William Joseph SHEARD – Born 1836?

William just seems to have disappeared after the record of him as the informant at the registration of his sister Jane’s death in 1851 other than in February 2012 I found his name appears on Findmypast.com Merchant Navy Seamen1835-1941 records list. Even after extensive searches of the census returns for the years 1861 to 1911 we can find no mention of him. It may be that he died or emigrated, but so far we have not found a likely reference for a death other than one in 1854 in Radford (GRO ref: SEP1854;7b;94;Radford) that we should apply for the certificate just to make sure and a search for any possible emigration record is ongoing.

In September 2008 we received an email from a Richard Young:

“The story that has been passed through the family is as follows: (possibly William, who changed his name to Charles and married Sophia Harper, my grandparents) My Grandfather was in the navy to begin with and whilst they were in Ireland he somehow missed his ship and joined the Duke of Wellingtons regt which was then the 33rd regt of foot, to do this he changed his name and every male member of the family was given the name Sheard, right down to my brothers son who was called David William Sheard Harte, my brother being called Charles William Sheard. My grandfather served 37 years in the Duke of Wellington regt. My uncle Frank served 27 years, so was in the first war, he has a son named Charles William Sheard. My father went in to the dukes army school at 10, into the Dukes regiment as a Drummer boy, was sent to India at 18, where he had an accident and was invalided out.”

This was the start of a lot of correspondence between us and although I have not heard from him lately I am still not in any way convinced that William Joseph & Charles Harte are one and the same person. Richard I am sure is 100% convinced and even states the same on his website where he uses a lot of my research as his “proof”.

UPDATE ON WILLIAM:

We have found on www.findmypast.com that William had a Merchant Navy registration number.

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