The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.1 | June 2023

Searchers

Fortunately, the tree was publicly available and so I was able to scrutinise for possible matches with my family surnames. None of the names jumped out at me, but I thought, as LOOSEMORE , is an unusual name, I would have a look at the profile of Robert LOOSEMORE , (see image). This told me that Robert was a mariner born in Bosham, Sussex, in 1798. He married a Harriet Adams in 1817 in Westbourne, Sussex, who died and was buried in Portsea in February 1819. He then appears to have remained widowed until 1829 when he remarried in St Mary’s Church, Portsea in April 1829 to Sarah Green. If the DNA findings are to be relied upon he could be my 3 x Great Grandfather. My 2 x Great Grandmother was Sarah Ann Compton baptised in Portsea in 1824. Did Robert LOOSEMORE and Merrender ROODS PAUL have an affair during the period when he was widowed (1819 to 1929) resulting in one or more offspring. I have not been able to discover much about Robert’s seagoing career during the period before 1829 but he later on he seems to have

been the master of two vessels called the Titania and the Comet which appear in Newspaper records docking variously at Portsmouth, Southampton and Liverpool between 1829 and 1840. Then in 1846 he crops up in Southampton running an inn called the American Hotel for seafaring people in Chapel Road very close to the Itchen River (see map overleaf) and the Itchen Bridge and the American Wharf. The Hotel later became known as Loosemore’s Hotel . He also stood, unsuccessfully, to be a town councillor for the Southampton St Mary Ward in 1848. He died in an asylum in Haywards Heath in 1880 but he left a will in which he was described as a gentleman and according to another descendant he had built several houses and a locations and his occupation make it more than possible that Robert LOOSEMORE is the missing link. This match appeared on my maternal genetic side which means that there would only be 16 possible 3x GGFs for a match. Then on the maternal side, my Chandlers business in Southampton. I believe that the circumstances of his

17