The Nosey Genealogist

So, like thousands of other family historians, I’ve had a look around the 1911 census records for my ancestors. I’ve seen the crystal clear images that for the first time show the actual schedule, rather than the enumerator’s book as all the previously digitally published census had been.

With the 1911 we are able to see the household filled out in our ancestor’s own hand. Or in the case of my great-great-grandfather’s household in Paignton Devon, in my great-aunt’s hand.

It would seem that, in the Thorne household, Great-Aunty Winnie was chosen by the family to fill out the official form, rather than it being done by her Father, the head of the household. I am speculating a bit here, but I wonder if this decision may have been taken on the grounds that her employment made her ideal, in the eyes of the family, to complete the document to the authorities satisfaction. She would be more used to official documents than her parents and her brothers as Eveline Winifred Thorne, 18, has listed herself as a Seasonal Assistant in the Post Office. This was the start of a career that I believe would take her on to become a Post Mistress, in time.

My Grandfather, 16, was a public librarian in 1911; which I never knew and may explain why I have loved books so much that I have spent 20 years as a partner in owning a bookshop!

The 1911 census, available at www.1911census.co.uk is a fascinating set of documents. It was taken at a time when life expectancy for women was a mere 54, as opposed to 82 today and was only 50 for men, compared with 74 nowadays! The richest 1% of the population held 70% of the nation’s wealth while today a quarter of the population account for the same share. Domestic Service was the biggest employer, followed by Agriculture and then Coal mining. More people were to be found in houses than today as lodgers and visitors swelled the occupation of homes revealing a different society to today’s.

At The National Archives the 1911 census is said to take up 2.5 kilometres of shelf space and is larger than those that went before. Its release early (98 years after it was taken instead of the usual 100years) is down to a freedom of information ruling that, as long as the sensitive data relating to mental state was blanked out until 2012, it could be published early as it is not protected by the Census Act.

I am going back to look for other branches of the family now.

Family History research is a passion of mine and so The Nosey Genealogist blog was born to give me a platform to go on and on about it. This is because I am painfully aware that not everyone shares with me a desire to populate their family tree with ancestors and so I try not to bore the pants off all my friends with it. I was, however, talking to a friend the other day about the subject and they asked me where on earth do they begin?

I’ve posted about this before on this blog, but it is worth mentioning that when ever I get asked about where to start I always tell them to begin with the five Golden Rules.

In my recent request from my friend I told them the following:

“Start at the beginning, that is…your beginning.

“Note down your parent’s names, their dates and places of birth, when they married and where. Ask them about their youth and any organisations or religious denominations that they belonged to. Did they stay in the locality of their birth or did they move? What is, or was, their occupations?”

After that I suggested they collated the same information on both sets of grandparents. If they are still with us, I told my friend to go and talk to them about their younger lives; as family historians we are often amazed at what rich background to family history research we can gain from talking to the older generations.

If my friend’s parents and or grandparents have died, then I would have suggested they find out where they are buried, or their ashes scattered and write down the cemetery or place for those generations that follow ours will thank us for this saving on their time spent researching their family. So the 5 rules, that I have distilled from the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are magazine published back in 2007 are as follows…

1. Start with whatever facts are known and work backwards, trying to make sure that each new piece of information is checked against original records to make sure of its validity.
2. At every stage, document the evidence noting down your sources. Tip: These can be people or paperwork.
3. Keep records of what you find, even the wrong avenues you have gone down. Doing this will help you not make the same mistake at a later stage in your research.
4. Be wary of information supplied by others as it may not be correct and always do your own research to back up what you have been told. Be particularly wary of information posted online.
5. When you are up a dead end seek help from family history societies, professional organisations, forums and specialist magazines.

Good luck if, just like my friend, you are starting out. Before you go any further should I mention just how addictive Family History can become?

