From the depths of despair .....

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

...... to someone breaking down my |banghead| . On a Marriage Cert, Fanny HARRIS aged 21 had her Father listed as John Harris Occ: Gardener, so I trawled 1837.com for her birth cert ref.

There was only one entry over two years with the correct Reg. District of Thanet, so I ordered it and was stumped when it said her Father was Thomas, a plate layer on the railway! :(

After finding a contact on the Surnames List in Herefordshire FHS, I found out that this lady is descended from Fanny's sister, Ellen Harris. Both sisters married two brothers, Ellen's birth and marriage certs give the name of her Father as Thomas Harris, plate layer ...... so we decided that Fanny was so excited on her Wedding Day ...... she gave the name of her step-father.

Then the chappie who wrote the name of her Father down, also got muddled and so John Harris Occ: Gardener was written down.

The Harris' girls Mother, Julia Harris (formerly Cooper) married John WILSON Occ: Gardener after Thomas Harris died!

Isn't it nice to find friends with sledge hammers? :D

[Sue Mackay]

I sometimes wonder whether my descendants will be running round in circles. Not only do I appear on very few census returns, having worked abroad a lot, but there is a mistake on my marriage certificate which might lead someone a merry dance if they are trying to trace me in centuries to come. On the night of our wedding my husband took out our marriage certificate to look at and burst out laughing. A little upset, I asked him what was so funny. Turns out that when I had given the registrar my father's occupation as 'drama school principal' it had got written down as 'drum school principal'. Mental note to improve my diction (sorry Dad) as well as to make sure I leave my family history notes in good order!!

[Barbara Davey Basnett]

I had been searching for my great grandparents' marriage details for months. I knew both of their names, James Davy Basnett, a jeweller and Mary Ann Baldwin, from my grandad's birth certificate and I knew roughly when the marriage should have taken place, during the year 1871, but the more I looked, the more it wasn't there!! I was being forced to conclude that they hadn't got married at all, but had just been living together, which seemed a bit unlikely for 1871. It was a considerable nuisance too, since he was illegitimate with no father's name listed on his birth certificate, and I couldn't find any details of her birth registration. Without those I had no chance of going any further back.

I decided to play around with names to try to find out who his father was. In a family where the tradition seemed to be to name the eldest son after his father, I decided the father's name might be James Davy. In the 1851 census a likely candidate soon presented himself - a 28 year old vet living on his own close by. I had discovered James Davy Basnett's mother had died, aged 24, just nine days after his birth, of "exhaustion" - obviously the idea of being a single mother in 1852 had just been too much for her. I started to look around to see whether James Davy had married someone else - at least then I could discover his father's name - and I found a James Davy getting married in the same area of Birmingham in December 1871. But when the certificate came, it was a 20 year old. The man I was looking for would have been 48. I seemed doomed to go no further with this one.

I turned my attention to Mary Ann. Searching further back in the record, I found the birth of a Mary Ann in 1849 who seemed to fit the bill. I pressed on and traced the family right back to 1800 and then - disaster! The 1871 census came out. I found James Davy Basnett straight away, a single man living on his own in Birmingham but no Mary Ann Baldwin. Her family was there, but she was missing. This meant she had either died or married someone else before 1871 and was not the person I was looking for. A quick bit of further research soon turned up the answer - a marriage that took place in 1869. Back to the drawing board.

Heartily disillusioned, I looked again. I have to admit, I almost gave up entirely at this point! There was another Mary Ann Baldwin of the right age, living with her father, Edward Eli Baldwin, a watchmaker, and her mother and various sisters, at 53 Blucher Street, Birmingham in the 1871 census. But her birth hadn't been registered, and neither had the birth of any of her sisters!

I was about to admit defeat. It seemed there was no way of proving exactly who her family were. But one day I was studying the 1871 census and leafing through my certificates when I picked up the marriage of James Davy that I had rejected before. James Davy, aged 20, a jeweller (father David Davy, a vet) had married Mary Ann Balwell aged 20 (father Edward Eli Balwell, a watchmaker) of 53 Blucher Street, in the Birmingham Register Office in December 1871. They had only gone to the Register Office one Monday and married in secret giving false names! The Registrar's wife and the office clerk acted as witnesses. There are no such people as David Davy, vet and Edward Balwell, watchmaker. And when I counted the months back from my grandfather's birth I discovered that Mary Ann was two months pregnant.

The marriage can't have been legal, surely! She must have been more frightened to admit to her father what she had done that she was of going and telling the Registrar a right load of old rubbish. She must have run away from home, too. I couldn't imagine her going back home and explaining that away!

