Gran's mother was Hannah Garnell Chambers - I've found that many of my female forebears were exceedingly helpful in giving their maiden surnames to their children as second names. Hannah's parents were Hannah Garnell and William Chambers. From his daughter's marriage certificate I knew that William Chambers was a fisherman and his own marriage certificate told me that his father was William Hughes Chambers, but only that he claimed to be of age in 1875.
Searching FreeBMD, the only possible Chambers in the index of births for Essex, was named George instead of William. However, since I knew that William had named his son William George, I decided to risk it and in June 2005 sent off for the birth certificate. Sadly, however, it turned out to be the wrong one. (If anyone is interested in a certificate for George Chambers born 10 March 1842 in North Benfleet, just get in touch)
Nothing daunted I sent off for the certificate of the closest William Chambers I could find, and hit paydirt: This William Chambers, born in Camberwell in 1844, was son of Hugh Chambers and Rebecca Barnett. Since I could find no trace of him in any census, though, the story stopped there until this weekend, when I visited the Ancestry.co.uk website where I searched the 1861 census, which I suspect was not yet available in 2005. Aha, the search flags up a William Chambers, age 18, born Camberwell, resident in Barking. Umm, don't really have the money to fork out for another year's sub though... Nevertheless, I went to have a look to see how much the asking price is these days and found that you can now subscribe for a month at a time, which suits me fine, since I usually do my family history in short intensive bursts. Copied in the Mastercard details and went to have a closer look at William. He turned out to be living in Heath Street, Barking, in the household of James Morgan, Smack Owner and Fish Salesman. In the same household were 19 other apprentice fisherboys aged between 13 and 18, many of them also originally from London.
I searched for him in the 1851 census, but with no results so turned my attention to his parents. A search in the 1841 census for Rebecca Chambers resident in Camberwell produced two results, at the same address. Further investigation revealed that they were the wife and daughter of Hugh Chambers, Labourer - surely this was William's family. Using the IGI I found the dates of birth of Hugh and Rebecca's children and then tried to find them in 1851. No sign of Hugh and Rebecca, so I searched the BMD deaths in Camberwell and found a Hugh Chambers died in 1848 and a Rebecca Chambers a year later, so it looks like poor William became an orphan when he was five.
And there the story ends at the time being. At some point I must see if there are any Poor Records for Camberwell that can tell me what happened to William when his parents died and how he came to be an apprentice in Barking.
]]>Top of the to-do list is to try to locate my Grandfather's grave in Tower Hamlets Cemetery. My Dad remembers there being a gravestone, suggesting that it was a private grave and the guidance at the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery webpage suggested I would be highly likely to find records and a map at London Metropolitan Archive . Then Murphy's Law struck as I discovered that the LMA is closed for building work until 21st January. Fortunately their enquiry service is still operating, so I decided to invest £35 in it. Let's hope that it bears fruit - before the 10th of December!
The second blow struck yesterday, when I went to the National Archives website to add to my list of catalogue reference codes of interesting documents and discovered that it, too, will be closed in the first half of December. I was intensely disappointed but, with hindsight, there is nothing vital that I need from there at the moment, only a lot of documents that might be of interest and that it would have been useful to have a look at without ordering copies 'blind'.
One of the ways I will make up for it is by visiting the London Probate Department and looking to see if any of my less poverty-stricken ancestors left wills. Another place that looks like it will be worth a visit is the Local Studies Centre at Valence House Museum in Dagenham, where it seems I should be able to find out a bit more about Barking fishermen, as well as look through school records to see if any of my Wills, Garnells or Chambers appear. It might be interesting to read through the local papers from around 1900, the time when my ancestors there seem to have had a depressingly high rate of infant mortality.
]]>However, some significant family history research has been done. During the winter I allowed myself to be persuaded into giving a lecture on the Special Operations Executive training schools that were set up in the West Highlands during World War 2. I was targeted for this because my father was trained at two of them and I was expected to be able to acquire enough information to make it interesting.
I seriously didn't expect to have enough material, but researching Dad's wartime career in a more systematic fashion than I had done before turned out quite rewarding. I started searching the National Archives website for SOE records and found several documents of interest, especially when I realised that searching for names would identify files with service records in them.
I already knew that Dad was one of a group of 4 NCOs who were trained to assist in sabotage missions in occupied France. One of the others, who I met some 25 years ago, is still living in Portsmouth. Another, Gordon Nornable, was my godfather and died about 18 months ago. I was interested to notice that his file at TNA was already open, suggesting that the Archive had been notified of his death.
