The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.1 | June 2024

Member’s article

himself and some quality background. As with Laura Ashley he brings no witnesses to this marriage. The only possible connection to Dublin and Ireland that I can find for Frank Butler is his youngest brother Ernest Hamblin Butler, born in 1862 and therefore some years younger than Frank, who joins the Royal Engineers and serves mainly in Dublin, marries there and has several children, before leaving the army in 1897 though he continues living there. It seems he may have ended his army days as an alcoholic judging by his military record, although he dies much later from bronchitis. Anyway, perhaps Frank relied on background material from him, but there is no documentary evidence for this link between them. There is very little information available from Frank Howard’s descendants about him, maybe because Frances, his daughter through Beatrice, seems to have led a troubled life and left little material relating to him. We know, however, that Frank Howard, registered as Francis Howard by Beatrice, dies on 10 February 1922. He had been suffering from bronchitis for about ten years. In January 1922 there is a severe recurrence of the flu prevalent at the end of the First World War into 1920. Frank dies of this flu. On his death certificate his age is given as 66, he is a retired colliery agent and is resident at 82 St Cross Road, Winchester. His death is registered by his widow B. M. Howard of the same address. There was apparently no will, but Beatrice continues to run the shop after his death, bringing up two children and not remarrying. Evidence linking Frank Butler to Francis (Frank) Howard When I had conversations with Hilda Butler

not long before her death in 2003, she indicated she understood Frank had

‘remarried’ in Winchester and that the name involved began with the letter ‘H’, possibly something like Hordern. She also indicated she had met his wife, possibly in the 1930s when Beatrice was still running the shop. Other information must have come via her father George Thomas Butler, and Emma Butler, his abandoned wife, certainly seemed to know that he had died by 1924 when for the first time she recorded herself as a widow when she returned to Canada where she had been living with her daughter and son-in-law. At the time, despite Hilda’s interest in Butler family history and her usually reliable memory, I was unable to attach the information she gave to a possible end to Frank Butler’s story. All I had been able to do was to become pretty certain he had not disappeared to South America. This year, however, I have been able to compare notes about a possible link with Winchester through a newly discovered very close relative, whose grandfather very quickly proved to be the missing Frank. Among other things we were able to compare handwriting samples for both people and also the faces of two half-sisters, Frances Emmeline and Frances Isoult at about the same age. There is also the fact that the 1921 census gives exactly the right age to the nearest month for Frank Howard to be Frank Butler. There is a match on all issues to prove the identity change. Undoubtedly Frank Butler took a big gamble that no one at that time would be able to work out the truth. It is only the fact that he had more children late in his life which has provided the DNA evidence. Colin Taylor Overseas Contributor

23