Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘I hope you can please advise me about the following. I cannot find the entire family of my great grandfather in the 1901 census. I have them in the 1891 and 1911 censuses.

This involves father, mother and seven children, the eldest child being born in 1884 (he is shown at home still in 1911 census). I have dates from a birth certificate of the seventh child in 1897 in Islington, London and the date 1904 from the death certificate of the 2nd child in Cambridge. He was a journeyman builder-cum-bricklayer - is it possible for a whole family to disappear from the census?

Help please, I have tried looking for all the family separately on census searches and can find nothing.’ From Terry

Steve says: “The short answer is yes but it is not a simple answer, as the reasons for absence, or apparent absence, are many. Here are 10 to get you thinking. I am sure that some you will be able to discount as impossible or implausible from your knowledge of the family.

1. For whatever reason, the family’s householder schedule was not completed, or not collected, or was lost, before the enumerator filled in his enumeration book.
2. The family filled in their census return correctly but the enumerator relayed the information incorrectly into the enumeration book.
3. The family filled in their census form illegibly or inaccurately, and the enumerator faithfully entered the incorrect information, or their interpretation of it, into the enumeration book.
4. Some parts of each census were simply and irretrievably lost at some date prior to the microfilming of the originals. For 1901, for example, parts of Bloomsbury & St Giles (London), Deal (Kent) and Hovingham (Yorkshire) are known to be missing.
5. The family has been mis-transcribed or mis-indexed on the versions of the census you have used. If, however, you have viewed two or more different versions, it is unlikely that each version would have a mis-transcription of the original unless the original is of especially poor legibility.
6. The family were failed migrants. Up to 50% of intended emigrants fail; they spend a few months or years overseas and then return to their place of origin. In this scenario, your family was abroad in 1901, having emigrated after 1897 and returned before 1904.
7. Temporary employment overseas. Seasonal economic migrants are not as unusual as one might think. Men, with or without their families, would travel overseas for work. I am thinking less of what today we would call professional “business trips” and more of the working classes, for example, Cornish miners going to South Africa to earn money for six months, a year or longer in times of economic depression and unemployment in Britain.
8. The family may have been temporarily residing elsewhere within the British Isles.
9. The father was serving with the British forces overseas in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in 1901 and his wife and children are hiding somewhere on the census returns as yet undiscovered.
10. The family is on the census but its members are dispersed, for example variously staying with grandparents, visiting relatives or boarding at schools, as appropriate. This is rare but perhaps not as rare as you might think: it makes it difficult to establish the whereabouts of each member of the family unit out of context.”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘I have real family history problem that I am unable to solve and hope you can advise me of how to get out of the deadlock.

1. On 1 March 1868 at Ivy Cottage, Kennington Green, Lambeth, a baby girl, Gertrude Foote Patman, was born to Samuel Patman, architect, and Mary Ann Patman (formerly Foote).
2. On 26 April 1868 at St Mark’s Church, Kennington, Gertrude Foote Patman was christened and the baptism entry shows her father as Samuel Patman, surveyor, of Montague Road, Uxbridge.
3. 1869 voters’ register shows Samuel Patman at 89 Vauxhall Walk, Kennington, in Princes Ward.
4. On 7 June 1888 William Thomas Wills, my partner’s grandfather, marries Gertrude Foote at St Mary’s Church, Hardwicke, Bucks. Her father is not listed on marriage certificate. She was a spinster working as a servant.
5. On 25 February 1889 a baby boy, William George Patman Wills, was born to William and Gertrude at Waddesdon, Bucks.

Now this is all I can give you as I have been unable to trace the marriage of Samuel Patman to Mary Ann Foote. Neither can I find record of Samuel Patman in any census before or after 1868 and nothing in the 1871 or 1881 censuses as a married couple with baby Gertrude etc. In (4) you see that Gertrude loses her father’s surname when she gets married but in (5) she recognises her father’s name by using it when she names her first born son.

There is just one big mystery which despite many hours of searching I cannot solve so I am really hoping you can help.’ From Peter

Steve says: “This is not the sort of question which permits a quick or easy answer. However, in light of the inconclusive nature of your research to date, it is probably safe to conclude that Miss Foote and Mr Patman were not married. It was quite easy to register a birth, or baptise a child, as if the parents were married and without producing evidence of marriage of the parents. Whether or not the child was born illegitimately, the absence of a marriage certificate creates immediate problems when researching ancestry, as one is deprived of the age of the father and the name and occupation of his father, which are recorded on marriage certificates and are essential in confidently ascending to the earlier generation.

