Often, the Finders team receives referrals from solicitors as we’re widely recognised as a professional probate genealogy firm that can find unknown heirs, missing wills and dormant funds fast.
Looking into the case of Eveline Southall’s, the team learn about the gun making industry during the 1st world war.

Eveline Maud Southall

Often, the Finders team receives referrals from solicitors as we’re widely recognised as a professional probate genealogy firm that can find unknown heirs, missing wills and dormant funds fast.

Eveline Southall’s case was referred to us privately. She died at the end of 2015 at a Birmingham care home. Her husband had died five years previously, and she had no children.

Eveline’s parents were called Arthur Shaw and Marion Ada Manning. We found Arthur’s father, Eveline’s grandfather, on the 1901 census and the result showed that he was one of 15 children.
Five of Arthur’s siblings had died as children, and two as adults that hadn’t had any children. We always need certificates to verify our research, and once we’d receive d the necessary ones for this case, we found that only three of Arthur’s family had married and had gone on to have children. All had stayed in Birmingham, but the surname Shaw is common in that city, so the research turned out to be harder than anticipated as a result.

On Eveline’s mother’s side, we found that her siblings had been born in different places. Again, this is a factor that makes research tricky. Then, one of the potential heirs mentioned a will – in which case, all of our research would have been for nothing as obviously, a will dictates where the money goes. However, further research revealed that there wasn’t a will.

The Finders team made progress with the heirs they found. Eveline’s mother had seven siblings, one of which was an Alice Manning, who married an Arthur Austins (a gun-maker). Arthur had worked for Westley Richards & Co, the oldest gun-making firm in Birmingham, and he was working during the First World War when demand for munitions was high. After the war, he became a tool-maker.

Alice and Austin had three children still living (and heirs to Eveline’s estate), including brothers Peter and John. Our travelling representative, Dave Bethom, met with them to explain their connection to Eveline and to talk about their grandfather, passing on information about him that they hadn’t known.

It turned out that Peter is also a tool-maker – following in his grandfather’s footsteps, albeit unknowingly.

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