The third, who my father knew as Jock Graham, we knew had been captured and executed, but Dad had not been told anything more. Through the NA site I discovered that his first name was really Harry and judicious use of Google revealed that he had been executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp in the last months of the war, along with a number of other agents including another whose name my Dad recognised.
It was pretty sobering to realise how easily my Dad's name could be on that list instead and how lucky we both are to be here.
The file containing my Dad's SOE service record was closed but the NA archivist was very helpful in sending copies of the parts relating to him once Dad had sent a written request for the information. Nothing of great import but I think he got a kick out of reading the officers' evaluations of his character.
]]>First point to note is that in the 1861 census James and Matilda have a 3 year old son, George, who seems to have died later that year. The PRO Index lists a George Haines born Blaby in the 2nd quarter of 1858 which means that Matilda must have been well and truly pregnant at the wedding!
The other point is that James' age is given as 38, suggesting that he was born in 1819, while the 1861 census suggests 1815 (age 46) and the 1871 suggests 1813 (age 58). Matilda's age on the marriage certificate is 21, which was probably stretching it, since in the 1861 census her age is given as 23 and she was 13 in 1851.
I can't find an entry in the birth index for Matilda's birth, and of course the really annoying thing is that William's birth certificate states that his mother's name was Ann. I suppose I'll have to try Narborough Parish Registers to be certain.
Found the Harrison family in the 1851 census and a couple of doors away lives a William Haines, born Narborough, like James and whose year of birth would be about 1818. It certainly seems plausible that James came to visit cousin (or brother?) William and struck up a relationship with the neighbour's young daughter which resulted in the creation of the future ill-fated George Haines. Presumably they had little choice but to get married.
There is a James Haines in the 1851 census, but his age is given as 28. Next door to him is a John Haines age 50, who is not old enough to be the father of anyone born in 1813, but could have fathered someone born in 1820.
I did find a Joseph Haines in the 1861 census, born Narborough about 1827, who surely must be the witness, so I'm inclined to believe that James was born in about 1820 and that for some reason his idea of his age became more and more exaggerated as his life drew on.
If only I could be certain of this ...
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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 ...
]]>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.
]]>Because she left me such a detailed account of the family and their names I just checked these against the censuses and the registry index on FreeBMD and they all checked out OK so I didn't get any birth certificates for the family. But recently I picked up "The Railway Navvies" by Terry Coleman again - we've had it for many years, my mother must have bought it - and started re-reading it and this provided the incentive to find out a bit more about gt-gt-grandfather Charles. Family tradition says he worked on the construction of St Pancras Station in London (1865), then on the Ampthill Tunnel.
I doubt I'll find any documentary evidence to support the St. Pancras tradition but as he married Lucy Lowe at Ampthill in 1868, the marriage certificate should show his trade and place of residence. Their eldest son was born about a year later at Ampthill, then in 1870 they had a daughter, Elizabeth, who was born at Ratford in Nottinghamshire. Then in 1873, my great-grandfather was born at Settle. The other seven brothers and sisters were born in Northamptonshire and in 1881 Charles appears to have left navvying to work as a labourer in an ironworks.
I think I'll get Charles' marriage certificate and the birth certificates of his four elder children to try and trace his career. I've started off by getting William's : sent for it a week ago, and it arrived today. Nothing more specific than "Settle" for place of birth but Charles' occupation is "Platelayer", so it looks like he laid the track, rather than actually built the railway. It'll be interesting to see what he was doing in Notts and at Ampthill.
I may have chosen a bad moment to start sending for certificates, since it appears that the BBC are showing a new series of their celebrity genealogical programme. This will probably bring the record offices to a halt again. Still, it may be possibly to tie in an event in the Heritage Centre and capitalise on the publicity.
]]>Anyway, it produces far more thorough, tidy output, although I had to look at the Help to find out how to include links to external pages. This too is extremely thorough and well-written, one of the best Helps for a Linux app that I've seen. I look forward to finding out what other improvements they've made.
]]>So now, in theory, I have a place where I can muse over various aspects of my family history research which don't fit easily into the order of the GRAMPS database or the chaos of saved webpages and scans on the PC. Whether I have the discipline or can find the time to make it an effective tool is quite another thing, as the half finished transcription for FreeCEN sadly bears witness.
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