Moreover, as you cannot find a candidate Samuel Patman on census returns either side of 1868/69, a second and more tentative conclusion I would draw is that he may have been born outside England & Wales and his stay in the country may have been transitory. This assumes that his name is as stated and he did not have an alias. His name is not especially common. A quick search on the internet shows a 34-year old Samuel Patman leaving London aboard the Indus on 10 April 1871 and arriving in Brisbane on 20 July 1871. No occupation is shown. He was travelling in 2nd cabin, rather than in steerage, which might be consistent with his putative professional status.

There is of course no evidence that this is one and the same individual as the father of Gertrude. He would have been born circa 1837 which, being on the cusp of English & Welsh civil registration, is not ideal for research purposes and, of course, as suggested earlier, he may have been born elsewhere. However, if you have no other leads, you may wish to pursue the Australian migrant with view to eliminating him from your enquiry or tying him in.”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

After receiving a copy of my great-grandmother’s death certificate I thought it would be an easy thing to find her burial place so that I can visit from Australia next year. However, I have come up against a problem I have no idea how to tackle - I am unfamiliar with the areas around Bournemouth and with the changes to Hampshire and Dorset boundaries so do not know where to begin.

She died in Winton, Hampshire in 1903 from the effects of TB at aged 32 - her name was Ellen Dean (nee Boyt), wife of Charles. I have made enquiries with libraries but there is no record of her burial in the Bournemouth area and I am at a loss to know where to try - surely there must be a register which would record all burials for the County? Any advice would be gratefully received.’ Kris

Steve says:”Unfortunately, no! There are no such things as countywide burial registers in England and Wales.

Registration of deaths occurs locally at district register offices, with records then being collated centrally into a nationwide index. It is true that in civil registration there is an ongoing move towards unitary authorities sited at county level: for example, Kent County Council has a single countywide Registration Services portal. However, this does not apply to burials and cremations.

Unlike deaths, burials have never been regarded by the state as a vital event requiring systematic registration of date and place. Therefore, once a death has been registered, and assuming certain regulations are followed, burial can take place in a cemetery (or other approved location) of one’s choice.

Back in 1903, therefore, your late great grandmother’s death was registered in Christchurch registration district, which covered both Winton and Bournemouth. This is the only guide to place of burial that you have: most burials take place close to the locality of residence and death where these are the same. However, it is not hard to imagine situations where these general guidelines are broken. For example, if a person died far from their usual place of abode (for instance, while on holiday, or travelling), they may have been buried not near the place of death but back in their home district. Similarly, it is not unusual for a person who left their home town to be buried back there, especially if all other family remained in that location. Of course, neither of these scenarios may apply in your case, but do check on the death certificate for any addresses given for the deceased and/or the informant.

If it does seem that your great grandmother both lived and died in the Christchurch registration district area, you find yourself in a position shared by many genealogists: you know where an ancestor died but you will have to search speculatively to try to identify the place of burial. It was precisely to help out researchers in your predicament that the Federation of Family History Societies embarked upon its ongoing National Burial Index (NBI) project. A version of the NBI is online, containing 13 million entries, at Find My Past and can be found at http://www.findmypast.co.uk/parish-records-collection-search-start.action?redef=0&event=D. Currently, however, there are only limited records for Hampshire and, unfortunately, none of relevance to you.

This leaves you with only one option: to identify all the municipal and church burial grounds in the area active in 1903 and to eliminate them one by one, working out from the centre to more distant locations. As you are based in Australia and do not benefit from local knowledge, I suggest that your best step would be to contact the relevant family history society, in this instance Hampshire Genealogical Society for advice. Their contact page http://www.hgs-online.org.uk/contacts.htm includes email addresses for local organisers. They may also be able to recommend a local expert willing to undertake enquiries upon your behalf; such searches may be necessary at the County Record Office and could take in funeral notices in local newspapers for the two weeks after death, as well as burial registers.

