Richard Bailey Railway Connections

It is amazing the people you meet doing genealogy. I've come across many distant relatives and we've helped each other with our common research interests. Just a short while ago I had one of these connections with a 4th cousin once removed related through a common ancestor Richard Bailey.

Richard Bailey was born about 1802 in Leigh, Rutland, England. He married Elizabeth Underwood (1808-1888) and together they had at least 6 children; Lydia, Thomas, Eliza, Mary, William Robert and George. The family lived in Whymondham where Richard was a gate/ lock keeper for the Syston and Peterborough railway.

The earliest record I could find of Richard was the 1841 census, where is first mentioned as being a lock keeper. The 1851, 1861, 1871 show his occupation as being the same. The family lived in the gate house which unfortunately is no longer standing.

Through my family connection I was able to see this great articles and photo that another relative had posted on their online tree. The articles detail the cause of Richard's untimely death, a railway accident. For reasons unknown he fell on the tracks and was run over by the train which was travelling about 20 miles an hour. An inquiry determined the cause of death was an accident.

I was so excited to find this information and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of others!

The Mysterious Inglis Brothers

I have two amazing photos of my great-grandfather, Malcolm McKinnon Inglis, and his three brothers. From my research I know their names are Peter, John, and William Inglis. All of the brothers were born in Lanarkshire, Scotland between 1881 and 1895. This photo would have been taken in Scotland before 1911 when my ancestor immigrated to Canada. 

I don't have many pictures of my great-grandfather as a younger man, but I have enough of them that I could figure out that he was the man in the bottom left in the first photo, and back left in the second. However I had no other photos of the brothers that would help me identify them. The usual techniques to guess who they are were of no help here. If they were younger I could hopefully tell which ones looked older and younger than the others. Using my research to back me up, I could make an educated guess about the ages. However, the brothers are all really close together in age to being with and they're old enough here that its difficult to distinguish them. So they remained unknown.

Photo One

Photo Two

And for a couple of years I had these photos knowing they were the Inglis brothers, but not who was who. That was up until a couple of days ago. Recently I have been going through and diligently scanning all of my un-scanned photos. I came across a couple of labelled ones that have helped solve this photo mystery. I couldn't believe my luck when I came across two slightly older pictures of William and Peter. They still looked similar enough and I could figure out who they were in the older two photos.

William Inglis
On the back "1914-1918, Lieut. Wm. Inglis HLI"

Peter Inglis
On the back "Peter, Engineers, 1914-1918"

Finally I had labelled photos of two of three mystery men! By process of elimination I could identify the third. My Mom and Dad came over last weekend and we had a look at the photos. We think that William is back right in the first photo and bottom right in the second. He has a distinct long face that stood out in all the photos. We had a tougher time picking out Peter as he seems to have aged quite a bit since the first photos were taken. Eventually though we decided he was bottom right in the first and back left in the second. His ears were what convinced us in the end. So that just left John as back right in the first and bottom right in the second. 

These two photos were such a great find as they have helped solve something that was bothering me for a long time. I find it so much more enjoyable to do research on people when I can visualize what they look like. It gives me a deeper connection and encourages me to delve further into their past. The other great thing that has come of this is the previously unknown service of the Inglis family in the first World War. I'm hoping to do some research on them in time for Remembrance Day.

Back: Malcolm, Peter
Front: John, William