NAMING THE HORDES

One of the problems when researching family history is the spelling of surnames, which can vary in one persons lifetime.  My name, Dennell, has been spelled in various ways - Dennill, Dennull, Pennell, Bennell and Donnell being just a few!

Of course nowadays everyone is literate, well 99% of us are, that is.  But before the Second World War literacy was only at about 75% so if the person themselves did not know how to spell their name how could they correct anyone else?

During the 1930s literacy rates did rise but not to a big extent and not for everyone.

In the recession it was needed for children to leave school as soon as legally allowed, and work even before then, to aid the family finances.  In villages where the school was dependent on the landowner and the only jobs were in service at the manor house, it was considered adequate to only be able to write one’s name and be able to read the bible. No consideration was given to spelling or even mathematics. So much for the 3 R’s!

While we are talking about the spoken name, we can’t discount accents as the ‘Queens English’ didn’t exist until the 1940s and then only spoken by the aristocracy. As an example speaking with a regional accent nowadays is looked down upon by the middle and upper classes.  Accents did account for many discrepancies, try saying the name you are researching with different accents and you will soon see.

Many researchers believe there are patterns in naming children but that is not necessarily the case.  Children were named after favourite brothers/sisters and even uncles/aunts, therefore creating generations of the same name.  Sometimes even to remember the dead, not only naming the next born the same as the dead child, but also a dead aunt/uncle could be remembered that way .

In the 19^th century it became popular to use the mother’s maiden name as another Christian name, which works well for anyone searching.  

It was common practice to use the father’s surname as part of the Christian name in illegitimate births, especially considering that even today an unmarried father has to be present to allow his name to be put on the birth certificate. 

BRICK WALLS ADVICE

Breaking down 'brick walls' requires not only perseverance, but experience. To be able to learn something new that can be applied to any research.  You might think that solving your own 'brick walls' should be easy, because you have more knowledge of the circumstances and may even have met some of the people in your youth - but it's hard to be objective when you are personally involved, so  it's actually far more difficult.  

I have a missing death certificate, my father’s aunt met and married in a completely different city [Birmingham] to where she was born [Leeds], was found living in the new town on one Census but by the next is somewhere else [London], and in Sheffield with her mother on the next Census.  On all these censuses she was stated as married but when she did remarry using her maiden name was stated as widowed, it is the perseverance part that could be useful. I will keep re-reading all the online information.

One of the biggest hazards for us researchers is our belief in authority - if we see an official document, we assume that it's correct. But the fact is, even government officials make mistakes - and that assumes they're given the right information in the first place!

Even the ‘official’ baptism records can mislead, the most common, and usual, gap between birth and baptism was at the most one week.  However, weak babies such as twins were baptised at birth.  So before 1837 it is very difficult to obtain the correct date of birth.

We'd all like to believe that the birth, marriage, and death certificates we've acquired - at much expense - are always correct, but when it comes to marriage certificates that's very unlikely to be the case.

I'm not talking about modern certificates - the information on them has usually been verified - but 19th century certificates. Nowadays we have to prove our identity and our age, but that hasn't always been the case.

The information most likely to confuse is the father's name and occupation.  

When the bride or groom's father is shown on the marriage certificate as 'deceased', then they probably are - but the fact that the word 'deceased' is missing doesn't mean they were still alive. 

Similarly, the occupation shown may not be a true expression of how the person spent their working life. It's not only in modern times that people have changed careers - in the 19th century they had to take what work they could get. Of course, you won't usually see someone switching from one highly-skilled trade to another totally unrelated profession. 

There's also a tendency to make the occupation somewhat grander than it really is: ag labs become farmers, and seamen become ships' captains; someone who has no occupation - perhaps because they are deceased - becomes a gentleman.

That's bad enough - but what if the name shown is wrong? It might be nothing more than the addition of a middle name - but it's not unusual for someone who was very young when their mother remarried to give the name of their stepfather (who may be the only father they can remember).

