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Over 15,000 new London docklands baptism records on findmypast.co.uk

We have just added 15,590 new parish baptism records for St John Wapping, provided by Docklands Ancestors. See the table below for a breakdown of the new records:

This means that you can now find 32,671 records for Wapping and a total of 423,148 records of baptisms for the London docklands area on our site. We will be adding plenty more new records in the coming months so make sure you keep visiting the site for updates.

Visit our help and advice page for more information on these records.

Get searching our parish baptisms to find your London docklands ancestor.

Even more Chelsea Pensioners records now on findmypast.co.uk

We’ve just added more Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1883-1900 to our site. There are now 289,783 records for you to search.

We’ll keep you posted on all the new updates we make to these records – you can expect to see plenty more in the coming months.

Search for your military ancestor in our Chelsea Pensioners records today.

Ask the Expert – lost grandfather

Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘Can you help me break down the brick wall that I have concerning my grandfather please?

My grandfather was: William James Wilson 1860-1937. I have found a marriage entry for him: he married my grandmother, Margaret Rees, in Swansea on 22 June 1893. On the certificate he gives his age as 32yrs and his occupation as house painter. His father’s name is given as William Wilson, deceased, occupation mason.

I have also found him on the 1901 census for Wales, when he and my grandmother are living at 113 St Helens Road, Swansea, Glamorganshire, Wales. He gives his age as 40yrs and his place of birth as Manchester, Lancashire, England.

Until the 1911 census for England became available I had thought that he might have been the William James Wilson living in Kirkby Ireleth, Lancs shown on the 1861/71/81 and 1891 censuses. However, on the 1911 census that one is still at home, unmarried and working as a ‘general labourer’, whereas my grandfather was married, living in Swansea (at 93 St Helens Road) running a painting and decorating business, (‘Wilson and Co’) and had six sons!

I have searched exhaustively through the various censuses and the birth index, but am unable to find any definite matches. I have ordered six birth certificates, none of which match the information given on my relative’s marriage cert.

His son’s names were (presumably some family names were used):

William Havelock, born 1894
Evan Douglas, born 1896
Ernest Rencella, born 1897
George Felix, born 1900
Richard, born 1902
Archibald, born 1903.

I would welcome some advice as to how to find any further trace of my grandfather as I am completely stuck with this. I am unable to find a definite birth entry for him, and unable to find him at all prior to 1901. Hoping that you can help!’ From Isobel

Steve says:

‘As I am sure you expected, this is not the sort of question that yields up a quick and easy answer! I imagine that you’ve been looking at this problem for months, if not years. So it requires systematic consideration of all possible eventualities. I will list some of these here for starters. I expect that you will have thought of and eliminated many of these already, but perhaps the underlying suggestions will help others out there facing comparable difficulties in their family history research.

1. He may not have been named William James at birth. He reversed his forenames, or added one.
2. His birth may appear as male in the General Register Office indexes, at the end of the A-Z sequence of forenames for the surname Wilson.
3. He may not have been born as Wilson. He may have been called Willson. Or Wilson may have been the name of his step-father, following the marriage or remarriage of his mother.
4. He may not have known where he was born. He may have believed that he came from Manchester and stated that in good faith, but perhaps he only grew up there to migrant parents who came from somewhere else: his mason father might find have found job opportunities lacking where he came from but plentiful in the city. Perhaps your grandfather was born somewhere else entirely in northern England.
5. He may have been born outside England and Wales. Some of the names of his children point to real or imagined Scottish roots, as does the surname Wilson. However, other names hint at the solid respectability of the late Victorian era tradesman class and may have been aspirational or fanciful, perhaps derived from reading matter rather than recycled from earlier generations of the family.
6. He may have modified his age, especially if there was more than a one or two year difference in years between him and his wife. Even though his recorded ages on his marriage certificate and the 1901 census are compatible with one another, once he had knocked off a few years, he may have felt compelled to keep up the pretence.
7. It is not possible to get death certificates for all the many men named William Wilson born between, say 1809 and 1843, and dying in England and Wales before 1893 but, if you have a great deal of patience and a subscription to a census website such as findmypast.co.uk, you could try looking at the 1851 to 1891 census returns to isolate the masons. You would then need to sketch basic trees for each of these candidates to see if one or more had a son named William James or similar born at about the right date, and then tentatively address and see if you can definitively eliminate these by turn.
8. His father could have been a highly specialised monumental mason or stone mason, or he might have been a bricklayer. He may not always have been a mason. Although this is a skilled trade, he may have been a master, or a journeyman, or a casual labourer who had to take other work when need be. Perhaps he appears on the earlier census returns with a different occupation.
9. The story might not be entirely reliable in several particulars. What would bring a house painter from Manchester to Swansea at some date between 1860 and 1893? Britain is criss-crossed with the improbable long- and short-distance migration routes of our ancestors. Many, of course, lead from country to town. Why would a Mancunian head for South Wales? One would think that there would be sufficient house-painting opportunities in Lancashire, and enough home-grown house painters in Glamorganshire, to make this surprising. Perhaps he had an earlier trade or calling? Or perhaps his family moved to Wales when he was still a boy?
10. Perhaps his seemingly modest story – born in Manchester circa 1860 to a father William, mason – was entirely invented. Identities could be changed with ease in the 19th century. Aliases could be taken to start afresh, and to leave behind bad memories or a dubious history. I have recently been looking at the data underlying the Chelsea Pensioner records which findmypast.co.uk is in the process of digitising in association with The National Archives: although we have not calculated any reliable statistics, perhaps 1 in every 1,000 soldiers had an alias. It may not help you advance your research but it remains a real possibility when you have carefully and methodically ruled out all the more usual explanations.’

