residents.

And she was somebody who loved company.

She was such a lovely person to be around with,

because she used to talk about all sorts of things.

So, she will be missed, in that sense.

Although Mary loved to chat about anything and everything,

it seems there was one subject particularly close to her heart.

She was a person who loved to talk about her life history,

her family, and she was quite proud of how she looked at her family.

To me, she used to say her husband was not a physically-fit man.

He was a man who she used to look after.

But she didn't regret marrying this gentleman, because she loved him.

When Ben and the team began their search for heirs

to Mary's £28,000 estate, they had very little information to go on.

We were just given the deceased's full name, date of death

and the place of death.

So, we thought the best thing to do was to order the death certificate,

in the hope it had more information.

When the certificate arrived, it wasn't very helpful.

As a place of birth, it just gave England and it did state that she

was a widow, but didn't list her husband's name or her maiden name.

Without a maiden name, the heir hunters couldn't check to see

whether Mary had any children who could inherit or begin

to build up any kind of picture of the family tree.

So, it was time to hit the phone.

The deceased's last-known address was a nursing home.

We made some enquiries there and they informed us

that she was once married to a Charles Davies.

We found the marriage record,

and realised that her maiden name was Mary Harris

and Harris is one of the most common names in England and Wales

and it can be a complete nightmare to research.

The surname Harris is generally considered to mean "son of Harry"

and early records suggest that the name Harris

and Harrison were used interchangeably by some families.

There are over 160,000 Harrises currently living in the UK.

When Mary Harris married Charles Davies in July, 1965,

she was 43 and he was 42 years old.

From the marriage, we found no children being born

and we knew that she hadn't been married previously,

because she was the listed as being a spinster

on the marriage certificate.

Once we've established there's no children of the deceased,

we look for any siblings that she may've had

and we, first of all, look for her parents' marriage,

as a point from where to check.

With a little bit more digging,

Ben discovered that Mary was born in Droitwich, Worcestershire in 1922

to Mary and Frederick Harris.

At the time of her birth,

Mary's father Frederick was working as a country policeman

in the local area, a job that would have been very varied.

A county police officer

in the morning, could be dealing with diseases of animals,

in the afternoon,

he could be dealing with a factory accident.

As a bobby on the beat in the early 1900s,

Frederick would have had very limited resources at his disposal.

A helmet, a truncheon,

and a pair of handcuffs.

His hat would be very, very simple.

Very basic.

Made of cardboard.

Absolutely no strength in it, whatsoever. Purely there for show.

And at a time when telephones and radios were few and far between,

policing was a rather different business.

The biggest requirement was being able to talk to people.

If we remember that there are not many policeman around -

maybe half a dozen, at the very most -

and their only form of transport is a bicycle,

then he's not going to be in range to use a whistle,

so the only way he can preserve the peace or break up a fight

is - number one - rely on other members of the public

to assist them, or - number two -

use his mouth to try and prevent disturbance in first place.

But while talking to people was essential,

there were also rules and regulations,

ensuring policeman like Frederick didn't chat too much.

He had a set beat to walk a particular street

and, in some cases, a particular side of the street.

So if he walked to the other side of the road

to talk to another policeman on the other beat,

the sergeant could discipline him

for wasting police time and gossiping.

The fact that they'd be exchanging information is immaterial.

On the trail of Mary's descendants,

Ben and the team had no time for dawdling, either.

Having found Mary's birth certificate,

they now needed to search for a record of her parents' marriage.

When they found it,

they discovered that Mary's mother's maiden name was also Harris.

We had a Harris marrying a Harris, which makes it

doubly difficult.

Having one Harris to research is difficult enough,

but we've got both the paternal and the maternal families,

which makes it extraordinarily difficult.

The team's only hope of saving themselves

the headache of researching two Harris families,

lay in finding brothers and sisters of Mary.

We found one sibling of the deceased,

a brother called Frederick, born in 1921 in Droitwich.

As it turned out, Mary's parents Frederick and Mary,

called both their son and their daughter after themselves.

But as Mary's brother Frederick had passed away,

any children of his would be next in line to inherit.

When we found his death record,

we did a bit more tracing backwards through addresses

and we found out that he was married.

Our research suggested that they didn't have any children, therefore

the deceased didn't have any nieces or nephews.

With the possibility of nieces and nephews ruled out

the team needed to look to the wider family

on both Mary's mother and her father's side.