And what about illegitimacy? There are estimates that 10% of children born in Victorian times were illegitimate, but you won't see gaps in 10% of the marriage register entries - nobody would want to confess to being born illegitimate on their wedding day.  Which would account for an illegitimate child being told the name of their father upon marriage.

Of course, many people didn't realise they were illegitimate - often a mother would invent a fanciful story to explain why a child had no father. Such stories may even have been supported by a photograph, perhaps of a soldier in uniform, or a sailor carrying his kitbag.

Always ask yourself the question, what would you have done in their position? Remember that illegitimacy and 'living in sin' were so villified in Victorian times that unmarried mothers would usually wear a wedding ring.

Don’t forget the argument "so-and-so was so religious, she would never have had an illegitimate child". Perhaps she was remembering things she had done in her youth?

Here are a few points of interest that have been found

People's Collection Wales is a government-sponsored website which has thousands of photographs from museums, archives, or uploaded by individual users. 

There are now over 700 Post Office directories online at the National Library of Scotland's website. The earliest dates from 1773, the most recent from 1911, and you can search each directory by name.

According to Claire Santry's blog, Irish Genealogy News, the General Register Office for Northern Ireland (GRONI) is going to be putting its registers of births, marriages, and deaths online. If all goes according to plan then at some point during 2013 it will be possible to access births from 1864-1913, marriages from 1845-1938, and deaths from 1864-1963 - all without traveling.

TIPS AND TRICKS AMATEURS MAY NOT KNOW

We must be careful of making assumptions. It's not only the 'red herrings' in the evidence that we have to watch out for, but also the traps we walk into of our own accord - often because we assume that what works 95% of the time will work 100% of the time. For example, when we search for a marriage we tend to assume that the wife was using her maiden name - and yet she could have been a widow although not stated on the certificate at the time of the marriage (in which case she'd almost certainly have been using her late husband's surname).

Another example: when we see people on the census described as sons and daughters we tend to assume that they're the children of the head of household and his or her spouse - yet that won't always be the case, step-children or even grandchildren can, by some, be classed as children. Sometimes the order in which they appear offers a clue. Of course it must also be borne in mind that wicked step-mothers were not only in fairy tales, and many a widower married for the second or even third time and the new wife did not want the children from a previous marriage around!

One of the hardest pitfalls to avoid is created when a widowed husband marries a woman who bears the same first name as his late wife. Unless you see a marriage that is for the same man there will be a difference in the age or birthplace shown on the census that provides a clue - but always be alert to the possibility or you may not put two and two together.

A common mistake is to think that everything has to be solved in chronological order. You might think, for example, that you have to find out who your ancestor's parents were before you can find out who her grandparents were - but that isn't always the case, especially when so many grandparents had a grandchild living with them as ‘servants’.

Another time when lateral thinking comes in handy is when you can find the answer - or part of the answer - by asking a different question. For example, you might not be able to find your direct ancestor's birth certificate - but maybe you can find her brother's birth certificate instead, and discover that her’s is in quite a different area.

And following on from that last tip, what if you can't find either certificate - doesn't that suggest there's something strange going on? When something like that happens your next step should be to run through all the possible scenarios - no matter how unlikely or embarrassing to present day eyes- that might result in this lack of evidence.

MISSING BIRTH CERTIFICATE

1 Because of the lack of legislation or guidelines and the fact that the Registrar had to find the births only approximately 65% were registered.

2 Parents were not bound to give birth information unless requested by the Registrar. Some were not truthful about the date of birth, as they had to pay if the registration was more than 6 weeks after the birth. Some parents thought baptism was a legal alternative.

3. An Act in 1874 made registration compulsory. The responsibility  for registration of a birth was passed to the parents, or the occupier of the house where a birth took place. The birth had to be registered within 42 days or a £2.00 fine was payable,  It still remained a common belief however that baptism registered the birth, also if the parents ran out of time they would either lie about the date of birth or simply not register and hope not to get caught.

So my advice would be before 1875 Baptism Records are more reliable.