Finally, as a word of caution, it is worth noting that if and when you successfully identify the place of burial, it is possible that you will find no surviving headstone in situ – one may not have been raised in the first place, or it may have become weathered and damaged over time. In this regard, those local authorities most mindful of health and safety regulations often lay down headstones which they deem to be dangerous.”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘Is it possible for a person to appear in more than one census return? In other words, does a census recorder check that all the people named on a census are actually present in the house?

My problem is that I have just recently obtained a copy of a marriage certificate for Norton Dryden Hutchinson showing that he married Maria Cook aged 20 in Southwark in 1870, and her father was Edward Cook, a stationer. Fine, there is a Maria Jane Cook born in 1850, father Edward who in the 1861 census is shown to be a stationer. I cannot find any other Maria Cook with father Edward who is a stationer. The trouble is that the 1871 census has a Maria Cook living with Norton Hutchinson but also a Maria Cook living with her father Edward the stationer.

The situation is not helped by Norton Hutchinson claiming to be a widower in 1881, but I cannot find any death of Maria Hutchinson, nor any 1881 census for father Edward and his wife.’ Mike

Steve says:”Yes! Many family historians come across the situation during their research. As alluded to in your question, each census is a snapshot in time intended to record not who was customarily resident in a given property, but who was actually resident overnight on census night. However, this objective will not have been entirely achieved in any census.

There are many reasons for this. The first is simply that people are not very good at filling in forms. If you are familiar with the 1911 census for England and Wales, you will have seen for the first time the household schedules completed by householders themselves (these were destroyed for the earlier censuses). And you will almost certainly have seen mistakes in filling out the form – for example, the so-called fertility information entered against the man and not the woman, or Nationality completed by English and Welsh natives even though it clearly says that this is to be filled in only by persons born overseas. I have also seen several 1911 census returns where the householder has dutifully but erroneously entered the names and details of all their deceased children: usually, struck out in angry red ink by a Census Office clerk.

So we can expect householders to have made many errors of other types on the household schedules for earlier census years from 1841 to 1901 and for many of these to have been copied across by enumerators into the census returns we see today.

Secondly, the form may have been completed a day or two before the actual census night and then a person usually resident turns out to be away temporarily on census night and is recorded elsewhere as well.

In short, I believe there are reasonable grounds for you to accept that both 1871 census returns refer to the same Maria Cook. The fact that she is recorded under her maiden name Cook rather than her married name Hutchinson in the parental home is not unprecedented and may simply be householder or enumerator error. However, before proceeding further, I would strongly recommend that you conduct further searches and obtain supporting documents, especially the 1850 birth certificate of Maria (to check the name of her mother). Bear in mind that the surname Cook is of course common, London is a populous city, and the occupation of stationer may be expressed in other ways, or may change over time (for instance, between 1871 and 1881), so you do need to proceed with caution so as not to accidentally attach an incorrect but coincidentally similar-looking branch to your family tree.

Finally, although it is premature to leap to any conclusions, it would not have been unheard of for a man to claim to be widowed, and to re-marry, after separation from his first wife. In the mid- and late 19th century, divorce was an expensive and intimidating process and there are many known instances of men, and women, dispensing with the formality of divorce and re-marrying bigamously.”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘Help! I have an elusive great-great-great-grandfather who appears out of no-where. His name was Absalom Boucher/Bowcher who married on 17 Aug 1825 in Bridport, Dorset to Priscilla Coombs.
Absalom died in 1848 but not before fathering 7 children. He was buried in St Mary’s churchyard in Burton Bradstock.

What I cannot find, is his Birth or Christening, which from the age given on his Death Certificate would’ve been circa 1790/91. His occupation has variously been described as: M. S., Gentleman’s Servant, Butler & Inn Keeper on his children’s records.

To work as a gentleman’s servant or butler, you would think it was for a well-healed land owner.
A thorough check of the Ilchester estate records (Fox & Strangeways families) did not reveal a butler or servant by the name of Absalom Boucher.

Another rich land owner was the Pitt-Rivers family and yet another was the Roberts family who owned the local mill. No further in-depth research has been done as I live in Australia.

Absalom may have had 2 sisters: Sarah b: c. 1798 & Abigail b: c. 1901, both around the Bridport area, but can only find a 1861 census showing these 2 ladies (Sarah married a chap named Edward Macey from Symondsbury & they were all living in Dorchester in 1861).