We hope this is useful to your research. If you would like to pose a question for Steve, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account.

Ask the Expert – Belgian soldier or refugee?

Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘A quarter of my family history is a virtual mystery to me. My late mother – Annie Grandjean Kilburn – was born in Batley Carr, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire on 24 April 1919. Family legend has it that her father (my grandfather) was a Belgian soldier, hence the middle name of Grandjean. His first name was never revealed to me, assuming it was known by the family.

He was said to be Catholic while my grandmother – Emily Kilburn – was Protestant. The Church was supposed to have arranged for him to be shipped back to Belgium before the birth, although it was said he wished to marry Emily. I have no idea whether any of that was true.

I have discovered through the Huddersfield & District Family History Society that Belgian refugees were living in Batley during World War II but no names were recorded in Council records. At Kew National Archives I found two Belgian refugee families with surname Grandjean residing in Leeds, which is close by. It has also been suggested that he could have been a Belgian soldier visiting his refugee family. I can also imagine that a Belgian soldier is a far more romantic notion than a Belgian refugee.

I would obviously like to know my grandfather’s first name, and where/when he was born, but I realise that finding that information is unlikely. However, would Belgians have actually served within or been affiliated to the British Army in Yorkshire? Do records of ships departing England for Belgium in 1918/1919 exist? Would contact with the Belgian embassy help? Finally, are there any further avenues you could suggest I explore?

Many thanks for any help you could provide.’ From Pat

Steve says:

‘It seems quite possible that the family legend is true and that your maternal grandfather was a Belgian national named Grandjean. The surname is common in Belgium, especially in French-speaking Roman Catholic Wallonia region. Moreover, there were up to 240,000 Belgian refugees in England during the Great War (a number which had dwindled to just under 10,000 by 1921 as a result of post-War repatriation).

As you say, there are various records created by the Home Office, among other governments bodies, now housed at The National Archives in Kew. However, most of these series are general policy and administrative documents and do not relate to individuals. Therefore, you are probably better advised to try locally. I suspect that Belgians would have had to register with the local police as aliens, even though they were not enemy aliens.

In this respect, I suggest you begin by approaching the Wakefield headquarters of the West Yorkshire Archive Services; if Wakefield itself does not hold any records, they should be able to advise whether there are surviving records at any of the other branches, such as the Kirklees one in Huddersfield. You should be prepared for no records to survive. If records for a family named Grandjean do survive, of course, and assuming they give a place of origin within Belgium (which may prove vital to the success of the undertaking), potentially you would then have to try to conduct research in Belgium to see if you could locate and contact descendants.

You would then have to broach the potentially sensitive subject of the paternity of your late mother. Even were you to get to this point in your research, you may find that the Belgian family may be unaware of grandfather, or great uncle, having fathered a child, especially if he himself never mentioned the subject or returned to Belgium before the pregnancy came to light.

Not all family history puzzles can be resolved. In due course, most of us will come across multiple brick walls and dead-ends in research. For most of us, the principal challenges lie in wait when we get beyond the era of civil registration and start to work through the much less reliable and comprehensive early 19th and late 18th century parish registers.

Others will be stymied at an earlier stage in their research, particularly those with immigrant or foreign ancestors. Even when this happens, as may be the case with your Grandjean connection, it is worth revisiting the problem every couple of years: new records are published and databases created, and what is not possible today may become possible in due course.

More generally, I have two pieces of basic practical advice for researchers confronted with more off-the-wall or unfamiliar problems. Firstly, as mentioned above, approach your local county record office or central reference library and seek advice from the archivists, who may be able to point you in the right direction.

Secondly, contact your nearest family history society which, again, may be able to recommend some avenues of enquiry which have not occurred to you, or to put you in touch with an expert or another researcher looking at the same kind of problems. A good place to start is to visit the Federation of Family History Societies’ website at http://www.ffhs.org.uk/members2/alpha.php – note that, as well as county and regional societies, there are also special interest groups in the Other section of its directory of member societies.’

We hope this is useful to your research. If you would like to pose a question for Steve, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account.

Your experiences

In last month’s newsletter we asked you to send us your experiences of researching your family tree. Thanks to all of you who wrote in – we really enjoyed reading your stories. Read on for how Ann is getting on with the search for her ancestors:

Ann Barker’s story:

One branch of my tree is the Scadding/Scadden family from Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. I found information about my 5 x great grandfather John Scadding who was hanged, but nobody could find any newspaper reports.

