Family Tree Leaves

Because Mary's name when she married was Mary PRICE but I've found she was baptised as Mary VALANTINE, I felt it was important to show how and why both names are linked to her, otherwise it would look like a huge mistake! Mary's parents are the unmarried couple, William WILCOCK and Mary VALANTINE but the mother Mary VALANTINE goes on to marry William Robert PRICE later and the child Mary also takes his name and lists him as her father when she marries. So, I thought the best way of doing this would be to show an adoptive link between Mary VALANTINE\PRICE and William Robert PRICE. Initially, I wasn't sure how to do this in Family Historian and made a few mistakes to start off with, totally confusing relationships! However, the software has a very good forum and, after some kind pointers, this is how it shows the relationships. I've never seen these bubbly white links on an ancestor chart before, so possibly I may have still got a mistake somewhere or other that n

What I'm actually trying to do is to re-input all my research into Family Historian, but I keep on allowing myself to be distracted by further research! Many moons ago, I started using Brother's Keeper but I found it tedious that if you entered census details against one person, you'd have to also put in everything for everyone else in the entry but if you were looking at any one person, you wouldn't necessarily know who else was on the same census entry. I was also finding that recording sources was not very thorough on Brother's Keeper. When I decided to look for other software to use, I had a look at some of the other popular software but decided that Family Historian seemed to have all the facilities I wanted so I bought the latest version at the beginning of the year. I have been trying to thoroughly record my sources but, after doing the FutureLearn online course, I'm not entirely sure I'm doing it right! Anyhow, within Family Historian, in the M

Well, my last post probably sounded like I was 'on something'? :) Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction! However, I have had other thoughts about this William PRICE. What if he really was another illegitimate baby for Mary VALANTINE? Maybe they got his age wildly wrong on the 1871 census? So, I searched on freebmd for births for William VALENTINE, using the phonetic search on the name, in London, Surrey and Middlesex between 1857 and 1861. For each one found, I checked on gro.org.uk to see the mother's maiden name. None were blank to indicate an illegitimate birth. It will be interesting to see what;s on the certificate I've ordered for the William Thomas PRICE born in the 3Q 1861 in St Saviour but I'm not sure it's going to advance things much! In truth, I doesn't really matter as it is the illegitimate Mary VALANTINE who became Mary PRICE who is my husband's direct ancestor and I can, at least, continue researching backwards from her. Never

In trying to track down Mary's mystery brother, if I'm honest I'm not too sure what to try! If you look on the familysearch wiki at the information on parishes in the Surrey area, where the 1871 census says he was born, there are firstly a lot of parishes and secondly not all appear to have their records online. So I'm consious that online searching may not find what I'm after because the records are just not there! However, if we trust that he really is 10 years old, or thereabouts, on the 1871 census, this gives a birth year of 1860 or 1861. As children can be baptised some time after birth (as happened with Martha, born in 1861 but baptised in 1864), I searched on the London Baptism records at Ancestry looking from 1859 to 1864. Much to my amazement, I found a baptism for William Thomas PRICE with parents William and Eliza PRICE on 14 Jul 1861 at St Mary's, Lambeth. The father gives his occupation as drover. Once again I find myself thinking, surely the

To recap on my investigation of the PRICE family found on the 1871 census, I've discovered that Dad and Mum are William PRICE and his wife Mary PRICE nee VALANTINE. That they were married on 17 July 1861. That the youngest child, Martha Ann was born on 3 Oct 1861 and baptised on 3 Jul 1864. That the eldest child, Mary, was in fact Mary's illegitimate child born 24 Jul 1854 and her birth was registered with the name Mary VALANTINE. When Mary VALANTINE/PRICE was baptised, her real father put his name on the baptism and he was William WILCOCK. Mary clearly 'adopted' or more likely was given the surname of PRICE when her mother married William PRICE. However, what about the 10 year old William PRICE on the 1871 census with the birthplace of just Surrey? My throwaway comment on the last blog post was that maybe he was also the illegitimate child of Mary VALANTINE. However, I'm now not so sure! As William was 10 years old on the 1871 census, I was expecting to find

PRICE is such a wonderful name to research. Much the same as SMITH! So, having found William and Mary PRICE on the 1871 census with children, Mary, William and Martha A, I thought I would trawl through the births registered to each name for around the time periods that I thought they were born using freebmd.org.uk and then look each one up on the gro.org.uk website to get the mother's maiden name linked to each birth registration. Having found all this data and put in into a spreadsheet, you can then sort on the mother's maiden name to see if any family groupings emerge. This has worked a treat for me when looking for SMITH births. So, as a starter, I carefully looked at the ages for each child on the census and came up with a first guess for likely birth dates and places. As I know the ages (and birth places for that matter!) given on the census can be out, I added a year either way. Looking at the information on the census ( William and Mary PRICE on 1871 census ), I

