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.’

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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.’

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