St Mary’s Columbarium

Today, being Easter Sunday, I thought it an appropriate time to reflect on life and death and to visit and photograph the plaques of the Columbarium walls at St Mary’s Anglican Church, in Kangaroo Point Brisbane. Apart from the stunning views of the city, the church is historic having had its foundation stone laid in 1872. Unfortunately I arrived too late in the day to go inside the church, but the exterior is something to behold in itself. I’m not sure if the church ever had a cemetery of its own at any time in the past, but it does currently have three Columbarium walls which are beautifully set out and obviously still in active use.

Many of the plaques simply have a two digit year and so it is unknown if these are for the 1900′s or the 1800′s, some research will be needed to determine that for certain, however many have the full four digits and it appears that the majority of the plaques are for deaths occurring in the 1900′s with some in the 2000′s. The most recent death date appears to be in 2011, and the earliest that I am aware of is 1921. While the majority of the plaques remember people in their 70′s and 80′s, there are a number of centenarians, with the oldest being 111 years and 4 months (as recorded on the plaque). There are of course a number of infants, children and teenagers remembered here as well, and a number of plaques simply state a name and a date.

One of the Columbarium walls at St Mary’s Kangaroo Point

Genealogically “Missing”

Recently I discovered that I had “missed” two children in a family on my family tree. How did I discover this? Through the 1911 UK Census for the parents of the family.

Not only was the 1911 UK Census the first census to be released as the original documents filled out by the household, not as a collation of data in the Enumerators Return Book, but it was also the first census to ask about “fertility in marriage”, namely how many years married, how many children that marriage had produced, how many were still alive, and how many had died. As such, it is possible for family researchers to potentially find out about “missing” children, and also, to help narrow down possible years of death for the children.

Just because a child’s name appears on one census and not on the next does not necessarily mean a death has occurred. Depending on their age, the child may have left home for work reasons, or have been sent to live with extended family, and checks of census records in the wider area, and of known family could help confirm this. Departure from the family census can also mean marriage of course.

So, what does that have to do with my two “missed” children? With the family in question, I had been able to easily find out about 10 children thanks to the 1871, 1881, 1891 & 1901 census records, and had also been able to trace time frames for the departure from the family home. I had so far been able to trace six of them with reasonable confidence, two of them had died and four had married, the other four known children I was still in the process of tracking down.

Then I found the 1911 census for the parents, and saw confirmation that all 10 children had left home…. oh wait, 12 children, 6 living, 6 deceased. I’m “missing” two children. Six deceased, ok I knew about 2 of the deceased, but if I only knew about 10 children, then that means I can reasonably infer that the 2 “missing” are also deceased, and may have died as infants or children having been born after one census and dying before the next. But how do I go about finding these two knowing essentially nothing about them except who their parents were.

Through cross referencing a combination of searches on a variety of genealogical websites, I believe I have found one of the two children, a young lass who appears to have died in infancy having been registered with both births and deaths within the same year but in separate registration quarters. The other child may take time to trace, and I have to be aware of a number of things in my searching for them.

• Can I see any gaps of three or more years between the known birth years that might show a place for another child to be born?
• If there are no obvious gaps, could the child have been a twin with only one surviving? Checking for a second birth registration in the same location and same period as a known birth could provide clues to this.
• If the child died before the birth could be registered, it may be that only a death was registered, so I shouldn’t discount zero aged deaths that have no corresponding birth register.
• Registration of a stillborn child prior to 1927 in the UK did not occur, and so there may be no official record of the birth or death at all.
• Lastly, but probably most importantly, given the age of the parents in 1911, and the size of the family, can I trust that they have recalled the number of children correctly? Does the other information they have provided appear to tally up with the already known information?

The 1911 UK Census is of course not the only way to find out about the genealogically missing.

• Depending on the year and country, a child’s birth certificate may indicate older siblings.
• A death certificate will usually indicate the names and ages of living offspring, as well as the number & gender of offspring already deceased – sometimes with names.
• Marriages may have been witnessed by family members whose names will then appear on the certificate, a father’s name will usually have been recorded. A witness with the same surname may be a sibling, an Aunt or Uncle, a Cousin, or even an in-law. Remember also, in the early 1800′s the population was much smaller and marrying a cousin or second cousin wasn’t unheard of.
• Wills and Probate records can show up skeletons in the closet by naming living heirs unknown by other family members.
• Shipping records and Passenger lists can indicate potential relationships by checking for common addresses amongst passengers.
• Family gravestones may provide details of an infant’s death not able to be found elsewhere
• Military records, criminal records, and land records may also provide clues and should not be discounted

If all else fails, find a discussion board or facebook group relating to family history in the area of the world your “missing” person is likely to be in, and ask for assistance. Give them all the details that you have and let them know where you have searched, then ask for suggestions on where else you might be able to search for information. Good Luck in your searching.

Recent Studies Completed

Just a few days ago, I handed in my final assignment for my most recent subject. With 99% of the work being done in Illustrator, I had a great time learning the ins and outs of various techniques and tools. For example, did you know that it may be easier to use the Pen tool if you actually use a Pen (and tablet)? Using the mouse for the Pen tool just doesn’t seem to flow as nicely for me as it did with the pen & tablet, but I know of some designers who create great detailed work using only the mouse, so it really does come down to personal preference there.

