Is Lillie Louisa Willson the same person as Ethel Willson? I think so!

This story might be a little confusing at times because the names of the characters change halfway through the story. This research revolves about Frederick Thomson and his mother, Ethel Willson. The other character in this story is Lillie Louisa Willson. I have been wanting to write about this research for a long time. Actually, it's been a couple of years, but now seemed like the time to put it out into the world. By bringing this story out into the open, I could be disrupting lives and families (more on that later), which is the reason I have not shared this story with very many people. As it turns out, Lillie Louisa Willson has been one of my most interesting family members to learn about when doing family history. Lillie was quite the person and like most of us, she lived a colorful life at times; I imagine her being very strong willed, incredibly independent and had a soft part of her who wanted to help others.

When I started researching Lillie, I actually was searching the records for Ethel Willson. The reason is that Frederick Thomson's birth certificate says his father was James Thomson and Ethel Thomson, formally Willson. So, before I go any further, let's go back to the beginning of Frederick Thomson. I knew just a few details about him and nothing about his parents, other than the two names on his birth certificate. When I started doing his genealogy, I knew that Frederick had grown up in an orphanage and he was from the area of Kent, England. I knew his birthdate so that helped. In the early years of his research, I requested his birth registration information from the General Register Office (GRO) in England, which confirmed his birthdate and it supplied me with two names: James Thomson and Ethel Willson, his parents. as I stated earlier.

Thinking that now that I had his parents' names, I thought I would be able to find more information about Frederick Thomson. I started going through marriage and census records, looking for anything and everything. I spent a lot of time researching the records in the area of Kent, England, since I knew Frederich was born there. There was several Ethel Willsons in Kent, but I could find no marriage record for a James Thomson and Ethel Willson, so, I hit my first dead end. One key detail that I kept coming back to over and over was that Ethel's last name was spelled with double L’s (“ll”) in the name, Willson, which I thought was quite unique.

Every couple of years I would come back and re-look at records online and go through the same song and dance as I always did, hoping I would find something that would lead me to more details about my Frederick Thomson. But, again, my research would turn up nothing.

Then at the beginning of COVID-19, it was time to try to employ the magic of DNA. The main purpose of using DNA was that I hoped to learn more about who Frederick's parents were. I had heard enough success stories and was hoping that the new technology would be enough to lead me down a road or two and help me solve the mystery. Like most people with DNA tests, there were some matches (with some very high cM-numbers) that I had no clue who they were when comparing them to the genealogical research and people mapped out in family trees. I knew enough that I started breaking them into groups trying to sort out who was who. I also understood I needed to start to build family trees for the people who I didn't know anything about. Lucky for me this was during COVID-19 and I had quite a bit of free time on my hand. I started to notice a pattern of surnames once I built out the trees. Of those surnames that became important for me over the next couple of years, would be Emptage and Isaac.

In the process of all this, I became friends with a woman who descends from the Emptage surname. She and I puzzled over the DNA connection for many months and even a year or so until she persuaded me to hire a professional researcher to look through the Archives in Kent, England. The archive houses the Thanet Workhouse records. I supplied the researcher with all the information I knew about Frederick Thomson (his birthdate, he grew up in her orphanage and was born in the Thanet workhouse in Kent, England, along with his birth register that included his parents names). The Kent Archivist quickly confirmed the workhouse information by finding records of the time Frederick spent there. The Archivist also confirmed details about his mother Ethel Willson. But the Archivist was a little puzzled, like I was, because she couldn't find much about Ethel Willson before she entered the workhouse to give birth to Frederick. The Archivist was very smart and thorough because she decided to expand her research using old newspapers. Then she struck GOLD. A newspaper article from the Kent Times opened up the early days of Frederick Thomson's life.

To make a long story short, Ethel Willson gave birth to Frederick Thomson in the Thanet workhouse where she stayed with Frederick for about six weeks. Then, Ethel Willson checked herself into an area hotel where she abandoned Frederick Thomson a few hours later. The authorities took the baby, Frederick Thomson, back to the workhouse where he grew up through his teenage years. As luck would have it, Ethel Willson registered her birthday (as was required) when she entered the workhouse to give birth. It would turn out to be another crucial clue in this long story.



With the DNA result, I continued to build many family trees of people I thought would lead me to Frederick's parents, but I kept coming up short because I could not find a James Thomson who was married to an Ethel Willson. One of the trees that I had worked on had many Willsons in it, (again with the double L's) but they weren't from Kent. They were from the greater London area, which puzzled me. I felt like I was hitting another dead end because that family tree had no Ethel Willson on it. Very frustrated, I kept at it, and I started building out other trees, which included one for Herbert Lloyd Isaac. As with most trees of the family trees I was building and researching, I didn't know where it was leading me, but I did notice that Isaac had a second wife with the surname of Willson. I thought that was interesting because, again, it had a double L's in the name Willson. To me, this was just another coincidence that I kept finding along the way. I went back and started really digging into the family tree that had lots of Willson's in it from the London area. One day, I decided to go through all the females with the last name Willson and compare their birthdays to the birthday that Ethel Willson used when she entered the workhouse in 1922. This was just good old-fashioned detective work on my part, but I got lucky once again. Ethel Willson used 22 Nov 1891 and that turned out to be the same exact birthday as Lillie Louisa Willson. But you have to understand I had many, many Willsons in the tree that I was working on, and she was just one of them at this point.

Then, I remembered that Herbert Lloyd Isaac had married someone with the last name of Willson. Then it all clicked, I looked at who it was, and turned out to be Lillie Louisa Willson, the same person who had the same birthday as Ethel Willson back at the Thanet Workhouse in 1922. BINGO!!

With the DNA connection to the Isaac family, the Willson surname, and a matching birthday, I was fairly convinced I finally knew who Frederick Thomson's real mother was. I was thrilled!! Now I had to turn my attention to finding out who his father was.

Now back to Lillie Louisa Willson, I've been lucky to make contact with a few individuals who had details about her life. Shortly after Lillie turned 23, something happened between her and her parents that changed the rest of their lives. They never spoke to each other again. This event shows two sides of Lillie: one, she was very stubborn and couldn't find a way to reconcile with her parents, and yet, two, it showed how determined and independent she was with the rest of her life. Lillie worked as a nurse during the first World War. Obliviously, she had a kind heart who wanted to help the soldiers and the tragic situation around her during the World War I. Personally, she didn't let the cultural norms of the time hold her back. After she gave birth to Frederick Thomson, Lillie fell in love a few years later with a gentleman 26 years older than her, with whom she had a child with out of wedlock. Lillie did eventually get married in July 1932 to the child's father (Herbert Lloyd Isaac) and they raised their child until she died at a fairly early age of 42 of tuberculosis. All this shows that Lillie was like most of us: a complex person with many ups and downs in her life.

So, in conclusion, the names (James Thomson and Ethel Willson) on Frederick Thomson's birth record are alias's and are just plain wrong according to DNA matches and evidence from documents. Frederick's mother is Lillie Louisa Willson. One of the biggest lessons I learned through my research is not to take everything for face value. Just because a document says one thing, don't assume that is correct. Let your mind wander and be open to other possibilities. I know is hard for genealogists, because we are taught to follow the paper trial. But I hope new discoveries will come my way with my new way of thinking. I expect that someday some of the DNA matches will respond to my messages so that we can try to sort out who Frederick Thomson's father is. I guarantee that I am going to be looking past Thomson as a surname to research! The DNA is leading me to the Emptage surname, but I have yet to narrow it down to the exact individual. But I hope that will be another story, for another day!