Before trying to trace Mary DIXON nee PRICE any further back, I want to try to find her 'missing' children. On the 1911 census, she says that she'd had 13 children and yet I could find only 10 birth registrations. The way I searched was to search for DIXON births on the GRO website where the maiden name was PRICE. I'm just wondering whether any births were registered where the maiden name was misheard and entered incorrectly? In looking at the list of the children I know about, it is clear that the births come very regularly! However, there are gaps; 1878-1881 in St Saviours, Surrey, 1887-1890 either St Saviours, Surrey or Holborn as they clearly moved between the two districts in that time period; 1892-1895 in Holborn; 1897-1898 in Holborn; 1900-1901 in Holborn. Taking each time period in turn and just looking for DIXON births with no mother's maiden name, I find the following: 1878-1881 St Saviours, Surrey - None where the mother's surname could be a mis

Poor little baby William DIXON. He was born in 1890 but doesn't appear on the 1891 census. I did search for a death entry but the only one I could find at all was for a 2 year old William DIXON whose death was registered in the Holborn district in the 3Q 1890. However, I'm sure this is 'my' William DIXON and I wondered whether the age of death on the index entry was wrong and this 2 years is really 2 months and so it should say zero? I submitted an error report to the GRO website on the 17th August to see if it could be checked and it has been checked and updated by them! I checked today! I do think it is worth submitting error reports to help other researchers. So far, I've submitted 3 since the beginning of July this year and so far two have resulted in them updating various things on the indexes. Anyhow, back to little William! So, I've found the death entry for him. He died aged only 2 months and his death registration details are as follows: Willi

I swear to you that I really have tried to find Mary PRICE on the 1871 census before! Or maybe I just dreamed I did? After all, I may well have just seen the PRICE name and headed for a dark place to lie down :) Still, I have today found the PRICE family on the 1871 census, living at 48 Hatton Wall, Saffron Hill, Finsbury, London. On Ancestry, the Civil Parish is described as "Ely Rents and Hatton Garden and Saffron Hill" which may be appropriate as number 48 Hatton Wall has a number of families living in it as well as the PRICE family. Perhaps it is some kind of rental apartment? The entry for number 48 starts on the previous page of the census. There's the GUIDETTI family, consisting of Pietro and Margaret GUIDETTI and their five children, the STABLES family, headed by the widow Mary A STABLES with six members of her family, five children and one daughter-in-law and also the AMBLER family headed by the widower William AMBLER with his three sons. The PRICE family

Here is what is going to prove to be another brickwall - this time on my husband John's tree with another common name of PRICE! My husband's Great-grandmother was Mary PRICE who married John's Great-grandfather, John William DIXON on 9 March 1876 in the parish of Chrishchurch, Southwark, Surrey. They were both 'Of Full Age' and John William was a porter living at 10 Broadwall, Southwark. Mary was living at 5 Isabella Street, not very far away. The fathers were listed as John William DIXON, deceased and William Robert PRICE, master drover. They both signed the register, as did their witnesses, Thomas BOUCHER and Ellen LEE. By checking through the GRO website, where you can check the maiden name of children's birth registration, I found the following children were born to them: Martha Agnes   DIXON 1Q 1877 St Saviour Surrey Ref 01D 98 James William  DIXON 3Q 1878 St Saviour Surrey Ref 01D 107 John Albert       DIXON 1Q 1881 St Saviour Surrey Ref 01D 91

I can't be the only person who comes across the SMITH name and wonders what on earth to do for the best! Emily Bessie SMITH My grandmother's name was Emily Bessie SMITH, born 9 Mar 1904 in Enfield, Middlesex (now London) to William SMITH (a Carman to a Horse Dealer) and Emily Jane JAMES. William and Emily married on 11 Dec 1893 in Enfield, Middlesex in Jesus Church. William says he is a 25 year old Carman, with father of John SMITH (Deep joy!). Emily was only 18 when she married, giving her father as Edward JAMES, and on the 1891 census, she's shown as 15 living with her parents, Edward and Ann, in Enfield. Her occupation is given as Scholar which is surprising as they weren't well off - her father was a Cowkeeper!  Anyhow, I give that extra detail because (assumption alert!) .... it doesn't look like she went very far? As a 15 year old, for instance, she wasn't living somewhere else in service. As a couple living in Enfield, on

Having just completed the free online course called Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree with FutureLearn, I thought a blog to record my Family Tree Researches might be a good idea. This free course was run by the University of Strathclyde and I would very much recommend it. They have already run it a few times and will no doubt do so again. You can always register your interest to find out when it's being run again. Although the course covers beginner topics, it's not just for beginners. I have been researching both my own and my husband's trees for some considerable time but I still found lots of topics of interest and new links to resources I didn't know about. One of the topics was looking at how to write a family history to publish and this also included writing a blog. There are so many genealogy blogs 'out there' that I doubted very much that anyone would want to read my whitterings. However, as one of my major failings is jumping around, search