Only by tracking down aunts and uncles and cousins,

did they now stand any chance of finding heirs.

So it was time to take on the double-Harris challenge!

But as they delved deeper and deeper into the tangled web

of Harris families,

would they ever be able to track the right heirs down?

And they all intermingled.

They not only married each other, but they worked for each other.

They were very much a tight-knit community

and they lived pretty well in the same street.

Heir hunters trace thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year,

but not all cases can be cracked.

There are thousands of estates on the Treasury's bona vacantia list

that have eluded the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

There are actually two bona vacantia

unclaimed estates list.

One list is our current list of advertised estates.

That's updated daily.

And there is also an historic unclaimed list,

that's cases that have been referred to us between 1997 and 2013,

which have been dealt with by the Treasury Solicitor,

but we're still looking for kin to come forward and claim.

Today, we're focusing on two cases

that are yet to be solved by the heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they're looking for?

Could you be about to inherit some money from a long-lost relative?

First is the case of Paula Barnby who died on 6th December, 1998

in Grasmere, Cumbria.

Paula is believed to have died a widow,

and while she passed away in Cumbria,

it appears she was actually born in Cologne, Germany, in 1908.

Her maiden name was Wieben.

Did you know Paula?

Do you have any idea when and why she moved from Germany to the UK?

Perhaps you have some clue that could help trace family

at home or abroad,

and find the rightful beneficiaries to her estate.

Next, can you shed any light on the case of Joyce Rosemary Wrigley,

who died on 19th March 2012

in Kingston-upon-Thames?

She was born Joyce Pallant

in Teddington in 1928.

Joyce married David Paul Wrigley

in May 1967

in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

But records reveal David died in 2003,

nine years before Joyce, and so far no other family have been traced.

Both Paul and Joyce's estates remain unclaimed,

and if no-one comes forward, their money will go to the government.

The public can get in touch with us

in writing either by e-mail or

post, or on the phone.

And that's how we will get in touch with them, as well.

Do you have any clues that could help solve the cases

of Paula Barnby or Joyce Rosemary Wrigley.

Perhaps you could be the next of kin.

If so, you could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

Day two in the case of Mavis Botham

and Gareth Langford and the team are picking up where they left off.

So far they've discovered that while Mavis had been previously married

and had one daughter who died in infancy,

many years after her divorce she met and fell in love with James Start.

After meeting in 1969, the couple spent 40 years together,

and often enjoyed trips to the seaside and a spot of bingo.

It turns out that the way in which their paths first crossed

was a rather unique one.

She worked at Chilwell Depot with Jim, and that's how they met.

Painting tanks,

which I thought was rather romantic, in a funny, sort of, way, you know.

Chilwell, on the outskirts of Nottingham,

was the largest army supplies depot in the world,

and was built on a site that had, for decades,

been playing a vital role in British military history.

During the First World War,

Chilwell with the site for the national shell-filling factory.

Between 1916 and 1918, the factory produced over 19 million shells.

To give you an idea of how significant that was

in the production of ordinance for the British Army during that time,

practically every shell that was fired during the Battle of the Somme

had its explosives filled Chilwell.

By the time Mavis started working there, during the Second World War,

the site had become the central ordinance depot and workshop,

responsible for issuing weapons and vehicles to the British Army.

Chilwell was an extremely important part of the supply of logistics

to the British Army during both the Second World War

and during the Cold War, as well.

During that time, British Army vehicles were equipped and supplied

from Chilwell.

Without the role of the Chilwell garrison during the Second World War

and during the Cold War, the British Army

would have been unable to function properly around the world.

Up until its closure in 1982,

Chilwell continued to be a vital source of military supplies.

Many of its employees were locals, like Mavis and James,

who would've enjoyed a vibrant working atmosphere.

Chilwell enjoyed quite a lot of facilities a small town would enjoy.

There were two churches, social club, sports club...

So, in a way, especially with people coming from the immediate local area

there was almost a community within a community at Chilwell.

After a meeting with Mavis's partner James Start this morning,

a travelling researcher has just called Gareth to fill him in.

He was able to confirm that Mavis sold

a property in early 2002 or 2003.

I don't think it's going to be a huge estate,

but it's definitely something.

This means that all the work they put in the case yesterday

has not been in vain.

And the good news doesn't stop there,

as Mr Start has been able to shed a little bit more light

on the possible sister that the team have been struggling to find.