MISSING MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE

1. From 1837, marriages were allowed to take place in a local register office, instead of a church. A new type of marriage register was introduced for all marriage ceremonies. The Church of England, Jews and Quakers could conduct and register their own marriage ceremonies. Two registers were completed, one for the church the other for the state. Other denominations (Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians etc) had to apply for their chapels to be licensed to conduct marriages and could only conduct a ceremony there if, in addition to the minister, a Registrar was also present to record the events in a Register Office marriage register. This did not change until 1898.

2. Banns might be read and the marriage never taken place for a variety of reasons.

3. The couple may never have married or not married until any children of the union were adults. The female taking the title of Mrs for appearances sake.

Again Church Records may be more reliable, especially the Banns Book.

MISSING DEATH CERTIFICATE

Not a lot to say about this because the responsibility for recording a death was placed on a relation of the deceased. The registration had to be supported by a certificate signed by a doctor, and the death had to be registered within 5 days.

When looking at the Church Burial Records bear in mind that prior to about 1900 embalming was only for Royalty and the Aristocracy so ordinary people had to be buried in 3-5 days to prevent the horrors of decomposition been seen and smelt.

ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING FAMILT HISTORY CONTACT ME

SUSPEND BELIEF

Do people really think they can do research with nothing or are they just mean? The amount of people that have asked me to see how far back their family can be traced but don’t like having to pay £10 for each certificate.

Most of the time spent doing family history at the moment is checking that all the information on the census forms is there [which usually means inputting all the info again] because of the changeover from Windows to Mac and the problems that has created.

Not much done today on the genealogy front because of MS problems. But what bit I have done shows that where we now live was once owned by a family with the same name was my mothers’.  So are we actually living on our own land?  I will investigate further.

Back to checking the census returns and gathering what I can information wise.

Of course it has to be remembered that ancestors weren’t always honest and also a lot depended [especially in the earlier years] on how the enumerator worded the question.  What do you do for a living? Is not the same as What job do you do?  An illustration of which is the occupation for one wife is put as ‘sewing children’s stockings’.  Does that mean that she was an out-worker at the local stocking factory or that at that moment in time she was sewing?

Another thing that I realised was just how Certificates and Parish Records plot the movements of our ancestors.  They may have been living at 1 address when the census was taken but be at another for a child’s baptism or schooling possibly 5 years after the census and have moved again by the time of the next census.

Brick walls create problems of their own and are mainly caused by either some of the information you already have could be wrong, and it won't always be obvious which clues are the ones that are going to lead you to the solution. Something that appears insignificant (the name of a marriage witness, for example) might be a vital clue, whereas something apparently vital (the name of the bride's father, perhaps) might be a complete fabrication.  A good tactic is that all the information you start with has to be regarded as questionable. I'm not just talking about the stories that were handed down within the family - we all know that they're likely to be wrong - but also about the apparently reliable evidence - the BMD certificates, the military records, the census entries. So my advice is to go back to the beginning and see if something does fit better after a closer look.

Welcome to Family History Land.

I have an old notebook where I do my scribblings of information while I am working on the Family History, I decided today to check all these notes thereby making sure anything relevant is entered into my software.

I am linking grandchildren births and deaths in so that I have a full family picture, I decided to start with my great grandfather. Unfortunately this meant adapting the software, and the wording etc, turned out to be based on trial and error.

I'm on the second day of trying to link families, it sounds easy but believe me, it aint. It's not helped by the fact that information in the notebook were not referenced properly. Doh! Remember stoopid that referencing info is the cardinal rule of any research. So I've got to find it all again, well it keeps me busy and distracts me from my other problems.

I found it all, and more besides!

Oooh! There is all sorts in this book even though writing [well scribbling] is difficult for me. Imagine if I could write?!

One of the things I found in the book is a scribbled list taken from the Yorkshire Burial Index which is now Online and is such a useful tool, the membership fee is well worth the mony, Some of my jottings don't correspond to the Online Database so I will have to re-read the CD.

