Mathew Felton

The Car Accident

The Story

We were tasked with completing a 5 generation family tree for a family and in particular to try to get to the bottom of an old family story about somebody who came into money and purchased a car and hired a chaffeur only to be killed shortly afterwards.

All that was really known were a few modern day names and that Mathew had ended up living with the clients father at some point for reasons unknown and there was talk of this eventually becoming related.

The Investigation

This was a relatively straight forward search working back from the known modern names to uncover the ancestors which ultimately led us to Mathew living with our clients family in the early 1900s.

Mathews father was working as a chemical worker as was our clients grandfather.

In searching through old records it then became apparant that our clients grandfather had died in 1924 in tragic circumstances as had mathews mother.

This left a widowed male and a widowed female in the house and records indicate they later married which then made our clients father and mathew step brothers.

Searching of probate records could find no reasons why mathew would inherit significant sums of money but we were able to find newspaper records which confirmed that mathew died as a result of being hit by an out of control car outside a theatre in 1954 confirming, as is often the case, part of the old family story was true.

The tree we produced led to a number of names being uncovered of cousins, some months later after relationships had been established it was learned that mathew had won a lot of money in the early 1950s through gambling.

If you have a long lost relative you would like to find more about or you would just like to know your own ancestry please contact us on the form below including as much detail as you have as well as your contact details and we will be in touch to see if we can help you solve your families mysteries.