Absalom is shown on the 1841 Census living in Symondsbury, Dorset. He was NOT of that Parish.
He is listed as a land owner in Burton Bradstock & Shipton Gorge, shown on the Tithe Apportionments around 1843.

Also listed as Land Owners was Sophia Roberts, Lord Rivers & Elizabeth Roberts.

Two clues:
1). Absalom had a daughter named Ann Roberts Boucher chr: 31 Jan 1835 in Burton Bradstock.
2). He and a woman named Mary Roberts were Witnesses to the marriage of one Ann Roberts in 1835 to a Robert Slader.

And that’s as much as I know about Absalom. There are of course records of other Boucher’s in the general Dorset area, but none that can be linked to Absalom.

I wonder if you could give me some tips as there is nothing more publicly available on the Internet or on the BVRI Disks. ‘ Cheryl

Steve says:“One of the least auspicious scenarios in which a genealogist can find themselves is the one where an ancestor is recorded with a No against Whether Born In Same County on their 1841 census return and then inconveniently dies before the 1851 census can shed any light upon place of birth. It is not possible to solve such a problem quickly or painlessly.

In your case, we know only that Absalom was not born in Dorset. You also say that you have searched all the usual online sources, although these are of course far from complete in the required period before the start of civil registration in 1837. I am assuming the Whether Born In Scotland, Ireland Or Foreign Parts field in the 1841 census is silent for Absalom, in which case the usual inference is that he was born in England, for which you also have some circumstantial evidence (his sisters were apparently born in Dorset, although I believe you have found no evidence of this).

Two things occur to me in light of this. Firstly, as you will no doubt have considered, the surname may be French and quite possibly Huguenot and you may wish to consider a speculative browse through the publications of the Huguenot Society – for details of what is available, see http://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk.

Secondly, an alternative scenario (not necessarily contradicting the first), is an origin in the Channel Islands, both because of the surname and of a possible family seafaring connection given his marriage in Bridport (I am assuming that the marriage register says “of this parish”).

Of course, neither of these may be true: he may simply have hailed from, say, neighbouring Devon or Somerset, or from London or elsewhere, but you have nowhere to go without some leads.

This may be one of the problems which you have to put by a for a year or so and periodically review, for instance in light of newly available online resources as and when they are published. However, if you have not done so already, you may wish to search for probate records just in case Absalom died testate and mentioned siblings, or nephews and nieces (given the large family of his own, this may be improbable but you will not know unless you check). Pre-1858 probate papers are decentralised but there are some searches you can make online, for instance on Documents Online (for the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills only) http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills.asp and, indeed, on Find My Past’s indexes to death duty registers http://www.findmypast.co.uk/DeathDutyStartSearchServlet. Note that the last, which cover the period from 1796 to 1903, are indexes and that, if you find a reference to the deceased, you need to take your search to The National Archives to view the registers on microfilm.”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘The 1911 census shows that my wife’s great grandmother was born in Peking, China in 1875. Is there any way we can find out why her parents might have been in China at that time, when they went and when they returned to England. They were all English citizens.’ Derrick George

Steve says: “Peking, or Pekin as it was often spelt in the Victorian era, would have had a small but thriving British community in the 1870s, following the trading and other concessions granted by the Chinese in 1860. As well as diplomats at the British Legation (with their staff of professionals such as translators and physicians), this is likely to have comprised customs officials, merchants and a small but growing number of what today we would call NGOs (both educational and medical) and church missionaries. With the exception of the evangelists, in some cases these residents may have taken with them trusted British domestic staff. It is quite likely that there was also a small entrepreneurial community servicing the official one – for instance, running a club or restaurant, a hairdresser’s or a fashion store.

Only you are in a position to judge how your wife’s ancestor fits into this social landscape. Perhaps you will be able to estimate how long her family stayed in Peking from their presence or absence on the 1871, 1881 and 1891 English & Welsh census returns. The census and family birth, marriage and death certificates may also shed light on this. However, I have to say that it is very unlikely that you will be able to establish when the family travelled out to China, as this was before the government started to systematically require and retain passenger lists in 1890. They could have taken a number of routes, for instance the long way by ship round the Cape, or the short cut through the Suez Canal if they travelled after it opened in 1869, or the combined land and sea route which predated the opening of the Canal.

