The Hidden Photos In My Late Mother’s Locket: Unraveling the Mysteries of a Grandfather’s Past

Jennifer Turney, 77, born in North London and currently from the Surrey-Hampshire border in England, knew very little about her family history. Her DNA results, combined with MyHeritage’s records, helped her piece together the puzzle of her grandfather’s life, and brought her closer to understanding her family’s unique story.

Jennifer Turney

Jennifer didn’t know much about her mother’s parents and grandparents. When she finally plucked up the courage to ask her mother — not wanting to upset her — not long before she died at age 90 in 1991, she replied that she didn’t dwell on the past. “I assume that it was too painful,” says Jennifer. “Her own mother died of an asthma attack in front of her when she was 11, and she felt shame over having an elderly, black father married to a mother at least 40 years younger than him.”

Hidden photos in her mother’s locket

After her mother died, Jennifer found a locket with a photo of her grandfather, John Goring. Years later, she discovered that there were two more photos beneath it: one of a younger Black gentleman, who looked unrelated to the photo of elderly John Goring, and one of a white gentleman that had been colorized in some way.

Was the Black man a relative from her grandfather’s Bajan/Barbadian family?

Was it her grandfather at a younger age?

Could the white man be Robert Goring, the gentleman who freed John Goring from slavery? That gentleman her mother had said was a missionary? Her mother had hinted that he might have been John’s father… but did she mean his actual birth father, or Father in a religious sense?

The locket with the second photo

“Determined to find answers, I visited Barbados, for the first and only time,” says Jennifer. “There, a researcher in the Barbados Records Office gave me the best advice: ‘assume nothing.’ Many of the records in Barbados were destroyed by fire and I was unable to add to my knowledge, partly hindered by the fact that — as it turned out — I was looking in the incorrect time frame because of my assumptions about my grandfather’s age at marriage.”

It was when she continued her quest on MyHeritage that she began to make new discoveries. “I took a MyHeritage DNA test and the results indicated an 8.5% Nigerian origin, which suggests that maybe, as a slave, he was taken to the Caribbean, as many were from West Africa,” she says.

Jennifer’s DNA ethnicity results

Many enslaved Africans from Nigeria and surrounding regions were forcibly transported to the Caribbean, including Barbados, during the 17th and 18th centuries. Barbados, one of the first British colonies to develop a plantation economy, relied heavily on enslaved Africans for its sugarcane production. The Nigerian heritage evident in many Barbadian families today, as seen in Jennifer’s DNA results, is a poignant reminder of this dark chapter in history.

Slavery was abolished in Barbados in 1834, following the Slavery Abolition Act passed by the British Parliament. However, full freedom was not granted until 1838. Former slaves transitioned into wage laborers, though economic and social inequalities persisted; a harsh reality that Jennifer’s grandfather certainly experienced.

Piecing together the puzzle with MyHeritage

Thanks to MyHeritage’s historical records, Jennifer has been delighted to be able to fit a few more pieces into the puzzle of her grandfather’s life.

A record she found in the England & Wales Marriage Index collection on MyHeritage showed that her grandparents John Goring and Florence Hannah Clark married in the spring 1899 in Greater London. Jennifer used the information in the index to access the full record, which also revealed the name of John’s father: Robert Goring. This doesn’t prove beyond a doubt that the missionary her mother mentioned was her great-grandfather, nor that he is the man in the third photo — but it does strengthen those hypotheses.

The other photo in the locket of a man Jennifer believes to be her great-grandfather Robert Goring

Another record from the 1901 England & Wales Census listed John as a watchman… and as being 79 years old! That would mean that two years prior, at the time of his marriage to Florence Hannah, he would have been 77. “I had not anticipated that my grandfather was in his 70s when he married my grandmother,” says Jennifer.

In light of this, it’s not surprising that on a ship’s log from the 1901 English Census, he was registered as a widower; he may have also had a family in Barbados. He worked for the East India Company (later called P&O), and when settled in East London, worked at the East India Docks. In 1901, he was a watchman at the docks. 

Jennifer’s grandfather in 1901 England & Wales Census, MyHeritage collection (click to enlarge)

It turns out that John was born around 1820–1830 in Barbados, but his age varies from record to record, which suggests that either he didn’t know his exact age, or that he was embarrassed to be marrying a 35-year-old white English lady — Jennifer’s grandmother, Florence Hannah — when he was 70 or 80 years old. 

“This large age range seems to be a family trait, as, apart from my grandparents, my mother, Martha, was 46 when I was born and my father, Arthur Richard, was 55,” says Jennifer.

In 1911, Jennifer’s grandparents, John and Florence Goring and their 2 children — Jennifer’s mother and uncle — were living at 62 Talbot Road in West Ham. “In that record, my grandfather is listed as 80 years old while he was marked as 79 in the 1901 Census! My grandmother Florence was 48, and died shortly after.”

“My grandfather worked as a cook, according to my mother, on ‘wind-jammers’ — sailing boats — hence why he lived in East London near the docks,” Jennifer explains. “He was still doing this when my mother and brother were young. She said that he would bring home gifts from his travels, and I have a wooden box, like a deep cigar box, with mother-of-pearl inlaid on the lid that he brought back from his travels. As a ship’s cook, according to my mother, he would cook spicy foods at home — not familiar amongst the English in those days and another reason for my mother to feel ashamed.”

Grandfather John Goring as a dock laborer in the Census of England and Wales, 1911 collection on MyHeritage

A death record Jennifer found on MyHeritage showed that John died in 1916, aged 95. “It is possible that the person who arranged for his death to be certified could have suggested an estimated age. To this day, I don’t know his exact birth date and I believe he didn’t know either!”

Connecting to those who came before

Recently, Jennifer visited East Ham. Using the documents and addresses obtained through censuses on MyHeritage, she was able to visit the places where her grandparents lived before they were wed, the remains of the church where they were married, and one of the many accommodations they rented during their short marriage. “Florence Hannah Goring died aged 48, of an asthma attack, in front of my mother, when she was 11 years of age and her brother was 8, leaving an apparently 90-year-old to look after two young children!”

“Thank you, MyHeritage, for this journey. It connects me not just to him, but to the resilience and history of those who came before me,” says Jennifer.

Many thanks to Jennifer for sharing her incredible discoveries with us! If you’ve also made an incredible discovery with MyHeritage, we’d love to hear about it. Please share it with us via this form or email us at stories@myheritage.com.