Cable Ties

In one of my past essays, What I Know about Thomas and Anna Downs: Part One, published on DownsGenealogy.com, I put forth some conjecture about this couple. One must be careful when writing conjecture in family history circles. Often what one feels may be true and deserves further research is repeated and published as fact later on by someone else. On the other hand, such thoughts when shared, often lead to others being inspired to look further and more concrete facts coming to light. This of course is always my hope when I venture into the realm of conjecture.

Since I penned that piece over a year ago, I have discovered much information concerning the origins of Thomas and Anna. Some of this evidence fits in with my theory or even expounds upon it. Other bits have caused me to revise my thinking. But either way, I thought I would put down my revised thoughts about things.

Let me start by giving a few pertinent facts as we now know them. Thomas Downs was hired as an operator on the French Transatlantic Cable from Brest France to Cape Cod. He was most likely already an experienced operator if they shipped him to America and built him a home in Eastham. Where did he get this experience?

The very first transatlantic cable went into operation in 1858, the year before Thomas was born. It ran from Ireland to Newfoundland. Thomas’s mother was from Newfoundland and he married a woman from Ireland. How did Thomas’s father meet his wife from Newfoundland? How did Thomas meet his wife from Ireland? I have recently uncovered the fact that Anna came to this country 4 years after Thomas took the job on the Cape. She married him in Boston the same day she disembarked the ship at that port. It seems to me that Thomas had already fallen in love with this girl from Ireland before he took the job in Eastham, but where?

I have wondered if Thomas’s father had been involved with telegraphy or the cable. Maybe this is how he met his wife from Newfoundland. One of the new facts that I have uncovered recently is that the Downs family in England was living in the Greenwich vicinity just prior to Thomas’s birth. Greenwich is where the first transatlantic cable was manufactured and tested prior to being loaded on the ships to be laid. Could the Downs family have something to do with this project? The time it was completed seems to correspond to when the Downs family moved to Chelsea in the Greater London area. In the 1861 UK census Thomas Senior appears to not be working and receiving a pension.
This is all just conjecture, but I find that there are so many time and place coincidences between the Downs family and the first transatlantic cable. There were plenty of shorter telegraph lines that could have also brought people together in Canada, Ireland and England. Could a single telegraph cable tie our family together? Could it be several smaller cables? Hopefully, some day we’ll know.