Page 339 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

censuses between these dates?
Oates, who was born in England, is the only other Soothill to appear in the 1880 census. With that distinctive name, one would have thought that Oates was easy to trace through. At the time of the 1880 census, Oates, aged 23, was living in New York (Manhattan) with an occupation as a carpenter. Oates is single and living in a household with 16 persons with varying names. It seems like a boarding house for young workers. Oates (1857-?) is the son of John and Mary (née Briggs). Oates was in the England and Wales census for 1861 and shown as living with his parents in Commercial Road, Dewsbury. I think he was married in Ashton, England, in 1880 – presumably after the 1880 census - to Mary Ann (née Smith) (born in Illinois) and they had a child, Martha, born in Manhattan, New York, on 1 August 1885. In the 1920 census Mary A. is shown aged 62 as widowed, living in rented accommodation in Oakland, Alamada, California. Nothing more is known about Oates and Mary’s child, Martha. There is a Martha Soothill in the 1940 census, but she is shown as being born in 1872 in Iowa and so is someone different. This Martha is living in Flossmoor, Rich Township, Cook, Illinois, in the 1940 census and so she is perhaps linked in some way to the Soothills born in Illinois who dominate the 1900 census. Again the puzzle is what has Martha been doing between being born in 1872 and the 1940 census which means she is captured by the intervening censuses?
Joseph - who first came to America in 1856 around the age of 24 years - seems an important candidate to develop a family in the States. The residence of McHenry, Illinois, which he gave on enlistment into the Civil War, is powerful circumstantial evidence of being linked with other Soothills living in that area. So, for instance, although John H. Soothill (1861-1923) was born in Harvard, Illinois, he married Mrs Fannie A. Vasey Gorton on 28 August 1884 in McHenry, Illinois. Hence, it seems possible – when one considers the dates - that John H. Soothill is the son of Joseph Soothill.
Similarly, in the records of Winnebego Co. Illinois, Fred H. Soothill, aged 335