I often tell the story of how surprising simple some of our searches are. Well this one is the complete opposite. It was so confusing I kept each webpage I had to accessed open so that I could continually cross check the next piece of information with the last. I currently have 26 tabs open and I estimate that it took me 30+ hours of research to get to a result.
The first part of the search was completely straight forward. It started with a message from Cath N, a friend of mine who is connected with the Yass RSL. During a recent house clean up, two WWII medals were found and handed to the sub-branch. It didn't take me long to work out the recipient was 55125 Vincent William Bingham who served in the RAAF. Vincent was married to Pearl and in 1941 they had a son, Grant. However, Vincent died in 1947 and Grant in 1961. All this information came from a website which documents headstones.
I then went down the path of trying to determine who Pearl was and that is when the difficulties stated. Her full name was Pearl Matilda nee Grant, this explained the name of their son. She pretty much disappeared from public records after Vincent died so I made an assumption that she remarried which proved correct, and then some. When I accessed the first picture above I hadn't noticed a further plaque within the main grave. A search on the headstone website came up with a result for Pearl.
By using a search combination for the names Pearl Matilda and Reuben on Ancestry.com I found that Pearl was married to Reuben Crymble but there was a large gap between when Pearl was in the electoral rolls using the surname Bingham and then Crymble, that is because her second marriage had been to Alexander Bradley. Reuben was husband number three. There were no children from either marriage so I stated all over again.
I found that Vincent had one sibling so I thought I would follow this family line. Then the difficulties multiplied. His sister was Joan Mary Bingham. Joan married Edward John Grant. At first I assumed that the same surname of Pearl and Edward was just a coincidence as I couldn't find confirmation of who their parents were. I had to go back into the archives to unravel all the family connections.
It turns out that everyone was connected. Brother and sister Vincent and Joan married brother and sister Edward and Pearl. The conformation came when I found the death notice for Pearl's father Primiron Frederick Grant.
Priomiron (sometimes mis-spelt Priomirom) was the son of Priomiron Frederick Grant. This was the cause of more confusion when searching the records. I think a lot of people who included these gentlemen in their Ancestry family trees assumed it was the same person. I was a little surprised that all the clues were now pointing at Canberra until I looked deeper at Edward John Grant.
Edward and Joan lived in Melbourne and had two sons. Peter Frederick Grant and Wayne Vincent Grant. The use of names from the previous generation is very strong in this family. Luckily the name combination is unusual and I found a Peter Frederick Grant in the electoral roll living in Perth in 1980. Without any additional evidence I made the assumption this was the same person. However, the leads ran dry. By just doing ransom searches on multiple websites, I found a death notice for Peter Frederick Grant in Perth in 2016. The noticed mentioned a son, Simon. This was really not a lot to go on so I waded trough social media and found multiple possibility but only one in Perth. I fired off a message earlier this afternoon and to my very pleasant surprise I received a response almost immediately. All the assumptions and guesses I made were correct and I had contacted Peter's son.
I've now connected Cath and Simon and the medals will soon be sent to Vincent's great nephew.
The returned medal tally is now 2698.
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