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.