I’m fascinated by how you can just fall over things on the web.
Some months back, I was looking for information about the famous Canadian photographer F W Micklethwaite (see Wiki) and saw a marriage for Hetty Ann Bahnforth married in Orillia, Ontario, Canada to Charles Alfred Walter – her father was given as Mitchell Micklethwaite, who was my 3x great uncle. At that stage I didn’t know he had any children. From that small piece of information I was able to piece together another part of my tree. Frederick William Mitchell Micklethwaite was born in 1841 and baptised in Paddock, Huddersfield on the 19th July 1843. He survived the cholera outbreak which killed his father John and older brother Allen. He married Ellen Broadbent in 1862 and they had a child Hetty Ann in early 1865 but Mitchell died in November of that year. Ellen was remarried in 1869 to John Thorpe. Hetty Ann married William Wallis in Huddersfield in 1886 but he died in 1893. She next married William Henry Bamforth in 1895. They had a son William Harold born 1897, but in 1906 they emigrated to Kamsack, Saskatchewan, Canada. Then in 1926 she married Charles Alfred Walter, who died in 1948 in Vancouver, Canada. There are still several pieces of the puzzle unresolved – why did they emigrate, when and where did Hetty Ann die, and what became of William Harold Bamforth after his WW1 enrolment? All this because I chanced upon something and followed it up.
Then a few days ago, a link was posted on one of the email lists I belong to, which detailed V2 rockets in WW2. My late father Frank spent his time in WW2 photographing the development of English rockets and I knew he had visited Germany around the end of the war to photograph a test firing of a V2. And there it was on this site – a whole page on Operation Backfire as I discovered it was called. I am now in touch with the folks behind these web pages – all because I chanced upon a link to the V2 rockets and followed it up.
As it says on someone’s tag line “it is by logic we prove, it is by intuition we discover”. So follow your own intuition and see where it leads you!
Andy Micklethwaite's Family History Blog 
Anton Stevens
/ September 3, 2012See link to Lijssenthoek Cemetry in Belgium. Is this perhaps the same Harold Bamforth, born in 1987, you mentioned? I was there today at the cemetry and when back home (Netherlands) just looking for information about the history of the cemetry. Quite impressive.
http://www.lijssenthoek.be/nl/adres/10532/-harold-bamforth.html.
Regards
Anton Stevens, Netherlands
andymick
/ September 4, 2012Thanks Anton for your research and the link – the name’s good, the Canadian connection is good, but the date of enrolment is a bit soon, and the mother’s name doesn’t match. I checked on the 1911 UK census on Ancestry (free at the moment) and there is a Harold Bamforth in Marsden with parents Arthur and Muinie (sic) when mine would have been in Canada. So unfortunately I don’t think it’s him. But I really do appreciate your efforts and your interest – it was so very, very close!