Generally, what we're seeing is,

Mavis was likely to have been an only child from her

parents' marriage, but probably had a half-sister.

Using the certificates ordered yesterday,

Gareth and Dan have managed to establish that Mavis's parents

were Caroline and William Botham.

Whilst together, they didn't have any other children,

information gleaned from Mr Start suggests that one or other of them

had a daughter called Winifred from a previous marriage,

and it seems Gareth is going to have to try to track her down on his own.

Everybody's a bit busy today, so I'm going to have a quick look myself.

See if I can get it started, then pass it on to someone else.

I am not 100% sure

if the halfsister comes from the mother or father.

The mother is the deceased.

Caroline Wickes was previously married,

but I can't find any obvious issue of that marriage.

So now I am looking at the father.

It's tough going.

But tracking down this half-sister is the key to finding heirs

to Mavis's estate, as she would be next in line to inherit,

according to the 1925 Administration Of Estate's Act.

The order of entitlements is it goes to the spouse,

then the children, then the parents,

brothers and sisters or their children.

It then comes into the half-blood brothers, sisters,

or their children.

Before we then go to cousins.

After cousins, we go to the half-blood cousins.

Sadly, it looks back Gareth is not getting anywhere

looking for Mavis's half-sister,

based on the information that Mr Start has given him.

Sometimes you can have too much information.

Because now I'm going to spend all my time looking

for the half-sister Winifred, or Winnie,

erm, whereas, you know,

possibly what I should be doing

is just working the case with no information.

With everyone else in the office flat-out,

Gareth soldiers on alone and finally makes a breakthrough.

So, Winnie, erm... I've actually just found her birth record.

She's not Winifred, she's Dorothy.

Dorothy W, though, so it's bound to be Dorothy Winifred.

I've got a date to play with,

a proper name to play with.

Erm...so we know she actually does exist.

It turns out that, prior to having Mavis,

Caroline was married before, to James Hemsley

and that she had one daughter - Dorothy.

Got a marriage for her.

Dorothy married John Martin in 1932 in Shardlow

and passed away in 1977.

So if Gareth can track down any children of hers,

these half-nephews and nieces of Mavis's

could be just the heirs he's after.

They've certainly had two kids in Shardlow,

then there's further children in Batsford.

And then, possibly, Ilkeston.

Derby.

And if all of these potential children to marriage are correct...

Although it's a near-kin case,

we're going to have an awful lot of heirs to trace.

With so many potential heirs to track down, the pressure is on.

It's a race against the clock,

as the team have no idea if the competition

have picked up the case, too.

And Gareth's job is getting harder by the minute.

We're seeing if we can get any addresses

for any of the potential heirs, but I'm struggling with the surname.

And, unfortunately, we've gone from really, really good names,

to a slightly more common name.

Whereas Dorothy's maiden name was Hemsley,

which is very unusual,

when she married John Martin all of that changed.

As a result, there are a lot of potential births

from the marriage to check.

Unfortunately, there are two births in the same area

of a James P Martin and I can't tell whether this one is my one

or the other birth.

And there are two marriages in the area.

I can't tell which one's which.

But Gareth refuses to give up,

and it's not long before he makes a breakthrough.

He manages to trace five potential heirs

born to Mavis's half-sister Dorothy and John Martin.

One daughter of theirs, also called Dorothy, passed away in 2004,

meaning her two children are now heirs to Mavis's estate.

It's now a couple of weeks since Jason, Mavis' half great nephew,

discovered he was an heir.

I never knew Mavis. According to my sister

she did stop at our house in 1967, but I wasn't born until '69,

so I never met her.

And when he was contacted by the Heir Hunters,

news of a mystery inheritance seemed too good to be true.

I got a letter through the door which I thought was a circular,

so I was going to automatically throw it in the bin,

but I spoke to my sister and she said that she had one

and fill it out and see what happens.

It's a bit of a shock to the system, to be honest,

cos I wouldn't know how much I'm going to get.

So, I'll probably have a week's holiday somewhere,

treat me and me missus to a holiday.

But while any inheritance will, of course, come in handy,

Jason still has some regrets.

I didn't know whether Mavis lived on her own or she's got a partner

or anything, I mean, she was 96, I got told. I've never met her.

Otherwise, I'd have gone round and visited her.

In the office, the research on Mavis' estate

is long since completed and, in total, there are nine heirs

all of whom are half-blood relatives of hers.

