Quote Originally Posted by glclose View Post
Thanks all for your responses. And to address some of the previous helpful suggestions -

William Henry Haslam Partington's mother Ellen Partington was the daughter of Joseph Partington and Mary Isherwood. She was baptized in Deane on April 2, 1820. The family lived in Over Hulton.
This would mean that the James and Ellen that we've been chasing are the wrong ones. The James Haslam and Ellen Partington marriage in Deane in 1843 seems to match up with the adjacent households in the 1851 census, though further research would be needed to confirm this.

I'm wondering how you're sure that Ellen is daughter of Joseph and Mary. If it's on the basis of an age in the 1841 census, bear in mind that ages were rounded down in that census, so anyone aged 20-24 would be recorded as 20. As well as the Ellen baptised in 1820, the index to Deane registers at Ancestry shows a number of other Ellen Partingtons baptised there around that time: one each in 1814 and 1815, and two in 1817. Two of those have a father James, so either could be the one who married James Haslam. Again, more research needed, I think, to confirm just who Ellen is.

In the 1851 census William HY (Henry) Partington was living with his grandparents in Ashton Under Lyne.
The one I've found looks like Parkington, and in a household where he might be the son of an unmarried daughter (HO107/2238 fo395 p7). Is that the one you have?

Ellen is elusive. Only Ellen Partington matching her birthdate in 1841 census was living with the James Partington family who were in Heaton near Deane. Also, if she was married in 1851 why wasn't her son William living with her? I am leaning towards the idea Ellen died sometime in the 1840's.
I'm wondering if it was William who died? (If his parents did marry, he could have been registered under the surname Haslam.)

The solution may be to spend some money and purchase some birth/death certificates.
Yes, though if you have access to censuses and registers online you might want to do some more groundwork first. It seems like there are quite a few families with similar names, so you'll need to start with what you know for definite, and work back one step at a time. Otherwise it's all too easy to take a wrong turn somewhere.

Arthur