There are 3 people I have scribbled down that I now cannot find either on the updated database or on the old CD.

This notebook with all the scribblings had just confused me even more, mind you that's easy.

I have wasted a full day sidetracked by tying to find people on the censuses there again the wealth of information on the 1911 census is immense. I can't focus very well today that is how I managed to waste a day.

HOW TO HAVE AN ALL MALE GENERATION

WILLIAM THOMAS DENNELL & ELIZABETH RICHARDSON

As mentioned last time, my Great-Grandfather had no surviving girls, so I have decided that this will be about William Thomas, the aforesaid great-Grandfather, and his wife Elizabeth.
William Thomas was the tenth child born to John Dennell and Mary Glow, but unfortunately only 5 lived. William Thomas was born on the 16 October 1839 at Halton which was then near Leeds but is now integrated as an area of Leeds, 2.1/2 miles from Leeds Centre.
He was christened when he was 1 month old at the family church which was the parish church of St Mary, Whitkirk. In 1853 Whitkirk was a parish in the wapentake [county division] of Skyrack, had 3041 souls, and comprised of Austhorpe, Seacroft, Thorpe Stapleton and Temple Newsam townships. Within the Township of Temple Newsam are to be found the pleasant village of Whitkirk, 4 miles East of Leeds, Colton, Halton, Newsam Green, Osmondthorpe and Templethorpe. The church was a vicarage valued at £202 [the annual salary of the vicar], in the patronage of Trinity College, Cambridge and the parish school has an endowment of £10 p.a. There is a Methodist Chapel at Colton.
By the time of the 1841 Census William Thomas was aged 1 and obviously living with his family where only 3 of the 5 children were still at home, the others were George 11, Maria 4, and they were living nearer to Templenewsam. The older children were in various positions of service, Sarah Ann at 18 being a live in servant at the farm of an elderly couple, William & Christina Watson, at Berwick in Elmet. Caroline, 14, was nearer to her family, being a general servant in the household of Edward W Birchill, a Surgeon and Apothecary at Halton.
In 1843 John & Mary's fourth daughter and last child, Harriet, was born at Halton, Whitkirk. soon followed in 1844 by the marriage of William's eldest sister Sarah Ann to Joseph Cawood also at Whitkirk St Mary.
Between the 1844 wedding and early 1851, the family, apart from the married daughters and George, uprooted and moved to Sheffield, joining John's sister and her husband in the St Philips area.
By the time of the Census in March 1851, 10 year old William was still living at Cross George Street in the St Philips area of Sheffield, but it must have been rather crowded by then as they had a lodger, William Dickinson from Coulton, who was also an Assistant Corn Dealer, probably working with John.
Ten busy years passed which gave William 2 illegitimate nieces, 2 legitimate nieces, 1 illegitimate nephew, 2 brothers-in-law and 1 sister in law. Also his aunt Sarah left industrial Sheffield for the equally industrial Birmingham. In early 1861 21 year old William was a silver plate chaser and the only child still at home with John & Mary and nephew, Walter aged 3, but at this time they were living at 12 Cross George Street.
Marriage to Elizabeth Richardson followed in May 1863, but their firstborn, Clarissa, died at only 7 days old from weakness, [possibly premature] in the August of the same year. Another birth followed in the late summer of 1864, that of Frederick William, who only managed to live until he was 3 months old and died in March 1865 of pneumonia.
Round about midnight on March 11th 1864 the Dale Dyke Dam at Bradfield, near Sheffield, collapsed, releasing a torrent of water that killed some 250 people. It devastated an area that stretched from the Dam, down the Loxley Valley, through Malin Bridge and Hillsborough, to Sheffield town centre and beyond.
William Thomas & Elizabeth were living were living with his parents John & Mary on the edge of a devastated area. These buildings had been rapidly erected to provide accommodation for the ever increasing numbers of workers needed by the Industrial machine. For many, many thousands, decent living standards were something they could hardly even dream about. Reality was likely to be a jerry-built hovel in a shanty town of back-to-back houses, possibly shared with several other families. Earth floors, one outdoor privy, or lavatory, for the use of the entire terrace, and a waste-disposal 4system that consisted of a bucket and a warning cry of "Watch out!" to passers by. If you were lucky.
In this building frenzy, the health of the tenants nor the living conditions were taken into account, so the death of newborns was a regular occurrence. The houses would have been very damp due to flood damage and overcrowded due to the style of building.
William's younger sister Harriet got married to Herbert Sedgwick in June 1865, but tragedy struck again later in 1865 when his older sister Caroline suffered a fatal miscarriage at the age of 38. Bronchitis killed his father John 65, at the beginning of 1866 when William was 26.
The birth of another Frederick William, who this time survived, was celebrated in the early summer of 1866, nearly two months after the death of William's father.
Many more children followed, John in 1868, Walter [my grandfather] in 1869, William Thomas in 1870, and George in 1871. George, sadly, died after only 1 month. Another George was born in the summer of 1872, followed by Robert Bruce in 1873. Unfortunately George died at the beginning of 1874, but fate had not finished playing with them. Their daughter Florence Elizabeth was born at the beginning of beginning of 1875 but died at the beginning of 1876.
In the early summer of 1876 William's sister Maria re-married, this time to the father of her 21 year-old son Walter, James Bingham of Sheffield, and at the end of 1876 another daughter was born, Lillian Elizabeth.
At the age of 38 in 1879, Elizabeth gave birth for the last time, to twin boys Joseph and Leonard. Leonard, however, did not reach adulthood, dying at the age of 15.
So that is how William and Elizabeth managed, despite having thirteen children, to only have male children surviving. The surviving sons stories are for another time.

