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Another Samuel Hollingsworth Myth Exploded? Maybe
The Valentine Hollingsworth famly has taken on a lot of errors and myths in its 300 plus years of existence in Ireland and America. Many descendants would rather have the romantically slanted falsehood than the boring fact. Your editor would cherish a direct line of twenty bricklayers than fifty royal personages, to be truthful. But any fact-based lineage is preferable, in this age of national lie-telling, dirty politics and phony wars. Too, both the Valentine Hollingsworth family and our County Wexford so-called "Lancashire Family" of Hollinsworth now Hollingsworth have had many Samuels in their generations and probably many to come. This is a story which should be told, but not to hurt anybody, we hope.

In 1964, before our idea for Hollingsworth Register germinated, we contacted many distant cousins in Ireland. One who reversed the method and contacted us was a Mr. David Samuel Henderson of County Dublin. He was at that time a chief officer on a tanker plying the waters between Dublin and Wales and other points in Britain. His mother was Marie (Hollingsworth) Henderson, then in her 90s. She has, of course, since departed this life, but lived to be nearly 100. David imparted to your editor her family history, which included the statement that her parents were Samuel and Jane (Dickinson) Hollingsworth, of Arklow, County Wicklow. Samuel, it was said, was captain of his own ship and drowned when his family were young. This is the story we are exploding now.

Early on, our searches, first via paid agents and then by personal examination of the records, in the printed indexes to deaths, all Ireland, 1864-1900 and beyond, never turned up the death of this man. Somebody distinctly stated that if it were not in the index, it was probably never registered. Of course, later this myth was also bashed down. But the decades rolled by.

Finally we landed on a microfilm of the LDS Family History Library (#101765) being the second volume titled The Marine Register of Deaths at Sea. It was, upon our careful examination, not indexed in any way, and it was not in the main indexes to Vital Records of the Irish Registrar-General or the supplemental indexes either. So your editor ploughed through the very hard-to-read and numerous hand-written records. Among them we found some confirmation of other deaths at sea we had heard of, which will be mentioned below. But finally, on page 36 (hence born ca 1847), an able seaman, Irish, address 56 Strand Swansea (Wales), member of the crew. Cause of desth: "Jumped overboard. Delerium tremens." Date of death 4 March 1883.

Whoa, Nellie! Most of the data matches what we know about Mrs. Henderson's father. The age is right. The Swansea address is puzzling, but not beyond verification or explanation. No other Irish Samuel Hollingsworth can be dredged up who could be this man and there is no other Hollingsworth in the Marine Register of Deaths at Sea!

Was there a coverup here? Did Mrs. Henderson's daddy get drunk as hell, go into a bout of the DTs and leap to his death in the sea? And did the family devise the necer story that he was a captain of his own vessel and drowned while carrying out his duties? We never could find any "Capt. Samuel Hollingsworth" either! More research is needed here, naturally.

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