| I decided that if I was going to find any living relatives I would have to start looking forward in history instead of backward.
I traced the family into the early 1960's but was curious as to why I could find no record of several of George and Sarah's children after their baptisms. I took another walk out to their former home in Fulwood, Preston. It was a typical terrace house - no more than three bedrooms. Why, I wondered, would someone who was obviously successful live with a wife and 14 children in such a small house? The answer was simple. Some of those 14 children did not survive infancy. Back at the Harris Library, I began going through the microfilmed death indexes and found references for the deaths of several of the missing children. Then, in the index for the year 1891, I found something I wasn't expecting to find. |
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| Richard James Swarbrick, age 3, 4th Qtr. 1891. | |
| What is this? There must have been two Richard James Swarbricks living in Preston. This can't be my grandfather. He moved to Canada,
married my grandmother and had four children. He couldn't have died in England in 1891. If he had, I wouldn't be here! I tried to shrug it off but that index reference kept nagging at me and I knew that I could go no further until I investigated it. At the Preston Registrar's Office, a clerk disappeared into a vault and returned with the official record. Richard James Swarbrick, aged 3 years 11 months, had drowned in Broughton Brook on 3 December 1891. His father was George Swarbrick and they lived on Woodplumpton Lane in the village of Woodplumpton. |
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I went to the Harris Museum and Library and checked the microfilmed newspapers for December 1891. In the papers published on the 12th
of December I found two articles about the sad death of a little boy. He had left school in the early afternoon and was playing with some friends when he somehow
fell into the nearby brook, which was swollen from the recent heavy rain. The sexton of Broughton Church, Samuel Little, heard the children shouting and ran to help. He pulled the boy from the water and tried to resuscitate him but it was too late. At the inquest, held by Dr. Gilbertson at the Golden Ball pub in Broughton, a verdict of 'Accidentally drowned' was returned. |