Research Progress - Wm H Vincent

William Henry Vincent, the son of John William Vincent & Mary Ann Rogers (my 4x grandparents) is another one of those dead ends.....maybe.  I am about to make a case for what became of him and will post the results when they come in.

For 1871 and 1881, William is with the family in Truro, Pictou Co, NS – he is a shoemaker in ’71, a seaman in ’81 and then he disappears.

One possibility that has stuck with me is that William got caught up in the Klondike rush in the late 1890s.  I latched onto this idea long before I discovered the cousins that also caught gold fever  - brothers Willoughby and Rueben Mason & brothers with  James & Tom Patton (Tom even worked for the Yukon Gold Co in England)

It's all based on this 1901 census from Dawson City, line 47 - there is nothing extraordinary about it - just my gut - it won't let it go.....but I gave up trying to prove it out of frustration.

I don't know exactly what, or rather who, I was researching a couple of weeks ago, but it lead me to the Yukon Archives and every time I find a new site, I automatically do a Vincent surname search on top of the person I am working on - just cuz - and wouldn't you know it, a hit for W H Vincent??!!  Yukon Archives - Vincent search

Thanks to Vivian, a genealogy assistant at the archives, this is a bit of a bio:

• The Northwest Mounted Police Records list a WH Vincent as passing through Chilkoot Trail enroute to the Yukon in March of 1900 and listed his residence as Pictou, NS
•  In October of 1900, he applied for a placer mining claim near Dawson
• A postal worker put together a list of people leaving the Klondike in June of 1906 and William gave a forwarding address of Fairbanks, AK
• He returned to Dawson in November of 1906 where applied for a placer mining claim in Hunker Creek
• Two more applications were for Sulphur Creek in November of 1913
• He was enumerated in Dec of 1917 where he was living near his claim in Sulphur Creek working as a miner
• He died in 1923 at the age of 66 and was buried at the Hillside Public Cemetery
• An estate file shows that there was a little over $44 after his debts were paid

 

Is this our William? 

I am waiting on death certificate - but my fingers are crossed - the reference to Pictou, NS is too much of a coincidence for me to ignore - wish me luck peeps!!