JOHN DENNELL & MARY GLOW

Continuing the new idea of concentrating on one individual at a time I have decided to feature John [my Great-Great-Grandfather] the person who migrated t0 Sheffield from Leeds in about the late 1840s.
THE STORY OF JOHN DENNELL
John Dennell and his sister Sarah were the only offspring of Thomas Dennell, then 34, and Mary Lucy, 37. Both children were born in the parish of Whitkirk, John at the beginning of November1800 and Sara at the beginning of October 1804.
In the April of 1821 John, 20, married Mary Glow, 21, from Tockwith, at St Mary's Whitkirk. The marriage, after the usual banns, was witnessed by Robert Perry and Robert Hargreaves, neither the bride nor the groom could write so they both signed with a mark, as did Robert Perry. At the time of the marriage John was a Cooper, a trade he continued until 1839, a few years before his move to Sheffield.
Most Coopers in villages and small towns worked in a 'Ad Hoc' freelance fashion but they did not only work for brewers, Coopers being the only tradesmen who knew how to bend wood, were also in demand for making the hoops for under crinolines, the cheaper variety that is, and to make the outside of cartwheels, before the blacksmith could do his work.
There would not be a demand for crinolines in the village. even though there were plenty of Manor Houses in the surrounding area and the development of trains would have made access to larger towns easier for those that could afford it, also trains would slowly bring an end to wooden wheels. The 1841 Census shows a publican living only 3 doors away in the village where John lived, although John was no longer a Cooper by then but was a Labourer possibly due to being illiterate and untrained in any other profession, the majority of village residents were employed in the coal industry. There was also the future to think of, two sons would be wanting employment and trades, the girls were not such a problem so by the beginning of the 1840s John & Mary must have been starting to feel that there was no future in the village apart from in coal mines.
The 11 children had started arriving early, Sarah Ann was born 1 year after the marriage and only 3 months before John's father, Thomas. died 1822, at the relatively young age of 57, when John was 21 only years of age. By the time his mother died 10 years later in the August of 1832 John's own family consisted of Sarah 10, Caroline 5, George 3, and Mary Maria aged 1. Twins William & Thomas had died when only a few days old in 1824, and a daughter born in 1825 only lived 9 months, births and deaths accompanied the family for many years, Mary Maria died the year after her namesake, John's Mother, aged just over 2 in 1833, Harriet was born 2 months after John's mother's death but died when she was a month short of 2 years old. Maria in 1837, William Thomas (obviously named for the twins) in 1839, and another Harriet in 1843 all grew to adulthood.
John was still working as a Labourer until Sarah Ann got married in 1844, when he was stated as a Hay Dealer at Sarah's wedding, looking at the employment in their village it consisted mainly of working the land either on it or below it. With few farmers, agricultural work would have been hard to come by but the welfare of horses was paramount, after all a farm could still be run with minimum workers but they needed the working horses, and also there was the welfare of stabled horses owned for transport and riding, trains still being a rarity. Hay would therefore have been a necessity, and the village had two or three hay dealers who would need labourers.
John and Mary must have felt relieved when the children began to marry and leave home, 22 year old Sarah Ann in May 1844 then 20 year old Caroline in Sept 1846.
