Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

One Family "Mystery" Solved
A lot of my family history research has focused on the Liverpudlian Okill branch of my family. My Great-Grandfather had married two Okill sisters in turn, each of whom seem to have died shortly after having a child. Both my Aunt Edith and my Father had hinted that that branch of the family had a famous and wealthy pedigree, and in my researches I had found a certain John Okill, who was a well-to-do ship builder and timber merchant who lived in Liverpool at the end of the 18th Century. He would seem an obvious choice, but so far I had not been able to make any firm family connections between him and "my" branch of the Okills.

Based on a regular emailing I get from Ancestry.com, I decided to try my luck again in this area. I discovered that since the last time I checked, they had completed digitizing much of the 1871 UK census. And lo and behold I find something that at least partially explains a vaguely-remembered moneyed past for the Okill branch of the family. I was able to track down the census record for the Okill household where the two sisters lived prior to their eventual serial marriages to my Great-Grandfather had come from, and beside the name for the head of the household was this note: "joiner and builder, Partner in the firm Okills and Morrisons(?), employing 20 men and 9 apprentices". This would seem to have been a prosperous little firm, and would explain much of the family legend without having to resort to a late 18th century family scion. Some further digging into commercial directories from the same period should help me nail this down.

Still no luck on the Roberts or Connell end of things, though hopefully I'll be able to dig up more info over time. The ancestry.com site has proven its worth several times, and I have been impressed with the quantity and quality of solid genealogical information I have been able to get from them. I just wish they'd stop bugging me with emails on extra services I can sign up for in order to find my non-existent 19th and early 20th century American relations.