Nick Thorne - The Nosey Genealogist

20th December 2008

The 1911 census is going to be made available on-line in 2009, earlier than the 100 year rule would normally have allowed. Under the Freedom of Information the government is allowing it to be released early, but with the sensitive data about mental condition blanked out. Already, as an early Christmas 2008 present, some people are being invited to test the beta version of the 1911 census site to give feedback on how it works.

The exciting thing with this census is that we will be able to see the actual return written in the handwriting of one of the household members!

I can hardly wait to get a look.

Here are some pitfalls waiting for the family history researcher when looking at Parish records that I have read about recently.

1. The handwriting can be difficult to decipher. It may vary enormously from parish to parish depending on the vicar or clerk writing it. The art of reading old handwriting is called palaeography and you may find various books available to purchase.
2. The registers are often no more than copies of the original daily memorandum book. These may have been written up once a year and so the possibility of mistakes creeping in or entries being left out becomes a real possibility.
3. Gaps in the registers or they are missing altogether.
4. Details lacking from the Parish record as there was no standard as to what should be recorded in early times.
5. Before 1733 most legal documents would be written in Latin, although surnames would not be translated into Latin.
6. Spelling of surnames may vary from the norm.
7. Children were not baptised at all, or were christened when they were older. In one of my paternal lines four or five were all baptised together on the same day!
8. Periods of non-conformity, again in my same paternal line I find several children christened in the established church and then several more in the Presbyterian chapel.
9. Illegitimacy, parentage in doubt? Make a search of the local poor law records such as Bastardy bonds.
10. A person may be mistaken and not know where they were born. The solution is to widen your search to other parishes.
11. People moved about more than many expect so be prepared to look at surrounding Parishes from the one you assume your ancestors hailed from. Following on from this is that the family may have moved into the area from a different parish. Here you should do a search of parishes on the IGI or the County Record Office for a ten mile radius. A great piece of software to help find the names of the neighbouring parishes is the Parish Locator free from this website:http://web.onetel.net.uk/~gdlawson/parfind.htm
12. The change of the calendar in 1752 may be a pitfall for you to tumble into if you are not aware of it. England and Wales adopted the Gregorian calendar in September 1752.

• 11 days were omitted - the day after 2^nd September 1752 became the 14^th September.

• The first day of the year, or Supputation of the Year became the 1^st of January.

• Prior to this in England 7 Wales, the year began on Lady Day, or the 25^th March. This would mean that the 24^th of March 1750 would be the last day of 1750 and the next day was the 25^th of March 1751, and a new year.

The Calendar Act 1750 changed this situation, so that the day after 31 December 1751 was 1 January 1752. As a consequence, 1751 was a very short year - it ran only from 25 March to 31 December.

The year had previously been broken up into quarters, still in use for some legal practices, Lady Day (25^th March), Midsummers Day (24^th June), Michaelmas Day (29^th September) and Christmas day 925^th December).

To throw even more confusion into this situation, Scotland had already changed the first day of the year to 1 January in 1600 and so 1599 was a short year there ( remember that in 1600, Scotland was a completely separate kingdom). What has to be recognised is that when King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England in 1603, the possibilities of date confusion must have been very large indeed.

Food for thought!

While I was at the Society of Genealogists recently, you may know from my last posting, that I read a book on the Hays of Hopes. This was my maternal grandmother’s line. In this publication it gave me the detail that my great-grandfather was “at one time Lieutenant in the 17th Leicestershire Regiment”. This revealed the exact name of the regiment and tied in nicely with snippets of information I was beginning to acquire from elsewhere on this gentleman who had been born in 1845 in Tours, France to Scottish parents and died in 1909 in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

His parent’s Janette and Charles Crosland Hay seem to reside in various parts of Britain, mostly south of the border, until they settled in Cheltenham where their children went to school. In “Victorian Legacy”, a book published in 1998 by the Revd Stanley Rudman on the wall memorials in Christ Church Cheltenham, my great-grandfather Edward is mentioned in the write up of his parent’s memorial, along with his brothers. The Revd Rudman attempted, in his publication, to fill in the background to the families of those commemorated in the church and he mentions that Charles and Janette had 5 sons, 4 of whom were attending Cheltenham College when their mother died. For Edward Adolphe Massy Hay, Rudman says that “He became a Lieut. in 17th Regt and subsequently a tea planter in Ceylon wher he died at Kandy in 1909.”