Complicated research, complicated family.

Hopefully, it's got some value. Got my fingers crossed.

And early indications suggest that Mavis's estate

may be bigger than they'd originally thought,

perhaps even as much as £60,000.

For Gareth and the team, it's looking like their time

and effort is going to pay off.

In the search for heirs to the £28,000 estate of Mary Davies,

case manager Ben Cornish and the team

were about to take on the double challenge of tracing two families,

both of whom shared one of the most common surnames in the UK.

The deceased parents were Frederick Harris and Mary Ann Harris,

and the deceased mother's maiden name was also Harris, which added

more complexity to the situation.

As Mary's only brother had passed away leaving no children,

the team were now looking for aunts and uncles and cousins

and they began with her father's side.

We know that the deceased father Frederick Harris,

from his marriage certificate, his father was a guy called James Harris.

James Harris married Ellen Fisher and had six children.

This meant that Mary had five paternal aunts and uncles...

..whose descendants the team needed to find.

For Ben, who faced the daunting challenge of tracing generations of

Harrises along all these lines,

the unusual name of Mary's aunt Minnerena was a golden opportunity.

When we come across a name like Minnerena,

we do look at it first, simply because there are going to be...

You'd be able to see the record pretty easily of who she marries

and, hopefully, you can break the Harris stem.

As it turns out, Minnerena married Walter Baird

and went on to have four children.

Of these, only one, Alice,

had children of her own.

So, when we looked at the stem of Minnerena, we realised that

she was born in 1869, which means we'd probably be looking at her

grandchildren or her great-grandchildren

as possible beneficiaries of this estate.

We eventually found a great grandchild of Minnerena,

who informed us of the family and confirmed we were on the right track.

This great-grandchild was Mike,

a paternal cousin twice removed of Mary's and an heir to her estate.

I was interested

because I was following the family tree on my father's side,

putting little bits and pieces together on my maternal side.

I'd never heard of Mary, as a relation.

It only goes back, really, as far as my great-grandmother.

I knew that she was a Harris, a Minnerena Harris.

We used to call her Mini.

I visited her a couple of times.

I was only about four or five at the time.

I can basically remember that she was dressed in Victorian clothes,

in a widow's dress in black,

all dressed in black, as they all used to do, I believe.

As an amateur genealogist, the call from the Heir Hunters

was very welcome and gave Mike much more than just money.

You try and build up a picture in your mind and...

of really how they lived and what they did

and, basically, where you came from, how you've evolved and...

It's really interesting.

And since inheriting from Mary,

Mike's been inspired to keep on digging.

I'm very interested to know more about her.

Where she came from, what she did. It's part of the jigsaw, really.

Getting in touch with Mike was key

to cracking Mary's father's side of the tree.

But Ben still had one more Harris family to trace.

When we're looking for aunts and uncles that have been born in the

late 1800s, we have census returns and other records which help us

identify the family.

It was in looking through these census records

of Mary's mother's family that he made an unusual discovery.

The occupations we found throughout the family line were that

of being watermen. It's quite prevalent across the board.

And it transpired that, at the time, watermen were very much

in demand in their hometown of Droitwich, Worcestershire.

Throughout the 1800s,

Droitwich was at the centre of a booming salt trade.

Ten miles that way along the canal, there is salt

naturally bubbling up in brine springs.

And a quarter of a mile down there, we have the River Severn

and the canal was built to connect in 1771 the salt with the river.

The building of the canal brought with it

new employment opportunities.

But there's been a need for people to actually work the boats

in and out of Droitwich and some of these families, the watermen,

would have come up the River Severn

and they would have come from Devon, Cornwall, Bristol,

some of them stayed here and lived here

and then started to produce a dynasty of people who worked the river.

The Harrises were one such family.

Bargemen and barge owners, or watermen as they were known,

travelled up and down the canal taking in the coal used to boil

the salt and taking out the finished product.

The salt came out of the boiling pans and was directly transhipped

into the holds of, effectively, an open container.

It had a cabin at the front and a cabin at the stern

and in-between was an open hold,

and they literally shovelled the salt into the coal, or the coal out of it,

depending which end they were at.

It was hard work, but it could be a lucrative business.

If you were a family where you owned your own boat,

you could be quite prosperous.

There are records of some families, some of the Harris family,

owning three or four boats

and each one was capable of earning about £20 a voyage profit.