Quite by chance I was reading The Western Gazette while visiting my daughter who now lives in Dorset. There was a section of news from 100 years ago, 50 years ago etc. I wrote to the editor to ask if there were any archives of newspapers in 1795 and if so where were they kept. He informed me that they were in the Somerset Studies Library in Taunton. So I persuaded my husband that we needed a day out!

There I discovered reports of his arrest, trial and subsequent hanging. He was arrested on 9th March 1795, his trial was on 11th March, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. He was hanged on 28th March 1795 in Dorchester Prison.

One of his accomplices Samuel Foster, who was also due to hang, was reprieved and sent to Australia the other one, Samuel’s brother Thomas Foster, gave King’s Evidence and was acquitted. Justice was swift in those days.

Your experiences

In last month’s newsletter we asked you to send us your experiences of researching your family tree. Thanks to all of you who wrote in – we really enjoyed reading your stories. Read on for how Liz is getting on with the search for her ancestors:

Liz Riley’s story:

‘I’ve had a lot of trouble locating people on one branch of my tree because they have changed their first names. The first one to come to mind was my husband’s great great grandmother who was christened Ellen Fawcett in 1809 and was named that at her marriage in 1832. Then on all the censuses she was Ellen Riley (her married name) and Ellen Fawcett on the birth certificates of her children. This was consistent until her death in 1874 which I could not find for many years.

I knew she died between 1871 and 1881, as I couldn’t find her on the 1881 census and couldn’t find a second marriage for her. I bought one certificate which looked close enough in DOB (1911) but it was the wrong Ellen Riley. So I gave up looking until recently I noticed a number of Eleanors among her grandchildren and great grandchildren and decided to risk the expense of buying the certificate – this was after checking the 1871 census for Eleanor Riley born about 1809 to ensure there wasn’t another person who this could be. It paid off and I now have the correct death cert for Ellen – I still can’t figure out why she suddenly changed her name though! I’ve noticed several others who had different names on official documents from the ones on censuses, but for Ellen this was a one-off.

This led to my reviewing a number of Ellen’s children and grandchildren who had seemingly disappeared without trace. Her daughter, always Ann on earlier censuses, turned out to be Susannah, her grandson Riley turned out to be Samuel (Riley was his middle name) and his brother Herbert was later known as John (his middle name) when he migrated to the US. Another brother, Henry, was known as Harry, so I was able to find some of his missing records when told this by a living descendant. I should have guessed these name changes earlier as my father-in-law was Lewis John, but was always known as John or Jack, and his sister Beatrice Maud (still living at 106) is mostly known as Maud, but was Betty to her husband. Also my husband’s grandmother was known as Annie, whereas her name was Ruth Hannah.

So my advice to others is to keep trying different variations of first names and second names, as they may have gone by different names at different times of their lives. You may also find clues in younger generations’ names (I now understand why my father-in-law almost insisted that we add John and Ruth as middle names to our first born son and daughter). It’s also important to get the certificates to ensure you have the correct person, but before purchasing them, check censuses if available to help rule out the wrong ones or you can spend a fortune on the wrong certificates. This is why it is important to have a subscription as it gives you the freedom to check all the resources available without worrying about how many credits you’re using up.’

Competition winner

In our February newsletter we asked you to guess who the famous Liverpudlian was from a series of clues. Judging by how many of you guessed the right answer, it was an easy one! The answer is William Ewart Gladstone, four times Prime Minister of the UK.

Our lucky winner this month is Austen Hamilton who we hope will enjoy reading Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors, the new book by Mike Royden. Read our March newsletter, which we’ll send out this Friday, for our Easter-themed competition and your chance to win another fascinating book.

Competition Winners – Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2010

A big thank you to everyone who entered our competition at the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE exhibition at Kensington Olympia this year! The prize of a 12 month Full subscription was offered on each day of the show, along with two runner-up prizes of a 6 month Full subscription.

I’m pleased to announce that these prizes have now been awarded to the following lucky winners:

12 month Full subscriptions – Robert Forrester, Pamela Freeman and Katherine Harris

6 month Full subscriptions – Rosemary Atkins, Jeremy Briggs, Mrs B Catchpole, Janet Henwood, Jack Miller and David Taylor

You can read more about the events at this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE exhibition here.

A customer's discovery in the Chelsea Pensioners records

Customers can often be so much more eloquent about the amazing discoveries that they make in our records than we can. Here’s a great example of what you might find in the Chelsea Pesioners records we released last week:

Originally posted at: http://www.bbcwhodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5132&hilit=&sid=6c73909b15c27394fdd81ddbd8178a78

A customer’s discovery in the Chelsea Pensioners records

Customers can often be so much more eloquent about the amazing discoveries that they make in our records than we can. Here’s a great example of what you might find in the Chelsea Pesioners records we released last week:

Originally posted at: http://www.bbcwhodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5132&hilit=&sid=6c73909b15c27394fdd81ddbd8178a78