Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe discussion
Watson's Family
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May 29, 2018 06:49AM
Has anyone ever done any research on the ancestors and descendants of Sherlock Holmes' biographer, Dr. Watson? Watson was married several times to various women including Mary Morstan and Nyleptha, but did he ever have any children?
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In THE SIGN OF FOUR, we're told Dr. Watson's brother was a drunkard who died. His initials were HWJ, the J. standing for "Jr." According to Baring-Gould, Watson's brother's name was Henry, and his parents were Henry Watson, Sr. and a Scotswoman named Ella Mackenzie. In PEERLESS PEER, Watson says Nylepthah was the only one of his four wives to bear him a child. Win identified Watson and Nylepthah's son as the grandfather of Mary Watson, the Doctor's great-granddaughter from DETECTIVE COMICS #572, "The Doomsday Book," which had an elderly Holmes working with Batman and Robin, Slam Bradley, and the Elongated Man against Edgar Moriarty, the Professor's great-grandnephew. Mary was engaged to, and presumably married, Edgar's cousin Thomas.
Awesome, thank you! I was/still am debating including Watson and Nylepthah in the ancestry of a character in a story I'm working on and so I wanted to know if they had ever had children. This character of mine could be descended from the same son whose lineage begat Mary, or perhaps they were the sire of a child the couple were forced to give up. Perhaps under circumstances which forced the Doctor to obscure their existence from his notes. The character in question has ties to the occult, specifically the Priests of Karnak from the Mummy films (as well as Zu-Vendis, potentially, hence my desire to link her to Nylepthah), so that could help explain things. But! I recognize that operating on the lineages of some of the more famous characters can be tricky business. (:Curiously, I just noticed that Haggard's novel Allan Quatermain has Quatermain and co. rescue the daughter of a Mr. Mackenzie, a Scottish missionary. Apologies if this is clarified in the sources listed (Peerless Peer is still coming up on my reading list), but perhaps this Mackenzie was a maternal cousin of Watson's? Therefore one of the Doctor's relatives would have been tied in with the most famous adventure to transpire in the country ruled by his future mother-in-law.
I think that Edward Holmes and Gower Watson could be the ancestors of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.https://www.goodreads.com/series/3169...
