The Bowler Family

The latest GEDCOM extract points to Ethel N Evans as the longest-lived blood relative currently recorded in the tree. Her birth can now be confirmed as 3 July 1884 in Aldbourne, Wiltshire. She died there on 13 April 1982, giving her a confirmed lifespan of 97 years, 9 months and 10 days.

Ethel sits close to the core line as Robert's great-great-grandmother: daughter of Thomas Brind and Mary Belcher, wife of Edward Harry Evans, and mother of Margaret Evans, whose line runs down through Anthony, Simon and Robert Bowler.

That confirmed birth date makes Ethel the longest exactly dated lifespan currently identified in the archive, not just the bloodline. A useful comparison is Stanley Richard Lance (23 January 1908–2 July 2005), who lived 97 years, 5 months and 9 days and married into the Bardall branch through Marjorie Mona Henrietta Bardall.

Daniel Diggle appears in Robert's family tree as his 6th great-granduncle. Born in Basford in 1797, he married Catherine Cockram in November 1816; their daughter, Sarah Ann, was christened later in 1817.

His short life became tied to the final, violent edge of the Luddite story. Contemporary newspaper reports record that he was convicted of shooting at George Kerry in Radford and was executed in front of Nottingham's Shire Hall on 2 April 1817.

Two centuries later, Nottingham's Navigation Brewery turned that grim local memory into a pint: Daniel Diggle, a 3.8% English bitter, described as a malty, smooth beer celebrating Nottingham's history of rebellion and named after the infamous Luddite.

William Bowen Campbell appears in Robert's family tree as a half 6th cousin 7x removed, through the branch shown from Elizabeth "Lady Countess Bedford" Long.

Campbell became Governor of Tennessee from 1851 to 1853, represented Tennessee in Congress, and was later appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as a brigadier general of Volunteers during the American Civil War. His military record also reached back to the Seminole War and the Mexican-American War.

Thomas Brind of Aldbourne, Wiltshire, lived 82 years. A surviving newspaper article describes him as "a remarkable man" who, among other things, was a captain of sheep shearers — leading teams across the Wiltshire downs at the height of the English wool trade.

His direct line stretches back to Thomas Brind of Rusteshall, born in 1460.

Denton True "Cy" Young appears in Robert's family tree as a half 8th cousin 3x removed, connected through the Susan Sellers branch shown in the relationship chart.

Young became one of baseball's defining pitchers: he won two games in the first modern World Series in 1903, pitched the first perfect game of the 20th century in 1904, and finished with records still attached to his name, including 7,356 innings pitched, 815 games started and 749 complete games.

The family records hint at a tantalising distant relation: James McHenry — Irish-born physician, signer of the U.S. Constitution and Secretary of War under Washington and Adams (1796–1800).

Fort McHenry in Baltimore — where the bombardment inspired The Star-Spangled Banner — bears his name. Filed in the archive under "Famous Relative", awaiting further proof.

George Smith Mackie (1838–1885) was born in Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire — the only Scottish thread in an otherwise overwhelmingly English tree. His move south to Surrey, and his son's onward migration to Colchester, brought the Mackie name into the English Midlands where it would eventually meet the Bowler line a century later.

The 1939 Register lists Frederick Joseph Bardall (1882–1940) of Islington, married, with the occupation simply: Fruit Salesman. His wife, Alice Maude Bishop — Robert's great-great-grandmother — had been born somewhere altogether more exotic: Meerut, India, in 1882. The family had military and colonial threads woven through it.

The parish register of Holy Trinity, Hinckley, records the marriage on 8 October 1893 of Albert Cheshire Yates, age 20, brickmaker, to Ann Diggle, age 19. From their union the Yates-Cheshire line ran through the Midlands brick and hosiery trades — straight down to Robert's grandmother Betty Cheshire Yates.