There is a limited collection of Peking registers at The National Archives in Kew and you may be in luck. The piece FO681/1 covers births registered with the British Legation 1869-76, so your wife’s ancestor born in 1875 might just be included in those records.

Perhaps other researchers have family history in Peking and can add to my general comments?”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘I have a brickwall that I would love an expert to look into to see if I can break it down. I have a baptism that I cannot find.

My 4 x great grandmother was a Leah (or Learth) Knights who, according to the 1851 census, was born in Billingford, Norfolk in around 1767.  Of course I have searched all the surrounding parishes, both in Norfolk and Suffolk, along with the other Billingford in Norfolk, but have not found any entries that could be hers.

Leah married Michael Pake in Rushall in 1799 and they had several children.  Leah would appear to have been quite old when she married - for those days - and she died in 1853, so I do not have any further census entries to check her place of birth.  She does not appear in any settlement or other Poor Law documents, and I do not have any information about her parents.  She was a spinster when she married Michael, so Knights is her maiden name and not a previous married name.

Can you please offer me any advice on how I might be able to track down her baptism?’ Jenny Manning

Steve says: “It is not possible for me to solve this without undertaking research, of course, but a few ideas occur to me.

Firstly, I assume that the parish registers you have been searching through are those of the Church of England. It is possible that the family was not part of the Established Church and the child was baptised in the nearest local Catholic church (or privately) or Non-Conformist chapel. Also, of course, it is possible that the family was not religious and simply did not bother with baptism: even though there were advantages to baptism, it is a mistake to assume that all children were baptised, or that parents baptised all of their children. It is also possible that the child was baptised not at the customary time (at about four weeks after birth) but at some later date: it is not uncommon to see parents baptising two, three or four of their children at the same time (for reasons of convenience or economy). You could therefore consider extending your search throughout Leah’s childhood years.

Census information is, by its very nature, very vulnerable to inaccuracy, as no evidence of identity was required by the authorities: they accepted in good faith whatever details the householders entered into their census forms. It is quite possible that Leah believed she was born in Billingford but was actually born elsewhere, for instance if her family moved there in her childhood. In other words, all Leah’s memories may have been of Billingford but she could have been born somewhere else entirely.

Another possibility is that she was indeed born in Billingford but not as Knights. Parental deprivation figures were high in the C18th and it is possible that her father died, her mother re-married and Leah took the name of her step-father (a Mr Knights, in this scenario). A variation on this scenario is an illegitimate birth, with the single mother then going on to marry Mr Knights. Or that Leah was born under a different surname but effectively fostered by a local family named Knights.

As you can see, there are various alternatives to consider, and you may have to consider all of them if you are to overcome this brickwall. I have answered your question in some detail as many researchers will face these kinds of problem and will need to systematically consider the manifold possibilities if they are to achieve a breakthrough.”

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Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘My great uncle Tommy Venables was a private in the Cheshire regiment in the First World War. It was stated that he was ‘killed at home’ in November 1916, but no explanation is given, although we believe he drowned. Where can we go to clarify what happened?’ Irene Hartless

Steve says: “Soldiers Died in the Great War shows that Private Thomas Venables died at “Home”. Where the theatre of war is given as “Home”, this usually means that the soldier died either while serving within the UK (for example, in a reserve battalion or in a home service garrison), or else died back in UK of wounds sustained overseas without having been discharged from the army.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website shows that he was buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery. If you have not already visited the memorial there, it is worth doing so in case a headstone gives more detail: however, it has to be said that this is unlikely unless the family met the cost (CWGC headstones are purposely standardised in design). The simplest way to find out the cause of death for a “Home” theatre of war casualty is to purchase a copy of the death certificate using the usual General Register Office (GRO) civil death indexes. Private Venables’ death appears to have been registered in the West Derby district in the March quarter of 1917. This delay (when registration would have been expected in the December quarter of 1916) may indicate that there was an inquest, which would be consistent with accidental death, such as drowning, which would require a coroner’s report. You can buy a copy of the death certificate for £7 online from the GRO’s website http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates or, if you live in Merseyside, you could visit in person the register office, which is located in Liverpool’s Cotton Exchange. The certificate may point you to a coroner’s report (if there was one: try Merseyside Record Office) and that, together with local newspapers, may fill in the background.”

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