£20 back then is the equivalent of around £2,000 today,

meaning the family were earning a very decent living,

but it was an occupation with some serious risks.

The River Severn was so dangerous to navigate and the charts

were so often out of date, you relied on the father saying,

"I can smell where we are in the fog.

"I know where we are. We don't need a chart.

"I know we moor here for the night."

That was the sort of skill that you handed

from one generation to the next, so continuity was vital.

With up to three generations of the family working the boats

at the same time, the Harrises had a huge advantage

that put them at the top of their game.

As Ben set to work tracing the many generations of the prestigious

Harris watermen, he discovered that Mary's grandparents were

Thomas Harris and Maria Harrison and that they had 11 children.

Of these 11, however, only three went on to have descendants.

One was Mary's mother and the other two Mary's uncles.

But as both these uncles married

women with the surname Harrison,

Ben had his work cut out.

We've got Harris marrying Harrises

and we've got the Harris marrying Harrisons.

Now, what happens when we're looking for birth records is that

any births could be connected to either marriages, so it really does

affect the way we do our research and if we're on the right track or not.

Life was becoming increasingly difficult for Ben

and it turned out that these added complications

all stemmed from the family's work on the water.

The salt trade required about, at any one time, say 15 to 20 boats

working the salt trade.

And those boats were managed and owned by a cluster of families

and they all intermingled. They not only married each other,

but they worked for each other.

So, some could be boat owners and crewing for another family.

They were all very much a tight-knit community,

and they lived pretty well in the same street.

Two of these families were the Harrises and the Harrisons.

And, apparently, the interconnection of the family caused a few

complications in their own day, too.

One of the problems with having five key families is that -

and often intermarried - is that you can have a surname which is common

to four different generations and because fathers call sons

after themselves, you end up with lots of Williams.

So, if you went into the pub on a Friday night and said,

"I need William Harris for a voyage tomorrow morning."

You'd get half a dozen people standing up.

That was going to be a disaster,

so they had nicknames. There was William Harris Duke.

There was William Harris Thromey. And there was William Harris Scragey.

Every family had their nicknames and that was the only way you could

tell which generation was which and which person you were engaging.

For Ben and the team, sadly nicknames weren't an option.

But they were slowly able to build up a picture of the family.

They discovered that Mary's uncle George had seven children

with Elizabeth Harrison.

True to form, he called one of his sons after himself

and that George had ten children of his own.

It was through one of his daughters Annie

that Ben found his first maternal heir.

One of Annie's children Yvonne is a first cousin twice removed

of Mary's and, prior to becoming an heir to her estate,

Mary's name meant nothing to her.

Didn't have a clue who she was - Mary Davis.

Never heard her spoken about.

Nobody ever talked about her or anything,

so didn't know who she was.

I didn't even know that we had relatives living in Droitwich.

Which is what? Eight mile up the road, not even that.

But despite not knowing each other,

Yvonne and Mary stem from the same family of Harris bargemen.

I can remember, as a child, going on my uncle George's boat.

And he had four children himself.

When he used to just moor up, we'd go on the boat and see him

and talk to him.

You couldn't move. So small.

And I know me mum went on the boats after me dad

come back from...the war.

By that time, the salt industry had declined,

but Yvonne's family were still flat-out ferrying other commodities.

The family would carry coal or flour, also.

Rum, chocolate, Cadburys.

It was very hard work working on the canals, especially for women.

The men worked, but I think the women had to work even harder

because they not only had to look after the children,

but it was washing, cooking...

..using the tiller, so they could move along.

So, extremely hard work, yeah.

I think me mum stopped after she had me, because I think it was too much.

There weren't enough space for two children under two.

I wouldn't want to be doing it.

As it turns out,

Yvonne is one of a whopping 47 heirs that Ben managed to track down

who are entitled to Mary's £28,000 estate.

But the Harris' ongoing link with the water means that

the family could, in fact, be even larger.

Some of the births aren't registered,

which means we can't prove their entitlement to this estate,

we can't prove the link between them and the deceased.

And this is because they were on the water

and couldn't register the births at a particular time or place.

It might have involved a lot of work, but the family's

many complications have resulted in a satisfying search for Ben.

It's a really interesting case,

because it's the first time I've come across the occupation of watermen.

And also, it's always good to be kept on your toes on a case where

there are a lot of similarities and a lot of work that needs to be done.