Stangely enough, after this incident in 1871, Edward Eli Baldwin and family appear to disappear from the face of the earth. I can find no trace of them at all! There must be another story there somewhere...............

[ChristineR]

Just a thought on this... I notice that on this marriage that you said Mary Ann has given her age as 20. There is no way that she could marry without written consent from a parent. I would suggest another scenario perhaps - on discovering that she was pregnant the pair were whisked off to the registry office to wed by the parents - in all the stress and bother it was overlooked that the wrong surname had been written down. (And there is always the possibility that this surname has been mistranscribed from the original document)

As to young Davy using that surname - he may have been going through a phase of using his real surname. I've had one of my lot do this. Married one woman using his father's name, married a second using his birth name (after divorcing the first)

Then the family vanished? Of course, the scandal and shame, they all left town.

Well, it's a thought....
Christine
Australia

[Dorothy]

Just before Christmas I finally traced where my Ggrandfather came from after 10 long years of following red herrings. None of the family knew much about my father's family and there aren't even many of the older members left now to celebrate my smashing down a weird brick wall ! By chance in 1990s I found my grandfather 's name in Scotland on the IGI at a small LDS family history centre. No one had ever mentioned Scotland and there had been guesses about him probably coming from down South instead of where he actually died in the North East of England. On his marriage cert. that I finally tracked down in Edinburgh , he gave he and his father a fictitious first name , took 6 years off his age and changed his mother's surname. So no wonder that I have been led a merry chase. The only birth place I found was on the 1891 census which stated Kent so I wasted good time and money with no success there!! When I finally tracked down his children in various places in Scotland and England I couldn't understand why he wasn't to be found on the 1871 or 1881 censuses now that I had birth certs. which proved the family lived in South Shields at those times. With the help of a friend here in Canada who knew the names of his children , she figured out that the " WILLIAMS " family in the census was really the HENSONs. It was bad enough that the " mistake" was on the 1871 census but it was also on the 1881 census , too . This time it stated Clapham , Sussex so from there I've traced he and his parents & siblings etc.with help from the SSFHG & other , a family connection and kind helpers as well as my own digging.

He might have changed facts but at least not on birth certs. of his children and they were named after his real family siblings and relatives. I had traced his wife's family in Sutherland so knew their family Christian names , too.

Why on earth did he do this?? I've conjured up some wild tales to explain his deceit but we'll never know for sure. My goal when I first started out with very few names to help me , was to trace back to my GGGgrandparents so I only have one brick wall left now ...but it's in London so it's not a piece of cake either:-)

[Mark]

Having just put the book down after a good read,I couldn't help but find this entry on FreeBMD

Deaths Sep 1888
BOLWELL Edward Eli 57 Birmingham 6d 40

That'd put his birth as around 1831

Maybe BALWELL / BOLWELL isn't the red herring after all.


Mark

[Barbara Davey Basnett]

Yes, the book is coming out soon!!
My great great grandfather had so many name changes that I'm not surprised I found it hard to pin him down. He was christened Eli Bolwell in a village in Dorset in 1832. By 1851 he was in Birmingham with his wife Maria, their baby, her parents and her brothers and sisters and calling himself Edwin Bolwell. What he married as I have no idea as the reference is missing from the GRO indexes (why am I not surprised?!!!) In the 1850s he christened two children as Edwin Eli Bolwell and two as Edward Eli Baldwin. When one died in 1857 he was Edwin Bolwell. In 1861 the pages have obviously dropped off the census so we will never know!! In March 1871 he was Edward Baldwin, in December Edward Eli Balwell. By March 1881 he was Edwin Bolwell and when he died he was Edward Bolwell.
Perhaps a Dorset accent was hard for Brummie ears to cope with in the 1800s! He and his wife were both illiterate so that couldn't have helped.
Talking of accents, in the 1871 census he was listed as having a 16 year old daughter called "Flima". When I investigated, it turned out to be a 16 year old boy called John Thomas - don't ask!!!

[HelenB]

Barbara - Is your Great Grandfather Samuel Eli? Mine is Ernest {David}. We have only recently begun to research our family tree, but you are welcome to what I know. Like you, we have traced James Davey's Marriage to Mary Ann Balwell in 1871. They had six children and on the birth certificates, her maiden name is variously listed as Balwell and Baldwin.I haven't been able to find her birth certificate. I have found James Davey's mother on the 1851 census and her father is listed as Samuel Bassett of Waring, Lancs. (I think this might be Warrington). Interestingly, they have listed her as married but under the surname Basnett. I believe two of your great grandfather's brothers were killed in WW1 (including my GGD) and I have found death certificates for to others - but not Samuel Eli and one other. We started looking because a family story has it that one of that generation killed his wife and then himself, but we have no evidence so far.