Dear all,

The Will of William Brewer (a gamekeeper in Tingrith, Bedfordshire) left the residue of his estate to be divided between his seven children. One of those children (Robert Brewer) had “many years ago” gone to America and had “not been heard of for some time”. When William died on 19 June 1870 the trustees of the Will were given three years in which to establish if Robert was alive or dead and the Will made provision for covering the costs of advertising etc., in so doing.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how I might be able to retrace the steps taken and establish if Robert was alive and well in America or whether the trustees drew a blank? Within the UK, there are key newspapers that you might advertise in (e.g. the Times) but what newspapers might have been used for a search in America? Has anyone solved a similar problem and if so, how did you do it?

Robert was probably born between 1817 and 1822 in Clophill, Bedfordshire and had clearly gone to America some years before his father's Will was written in 1859. And that is about all I know of Robert Brewer.

I know that it’s a long shot (especially with so little information to go on) but many heads are better than one when it comes to problems of this sort.

Mike.