When I had read this, in 2006, I had wondered which 17th Regiment he had joined as one of his brothers, William Wemyss Frewen Hay, had joined the 17th Bengal Native Infantry. Naturally, I had wondered if Edward had joined then as well. This shows how to beware of jumping to conclusions in family history research and to go to the source if at all possible.

I next found mention of Edward in The United Service Magazine, Published by H. Colburn, 1864 Item notes: 1864 pt.2 page 460 showing that he purchased his commission in the 17th Foot. So not the 17th Bengal NI then!

On a visit to The National Archives I spent some time looking at their copies of Hart’s Army Lists and found the 1866 edition. Flicking through the pages to the 17th Foot, The Leicestershire Regiment I found the entry that proved Ensign [2 Ed A Massy Hay, d 31 May 64.

I am yet to understand all but wonder if the “[2″ refers to the 2nd battalion but I believe the “d” may refer to him being posted to the depot in Chatham and not abroad. I excitedly went to Hart’s Army Lists 1867 and turned to the 17th Leicestershire Regt. but alas Edward was not there! Had he left the army by then? If so when had he become a Lieutenant as he is referred to in both the Revd Rudman’s publication and that other book on the Hay’s of Hopes?

Seems my research much go on into this man, as all is not clear!

I next visited the Royal Leicestershire Regimental Museum in Newarke house. I saw here an officer’s uniform that was contemporary to my great-grandfather’s time. As to be expected for the times, the regiment wore a Red coat.

As an aside; In the Hart’s Army List for 1866 the price to purchase a commission as Ensign cost £1200. Using the website Measuring Worth I found that, using the retail prices index, £1200 is worth £78,890.29 in current money. That is some investment great-grandfather Hay!

On my mother’s side I have some Scottish blood, being descended from a branch of the Hay’s of Hopes. This family line goes back to one Edmond Hay, said to be born before 1636 and who became Laird of Hopes in Haddingtonshire, now in East Lothian.

Since finding his marriage on Scotlandspeople to Isobell Adinstoun on the 4th August 1664 in Cannongate, Edinburgh (within Hollyrood Palace) I have speculated that he may have been the son of the Lord of the neighbouring estate, Yester. This because the Lord of Yester was another “Hay”, John Hay 1st Earl of Tweeddale and Lord of Yester.

I have, however, received emails telling me that John Hay, Earl of Tweeddale had no such son. I have found mention that he was the “natural born” son and elsewhere in my research that he was not related to the neighbouring noble Hay’s of Yester at all!

While I was in London recently I made my first visit to The Society of Genealogists at 14 Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA. I went there with the purpose of looking at the parish records collections to see if I could trace my Devon “Thorn ancestors” back further than the early 1800s. While I found paper transcriptions of records for St. Saviour’s church in Dartmouth and so had some success, I was to be disappointed that the parish records for Dartmouth were not on micro-film, especially when they have such a rich resource of other parish records in their library.

Going up to the top floor of the Library I found a collection of family histories and imagine my delight to find one entitled: A Collection of Notes on the Family of the Hay of Hopes, Haddingtonshire. Begun by Charles Crosland Hay and added to by John Yalden Hay .

My surprise at finding this was compounded as Charles Crosland Hay was my great-great-grandfather.

