The Family Detective

3 weeks shy of 3 years ago I knew a lot about my Great Great Grandfather James Hardy. I saved a file about him and then I got side tracked with some other branch of the tree. James was always hard work and so was his son John as they both lived in an area with someone of the same name and some other similar details that made it hard to determine which was my James and which was their James. This is what I saved for James Hardy: Born: Ireland 1828 Immigrated: 1851 on the "Cornwall" Married: Jane Cadman: Unknown details Lived: 89 Marriott Street, Westbury, Tasmania Occupation: Retired Military Soldier from the 66th or 77th Regiment Died Deloraine, Tasmania, 1881 Some other facts I remember but didn't save information for included James was given a retirement fund as a soldier that included some land, a pear tree and a well. James was not the convict James Hardy Vaux and there was another James Hardy in Westbury at the same time. His regiment was a foot regime...

HINT: ASSUME YOU'VE FOUND THEM! Of course I need more facts to prove this is James, but I start my search for facts by just assuming this IS James. From here I can start looking for other things using "details" I know about James. These are my new facts (assumed of course!) James & Jane Hardy live at Pensioner Row, Westbury Tasmania James died late 1880 or early 1881 So now, I'm sticking to Trove and I punch in Hardy Pensioner Row Westbury and can I say BINGO again? This is where I always get a flutter of excitement. I find this ad from 1954!!! Seems odd .. but can you see what I see? Yes, it's the same piece of land that had been owned by James Hardy but see the applicants?  ERNEST JOHN CADMAN and LILA MAY CADMAN. CADMAN!!! Can this simply be a coincidence? I myself prefer to imagine that Ernest is a little sentimental and has decided he's buying his Great Aunty Jane's farm!!! (Of course Jane may have previously been married and this i...

HINT: DOUBLE CHECK THE FACTS Going back to my original saved document from 3 years ago, I have James Hardy dying in Deloraine? But where did I get this from? I can indeed find a James Hardy dying in Deloraine in May 1900 (would have been deceased at the time of John's wedding). Now I am not sure how I have made a connection to Deloraine? 2011 was very early in my family researching days so perhaps I had just got that wrong? Searching the Death indexes in Ancestry.com I have James Hardy 1881 infact dying in Westbury, not Deloraine. So one of my original facts is wrong. Is my James the James Hardy of 1881, dying in Westbury or perhaps the James Hardy death in May 1900 in Deloraine? If we assume that James is the James who had lived in Westbury (we know John and his siblings were born in Westbury) then the date has to be 1881 as we have the Trove article about the sale of his estate and possible caveats. I want to dismiss Deloraine information at this stage because I don't r...

HINT: NARROW YOUR GOOGLE SEARCHES I imagine my posts documenting my search for James Hardy could get very extensive before I'm actually able to write his story. I'm always glad I didn't come a family of John Smith Jnr Jnr .. I can imagine how hard it would be to find anything. James Hardy has been common enough for me to be confused a lot. But now I feel like I have some solid dates and facts I can start putting those into google to get better results. Just typing James Hardy into google brings up 81, 700, 000 results. If I smarten my search by using quotation marks around the name, I'm already down to 385, 000 results. Now this is my search term - "James Hardy" Westbury military and I'm down to 8, 400 possibilities and some of the names and information jumping out at me is starting to look promising with what I already know about a James and his family. The first link takes me to Rootsweb and I have rediscovered the information (but no proof for ...