George Thomas Lambert: the brilliant genealogical detective work laid bare

Last time: No. 3 Charles Street, Private Secretary to the Admiralty, and great genealogical sleuthing by me 


Let's get to the brilliance as fast as I can.

George Lambert wasn't very easy to trace using ordinary fishing techniques on the Web. He just wasn't a flamboyant guy, not that I could tell.

In short, I traced him forward in the census, finding him in 1881 and 1901, but not yet in 1891. He had a long career at the Admiralty, and at some point became a trustee of Greenwich Hospital. I don't know whether that was a full-time job.

I found the index entry for the grant of probate in 1918, to two ladies I guessed to be his sisters.

I just kept putting his name into searches, trying different additional words. There was a George Lambert, age 13, born in Ireland, appearing at school in Midsomer Norton, in Somerset, in 1851. Could this be the right one?

On the same list was another boy, Henry Lambert, 14, also born in Ireland. I wonder, were they perchance related?

It was hard to figure out the name of the school but eventually the pieces came together. I tracked down a reference to George in an issue of the school magazine, many years later, mentioning him as a trustee of the Greenwich Hospital. Bingo. He was Sir George, Companion of the Order of the Bath by the time he died.

He was unmarried.

The one interesting thing I found about him was a reference, late in life, to his having sailed to America and back, and while in New York, having been a guest of Madame Hoity Toity.

I realize the diehards among us want the details. They're coming.

But don't you think this was impressive detective work?

It gets easier, too, because there is enough history to this particular Lambert family that they appear in lists of peers.

More to come.