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Dawn,

Please forgive me for saying this but this sounds a little bit like those family stories that most of us have somewhere in our locker. Sometimes these stories are 100% true, sometimes they are 100% fictitious and sometimes they contain an element of truth which may have become distorted over time.

Quite often the fictitious or distorted stories relate to a family members connection to royalty, great wealth, fame or even infamy. When trying to decide whether a story is likely to be true or not it is essential to evaluate the probability of the events the story tells of. For example is it likely that the father of an iron moulder was a titled individual or that their mother was a lady disowned by her wealthy family because she ran of with their groom. Is it likely that an otherwise healthy trading company was forced to cease trading because a family member ran off with its cash thus depriving future generations of a luxurious lifestyle. Such things are of course possibilities but in most cases unlikely.

The key to unravelling your particular story is first to discover what happened to the Straw Hat firm, such as when and why it ceased trading or was bought out. From your other thread about the Hart family I note that you are trying to establish those facts. Once you have successfully done so I feel that you will improve your chances of deciding whether the demise of the firm might have been caused by a family member absconding with the family fortune and if so who that family member might have been. If that was indeed the case, remember that the person responsible would presumably have had to have been in a senior position of responsibility within the company, possibly a director of the company who had access to the companies bank accounts or was responsible for the companies financial dealings.

Good luck in your quest.

I see you have this thread on the Hart family and one being a George L Hart straw hat manufacturer

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/trying_to_find/hart/thread/1264946

jax

Dawn

Lets start at the begining......who are your relatives that owned the straw firm

Names/dates and places please

I have been looking into finding out how, why and when the factory shut down as there may be a link there somewhere. How the family knew where he was and what happened to him I have no idea. Hopefully further research will solve the puzzle.

If he had access to the family money, one would suppose that he had quite a close link.
How did the family find out where he was or what happened to him? Did someone keep in touch?
Have you ruled out all your father's uncles or male cousins?

Gwyn

Jax, many thanks.

Gwyn, I'm still trawling through the Census of family members which is not an easy task when there were 7 or 8 children in each family. I think I'm going to far into the tree to be honest.

215 people with the surnames Harte travelled to the US between those years

jax

I am presuming he was born in Luton, Beds, where the rest of the Hart family resided and where their straw hat factory was but that is all the information I know. Thanks for your help.

So he was a family member?

Who was lost and not accounted for within the family group?

Gwyn

Ancestry has incoming passenger lists for the most commonly used most ports of entry from Europe to the USA.

These can be searched by just surname and time span. If as you do not appear to know his forename I presume that you also do not know his birth date or exactly where he was born. That information would probably have helped to identify which passenger, if any, was him.

I spoke to my Aunt this morning to confirm some names and it was her that mentioned the 'e' at the end of Hart and about the gent who went to the US and resided in Rhode Island. My Aunt, along with my father and uncle should have been sent their at the start of the First World War as evacuees but a month or so earlier a ship was torpedoed in the Atlantic with a huge loss of life of English evacuees and so they didn't go. She has no recollection of his first name or whether he was with somebody when he went.

So you dont know his full name or anything about him at all?

how did you get to him in the first instance?

Where and when was he found dead?

It's very confusing but basically the Hart(e) who emigrated (or fled) added the 'e'. The original spelling is Hart which is my maiden name. The gent to went to the US made off with the family money. The Hart family used to own a straw hat making factory in Luton and this chap did a runner with the money. He was eventually found dead in a hotel room and my gt grandfather spent a lot of time and money trying to prove that the money was his, but to no avail. Hence I don't live is a massive house with a housekeeper!
And thanks jax and Ginny.

Where did you get the name Hart(E) from?

You'll have trouble searching without a name and date/place of birth

ellis Island

. Alfred Neville Harte Yarmouth, England 1923 age 15

Find my past have records up to 1960

jax

Does anybody know where I look to find records of ancestors emigrating the the US? The family member was Hart, possibly spelt Harte (no first name), and he emigrated to the US between 1920-1935.