Our military expert Paul Nixon, pictured, answers your questions.

From Doreen Taylor in Binfield, Berkshire:

‘How can I find military records of my uncle, Alfred James Saunderson, born July 1891 in Thames Ditton Surrey? I have tried to find out if he died in the First World War, as I suspect he did. I have not found his name on the Local Cenotaph. I am very interested to find out what happened to him. I hope you can help.’

Paul says:

‘The good news is that there is no Alfred James Saunderson listed on either the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Roll of Honour website, or on the Soldiers Died in The Great War database, so he appears to have survived WW1. A service record for Alfred Saunderson (no middle name) born in 1891 in Thames Ditton, survives in the WO 363 (burnt documents) series. It shows that he enlisted for war-time service only on 4 September 1914 and was given the number 3299. His record may be viewed at The National Archives in Kew.’

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We’ve had some exciting news from The National Archives this morning!

They have just made the correspondence between a number of English and Welsh Poor Law Unions available online. If you’ve found any of your ancestors living in workhouses in our census collection, these documents can help you establish what their living conditions were like.

You can search and download the records for free now from The National Archives’ website.

Our expert Stephen Rigden, pictured right, answers your questions.

From Graham Nowell in Abingdon, Oxfordshire:

‘I have some items that belonged to an ancestor who was a Customs and Excise Officer in the South West of England sometime in the 1800s. I know nothing about him except his and my surname, Nowell, not a very common name.

Are there any records available for searching that might give me more clues? Thank you.’

Steve says: ‘For questions such as this, two sources immediately spring to mind. The first is the relevant local county record office (or equivalent – many have now been re-branded) and the second is The National Archives at Kew. As Customs and Excise was a function of central government, I would suggest that TNA is much the better option to start with.

There is nothing searchable online. However, you can read an online Research Guide on the subject of Customs and Excise officials and tax collectors and this gives much information about what is available – indeed, it is clear that TNA holds a vast collection of materials.

From a quick glance, it seems that few of the records are likely to have integral indexes and, therefore, it would prove time-consuming searching speculatively for a reference to your ancestor. You would need to visit in person or, alternatively, commission a researcher to make the searches for you.

If you have the time, I would recommend that you undertake the research yourself, which would be much more fulfilling. When at TNA, you can always ask the search room staff for help and guidance, so you should not feel intimidated about the prospect of searching records which are unknown to you.’

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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.”

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.

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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The county of Lancashire, comprising 1.6 million records, has been added to the 1851 census. These records come freshly transcribed from a new set of images, so if you’ve failed to find your ancestors on the 1851 census elsewhere, then you may just find them among these accurately transcribed new findmypast.com records.

Search for your ancestors in the 1851 census now

Coming in the next month: unfilmed 1851 records online exclusively at findmypast.com

A short time after the 1851 census records go live, findmypast.com will add transcriptions and reconstructed images for around 160,000 individuals from severely damaged  pages. They have been made available for the first time online at findmypast.com after a 14 year project to transcribe the original records by the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society (MLFHS).

The records for the Manchester, Chorlton, Salford, Oldham and Ashton-Under-Lyne registration districts were water damaged many years ago when the storage area they were kept in flooded. Some were so badly affected that no writing at all was visible and many were too fragile to be scanned.

Image courtesy of Ray Hulley, Co-ordinator of the 1851 unfilmed census project.

In 1991 a small team of London-based volunteers from the MLFHS began the painstaking process of transcribing the records, which were held at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. As the documents were too fragile to withstand the glare of artificial light, the volunteers had to rely on natural daylight to read them.

Invisible text revealed

After The National Archives was established in Kew in 1997, the project was transferred and with the expertise and support of the conservation department there, the team made considerable advances in the recovery of the missing text. Using the latest ultraviolet equipment the team were able to see writing that had not been visible with natural daylight, and to re-examine documents that had already been transcribed to recover text that was invisible to the naked eye.

The transcribers followed a policy of ‘faithfulness to the original’ in accordance with best transcription practice, and words were only transcribed as far as they were legible – in many cases only parts of names or other details could be deciphered. In some cases street directories and rate books were used to confirm that names had been interpreted correctly, but the transcribers resisted the temptation to fill in information that they felt ‘should’ have been there.

The reconstructed image follows the same layout as the original, and as with other census images contains not just the information from the household, but the neighbouring houses as well.

Thanks to the statistical information that had been generated before the books were damaged, the transcription team knew that data from 217,717 individuals was missing. The team managed to retrieve 82 per cent of this data. We’re sure that you will agree that this is an impressive achievement, which would not have been possible without the immense dedication of Ray Hulley, the project leader, and his team of volunteers from the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society.

Help save records from being lost forever! Get involved with a project

Dedicated family historians up and down the country are working on other projects to make records like these available to family historians in Britain and around the world. If you would like to get involved with a project like this one you should contact the Federation of Family History Societies who will be able to give you information on your local family history society, as well as projects up and down the country.