The book was a mine of information about many of the descendants of Edmond Hay that will keep me occupied for ages, but apart from the reproduction of a portrait of Edmond Hay and another of the First Earl of Tweeddale, the greatest find for me, within its covers, was the transcription of the Sasine of Easthopes from 28th November 1653 (Reg of Sasines, Edin Vol 1 fo 99) that shows that the estate and lands of Easthopes were given to Edmond Hay by the Earl of Tweeddale .

The book seeks to add weight to the belief, in the Hay of Hopes family, that Edmond was acknowledged by his father to be his son. There are examples given, from the Parish Records in Yester, of the Earl’s legitimate children being witness to the christenings of Edmond’s children and of Edmond being witness at the baptism of Jean, daughter of John, Lord Yester, on 9th August 1674.

The weight of evidence is growing in favour of the argument that my mother’s side are descended from the noble line of the Tweeddale Hays, albeit from a possible illegitimate son of the 1st Earl.

While I was visiting London I was asked to help research an Indian Army Officer from the Second World War. This person had joined up in the UK and transferred from England to the Indian Army serving in the Royal Indian Army Service Corps.

The aim was to find the officer’s birth date for a daughter, as the details were not recorded elsewhere in her family because of his divorce, early on in her life.

At the British Library, once reader registration was completed, we entered the Africa & Asia Room. The staff at the desk were very helpful and pointed us to the Indian Army Lists where we were able to find the Second Lieutenant in the volume for 1943 under RIASC. For some reason, however, although most other entries had dates of birth listed, our man had not!

All was not lost as my accomplice could provide the necessary paperwork to show that she was the man’s daughter. With this the British Library staff were able to go away and come back with his actual service record and she was able to read his record, to see his signature and to take a note of his date and place of birth. With this valuable information she can now start researching the paternal branch of her family that until now had seemed closed to her.

A search on ancestry.co.uk with the correct details gave his birth and death index record to follow up on.

Its been a long time since I posted due to being away on holiday and then coming back to a mound of work, but here is the first of some new posts.

While away I was able to go to Kew and The National Archives. The aim of the trip was to familiarise myself with the place as any serious Family History Researcher is going to have to use TNA at some point in their genealogical searches. I had looked at the website http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ many times before. This time I was planning my first visit to Kew and so I determined what I was going to look for when I got there. I wanted to try and find my great-great-grandfather’s baptismal records in the nonconformist registers.

The current investigation of my paternal line, the Thorne’s or Thorn’s of Dartmouth (if you have read my previous post you will know that Thomas Henry added an “e” to our surname in the 1850’s) has shown that g-g-grandfather THORNE was buried in the churchyard of the CofE church of St.Saviour’s, Dartmouth and that he married g-g-grandmother Ellen MALSER in St.Mary’s CofE church in Portsea, Portsmouth. His parent’s, John THORN and Elizabeth SISSELL seemed to have married in St.Saviours in April 1817 but I could not find the Christening of Henry in St.Saviours even though there were other children of John and Elizabeth baptised there.

The answer seems to be that for a period of time the family left the Established church, as from 1826 to 1836 and every two years between these dates, a Thorn was baptised in the Presbyterian Chapel in Dartmouth! This included Henry Thomas Thorn, my g-g-grandfather.

How did I find this?

Well I had used Hugh Wallis‘ site to identify the records and give me the dates (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/

IGIBatchNumbers.htm#Menu

)

Then on TNA’s website I used the catalogue to find Word or Phrase: Dartmouth and Department or Series code: RG - which is the Records of the General Register Office, Government Social Survey Department, and Office of Population Censuses and Surveys.

This gave me the answer that DEVON, Dartmouth (Presbyterian) Baptisms were at: RG 4/959 and could be accessed at TNA in Kew.

So when I arrived I was able to go to the banks of draws containing micro film, select the correct one and go to a microfilm reader and scroll through until I found my g-g-grandfather and some of his siblings!

It should have been easy, but I got side tracked and as it was unfamiliar to me with so many interesting things that could be looked up, it took an age longer than it did the next time I visited.