Once the two eldest girls were married things changed rapidly, George went to work for the Railways with Sarah's husband Joseph Cawood and Caroline's husband Michael Hemingway. John and Mary decided to move to Sheffield with the younger children at some point between 1846 and 1851.
This move was a downward step for John because he went from Hay Dealer in 1846 at Caroline's wedding to Corn Dealer's Assistant in the 1851 Census. There again he did live next door to another assistant from Coulton, who was most probably known to John and Mary as the two places are in the same parish, and they lived two doors away from the Corn Miller in Sheffield whom it can be assumed they both worked for.
The family starts to fall apart in 1853 when Caroline's husband, Michael, died of TB then Caroline had an illegitimate daughter, fathered by Richard Peacock, at the beg of August 1855. She came to her mother in Sheffield to give birth but did not bring up daughter Geogiana Peacock Hemingway herself - she was brought by Caroline's elder sister. Sarah Ann. in Leeds.
John & Mary must have heaved a sigh of relief when George was married at the beginning of 1857 to Martha Leigh in Manchester, but this was followed by another illegitimate birth. This time it was Maria who gave birth to Walter Bingham Dennell, it would have been easy to tell people Caroline was a widow, after all she had got a wedding ring and was using her married name but with Maria it was a different matter so her mother Mary brought up the child. Walter. whilst Maria went to live in Birmingham where she married, in 1859, Henry Cater.
Meanwhile George & Martha were producing children, three before 1861. The next information is the census of 1861 which shows John as a labourer and Mary as being blind for the past 3 years, therefore never being able to see the child she was rearing on behalf of her daughter. They were still living at Cross George Street in the St Philips area of Sheffield, which was in a typical town area being overcrowded and overpopulated. Quite a contrast from the village life they had led and had grown up with.
Sheffield started expanding rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, increasing from 60,095 in 1801 to 451,195 by 1901. The influx of people also led to demand for better water supplies, and a number of new reservoirs were constructed on the outskirts of the town. The collapse of the dam wall of one of these reservoirs in 1864 resulted in the Great Sheffield Flood, which killed 270 people and devastated large parts of the town, among which was part of the St Philips area. The growing population led to the construction of many back-to-back dwellings that, along with severe pollution from the factories caused the deaths of a large percentage of the population through cholera and many other infectious diseases that spread rapidly in these overcrowded and unhygienic conditions.
Life, however, had not yet finished throwing obstacles in the path of John and Mary. A girl was born to George & Martha at the beginning of 1863, their fourth child and the sixth grandchild. A few months later John and Mary's youngest son, William Thomas, married Elizabeth but again a celebration followed quickly by death. Three months after the marriage William and Elizabeth had their first child, a daughter who sadly only lived for one week.
The youngest daughter of John and Mary, Harriet, married Herbert Sedgwick in the early summer 0f 1865, and by the time John died in 1866 there were two more grandchildren born to William Thomas and Elizabeth, both boys and so began the family that consisted only of male children.