Family History Ramblings

Much burrowing among the census returns seems finally to have got me back on track with identifying my gt-gt-grandfather James Haines, who I had tentatively identified living on the Narborough Road with a wife named Hannah in 1881. I wasn't happy with the identification though, since I had definitely identified James' widowed mother-in-law, Elizabeth Harrison, who was lodging my gt-grandfather William Haines in 1881, and Hannah was too old to be Elizabeth's daughter.

Deciding on a different approach, I looked for Elizabeth in the 1871 census, and found her with her husband John and granddaughter Ann Haines, who I had found mentioned on one of the notes left by my Mum, but had not yet found documented elsewhere. Great!! But better was to come, as living next door was James Haines, widower, and his son Willie. On the same page is a William Harrison, who may be John's brother - Huncote families obviously stayed close. This gave me a short timeframe to look for female Haines deaths in the Blaby district and I turned up the death of Matilda Haines in 1869. This made it easy to find marriage index entries for James Haines and Matilda Harrison in 1858 and then to find the couple in the 1861 census with a 3 year old son George who appears to have died later the same year.

Another of these long forgotten family tragedies which will have meant so much to the individuals involved - James and his young wife Matilda (she seems to have been about 25 years younger than him) lost their oldest son and then had another son and a daughter, only for Matilda herself to die, leaving two young children. These untimely deaths do interest me and I shall try to remember to get the death certificates when I'm feeling extravagant and try to understand a little more of what happened. James himself appears to have died in 1879.

I've sent for James and Matilda's marriage certificate, so hopefully I will finally fix James' age and find out the names of his parents.

My Dad remembers a great-aunt of his named Clara. A daughter of my great-great grandfather Charles Poole, the 19th century census records suggest that she may have been named after her aunt Clara Poole, born 1834 in Leyton. To my surprise, given the static nature of Charles and his descendants, I discovered that Clara had qualified as a schoolteacher and each census from 1861 to 1891 found her in a different county. 1861 found her teaching in Bramley in Hampshire but 10 years later she was in South Wales, the "National School Mistress" in Llangynwyd, Glamorgan. Then she went south, teaching in Beaworthy, Devon, in 1881 before retiring to St Breock in Cornwall (1891), where she appears to have died in 1893.

Only three siblings appear in the 1841 census, although there may well have been older ones. The third, George, also seems to have wandered. I found him in Plymouth in 1871, on board the vessel "Unity" of Jersey, so I searched the Channel Islands census and found an English-born George Poole in Jersey of the right age in 1861 and then in 1881, when he had a Jersey-born wife Anna and two daughters, Louisa and Bella. After 1881 they appear to have disappeared off the face of the earth - quite possibly they emigrated.

It's taken me about 5 months to get round to it, but I finally took out Ancestry subscription again. I cancelled the last one last summer because i just didn't have the time to use it, but since I actually had the money to pay for a year's sub it seemed like a good time to make sure I could do some research next winter.

Difficult to be sure how useful it will be, since I've already covered most of the 19th century records that I need, but at least it will be there to satisfy little enquiries by contacts who drift by.

Feeling the benefit of the 1841 and 1851 census returns, though, made some progress on both the Haines and Poole lines.

Desperately looking for something to do other than work, I punched "Earl Shilton" into Google and browsed through the results. Discovered that Hinckley library has the Parish registers available on microfilm, but apparently the library is closed for improvements until the Autumn, so I'm unlikely to be able to visit until 2007.

Added "Almey" to the search and my attention was drawn to a Rootsweb posting about a Samuel Almey who married a Lydia. Got me thinking about Nathaniel Almey and his elusive marriage to Lydia. Checked it hadn't magically appeared on FreeBMD since I last looked, then had the bright idea of searching Hinckley marriages for Nathaniel with no surname specified between 1855 and the year of Elizabeth's birth (1862). BINGO!! An entry for Nathaniel ALW* in 1857, click on the page number and find Lydia NORTON on the same page. So that's why one of their sons was named Norton!

Tried to enter Almey as a correction on the FreeBMD website but lost my nerve, faced with a barrage of warnings:

"... it is unlikely that our source will be any more readable now than it was when it was transcribed, and such corrections are unlikely to be applied."

"Submitting corrections which do not comply with
the instructions simply wastes your time and ours!" (in red font!)

and then "Your submission does not appear to comply with the rules!"

I think anyone else looking for Nathaniel's marriage will have to stumble across my tree.

Anyway, that's another twig stuck onto the tree, and another certificate to get ...

Happened by the GenesReunited site last week for the first time in a while and had another attempt at loading the GEDCOM that failed the last time I tried it (New Year). Checking the email this morning I find it has worked and resulted in the usual increase in contacts, only one of which turned out to be a link, from a distant cousin on my father's side. Always good to make progress with Dad's family, since I had so much less to work from to begin with.

The other recent success came in the form of a very helpful letter from a lady at Wellingborough Borough Council, telling me where my mother's great grandparents William and Caroline Jones are buried. The boys and I were looking at the right part of the cemetery when we went there last summer, but it's good to have it confirmed and to have a sense of knowing where they are.