Oh yes, I got hooked and had to come back another day. But that is a story for another post.

You probably may have had some experience of looking up ancestors using the International Genealogical Index (IGI) on the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) http://www.familysearch.org . If not I should explain that it is a compilation of entries from baptism and marriage registers drawn from parishes and their equivalent form all over the world. For those of us with UK roots it represents us well with index records with some English counties in particular having excellent coverage.

Once again I am indebted to Pharos Tutors for introducing me a handy website that aids the family history researcher find their way around the LDS site and helps us know what registers are available on the IGI. It is the site maintained by Hugh Wallis.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm

As Hugh Wallis says, in the introduction to his website, it is not always simple to find your ancestors (even when they are there to be found in the IGI) using the search mechanisms provided by familysearch.org. The reason being that to search by last name only is not permitted unless you search within a single batch of records at a time or, across the entire country! Now a search for a last name across the whole of England is a very tall order, remember it is not even a search of single county, let alone a town you are having to do. If you have a rare name, Hugh Wallis suggests, might be OK to do, but if you are looking for a Smith or a Jones then you have a big problem!

The possible ranges he allows you to access are the Births/Christenings and Marriages. I really can not recommend this tool highly enough.

Lastly, just remember that the IGI:

• is incomplete – and this applies not only on a parish by parish basis, but to within parishes as well where gaps may also be found

• is compiled from several different types of record including members of the church supplying information that can be inaccurate and not only from the original parish register

• has countless mistakes due to problems with interpreting handwriting and the fore mentioned member submitted entries

• does not, except for a few cases, cover burials;

• is only an index and as such should not be considered a substitute for looking at the original record.

As I try to get back a generation from where the census records on line stop in 1841 I am having to turn to Parish Records. For my Scottish line I have been able to use the easily accessed old parish records (OPR) on Scotlandspeople website, but for my English line the lack of scanned records means the challenge of learning how to break into this area of family history research is a fascinating new subject for me.

I was re-reading the first chapter of The book on British Genealogy and Family History yesterday. I am talking about Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails.

It has a great section on understanding relationships. No I don’t mean its a help for couples going through tough times, more what the terms stepfather, half-brother and so on means! It explains simply that “step” indicates that there is no blood relationship between parties and only a relationship through marriage. “Half” is something different and is where the parties only have one parent in common.

Now I was very aware of this terminology myself as, in my family, I have a stepmother and a half-sister and had a step-grandfather. So, while these relationships are actual fact, somehow to me when I see these cold terms used to describe people that I am extremely fond it appears to me as if I am trying to distance myself from them in some way. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that this is just not true. But in Family history research we sometimes have to be precise in relationships and detail exactly where and how people fit into our family tree. None more so when we have to deal with illegitimacy.

Where as today, being born to parents that are not married carries little stigma, in the past it was a different story and so it needs to be dealt with sensitively when dealing with relatives of a different generation.

Staying with this chapter from Mark Herber’s book I was amused to realise that when, at a family wedding, my first cousin once removed, introduced me to one of her friends of her own generation as being “Mum’s cousin” she was in fact being completely correct in her description. As Herber says: “Relationships between cousins are more complex. Cousins are people who share a common ancestor…The children of two siblings are “first” cousins of each other. The children of two first cousins are “second” cousins of each other and so on.”

OK so far, but then we move on to different generations. The word we use to denote this is “removed” so my first cousin’s daughter is my cousin once removed. When she has a child it will be my first cousin twice removed. We have to work out the number of intervening generations between ourselves and the common ancestor and use that number before the word “removed”. Now here comes the bit that I had forgotten!

“The word “removed” is generally only used to express relationships down a family tree.” So this was why Jenny, my first cousin once removed, being the daughter of my first cousin Julie was correct when she referred to me as her “mum’s cousin”

Here ends the pedant’s lesson for today!

Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails available from all good bookshops.