I’d like to share with you just a few of the creations I made through this last subject.

Which Birth Record?

In my vast family tree, I have 24 males by the name of William Siddle who were born prior to 1900 in England, and all appear to have been born in either the Yorkshire or Durham areas. This isn’t a huge problem really as for the majority of them, they each have their own birth year, and by cross referencing census records and birth registry indexes I have been able to reasonably confidently assign birth years and birth quarters to each of these people.

However, from my initial findings, I have 6 people born in the same year as another, two in 1851, two in 1854, and two in 1859. To work out which birth index record belonged to which person, without resorting to purchasing each birth record, took some detective work and a lot of cross referencing. For this example, I am going to use my 1854 pair, and I am going to walk you through my process of determinining which birth record I should attach to each of these people.

I already knew from census records that one was born in Hurst, Yorkshire, and the other was born in Shildon, Durham and both have ages recorded consistent with being born about 1854.

William Siddle Births 1853-1855

First of all, I went to FreeBDM and looked up all William Siddle’s born between 1853 and 1855, not specifying any District or County. This gave me a surprising 9 results. My next step then had to be determining in which county each of these districts was located.

By clicking on each District name I was able to find out that Docking is part of the Norfolk County and so could rule out that record immediately. Auckland and Durham Districts are part of Durham County, and Teesdale sits on the border of Durham and North Riding of Yorkshire, while the remainder are part of the various Yorkshire counties as they stand today.

My next step involves Google Maps and locating each place in relation to each other. Teesdale was difficult to locate but I suspect that it may now be part of Barnard Castle in Durham.

By plotting Shildon, Bishop Auckland (aka Auckland), Barnard Castle, and Durham on a map, I could immediately see that Bishop Auckland is much closer to Shildon geographically and is therefore more likely to be the registration location for a Shildon birth. This puts the Shildon born William Siddle as being registered in the Apr-May-June quarter of 1854. To confirm this further I will have to look for a baptism record.

The Hurst Yorkshire born William Siddle proved a little more challenging. After plotting the locations on a map, the locations showed a clear difference in geographical location. Halifax, Hunslet and Leeds are clearly in a more southern part of Yorkshire (although the County is called West Riding of Yorkshire) , while Reeth, Richmond and my known birth location of Hurst are all located in the northern part of Yorkshire. This, I could rule out Halifax, Hunslet & Leeds as likely registration points.

When I first saw the FreeBDM search results, because I knew that my Hurst born William Siddle has had his death registered in Richmond, my first thought was that the Richmond birth must also be his. However, the date of the Richmond birth didn’t tally up with the age declared at death and the ages declared on each of the intervening census records. I therefore ruled out the Richmond birth as well.

This left me with just the Reeth registered birth left. However this registration was for the December quarter of 1853, could this possibly be right? Well, yes, it can be. On each census record, the Hurst born William Siddle’s age is recorded as 7, 17, 27, 37, 47, and 57. Yes, 7 years prior to 1861 is 1854, but had William had his birthday yet that year?

In the 1861 census, which had a census date of April 7th, a child born between 8 April and 31 December would not yet have had their birthday, so if they were born in 1854, they would be recorded as being aged 6. However a child born between 1 January and 7 April of 1854 will have had their 7th birthday by the time the census is taken. Similarly going back a year, children born between 8 April & 31 Dec of 1853 will have had their 7th birthday but not their 8th like those born on or before 7 April 1853. Therefore I can safely say that the Hurst born William Siddle was born between April of 1853 and April 1854, and therefore the Reeth registration is most likely to be the correct registration for this person’s birth. A baptism record may agin help with further confirmation of this.

Now that I have those two 1854 William Siddle’s sorted out, and found that one is actually an 1853 Siddle, I just have to work out where the other 7 William’s might fit into my family tree.

Missing Records & looking for a specific date.

In my family history research I have often found that one or two of the easy-to-find records are inexplicably missing. Sometimes, as in the case of census records, it is because the family wasn’t where I expected them to be, but other times, as in the case of birth, death & marriage records, it could be due to me not having a correct date or place to start with, or the event occurred before compulsory registration came in, or that records were destroyed in some way, or the record simply does not exist. But an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I know that these people lived and breathed and had children, and I know from the records I have found where & when they thought they were born, but in my many hours of searching a variety of spellings, locations, dates and indexes, I have yet to find the records I seek.

How then do I get around these missing records? Simple, I don’t. I gather the presumed facts from the records I have found and I put them all together and if everything matches up, then I might be able to at least record a year or a general location, but until I find that missing record with that last date and location, there will always be a presumption of that piece of data. I do keep in mind however that as time progresses, more and more historical records are coming online, and that sooner or later, another piece in the puzzle may come to light that leads me that little bit closer to an answer.

As an example, I am currently looking for the birth date of an ancestral aunt, Sarah Hardman. I know on her marriage certificate from October 1866, she states that she was born in Belfast Ireland, and that she gave her age as 33 years. If I take this at face value and that she has not adjusted her age up or down for vanity reasons, I can reasonably guess that she was born in 1833. While this is a reasonable guess, I have not taken into account the three months remaining in the year where she could still have her 34th birthday, thus pushing her birth back to 1832. I can now narrow her birth date down to the 12 months between her marriage date in October of 1832 and the same date in 1833.

When the information from her death certificate I have ordered arrives, it should have the date she died and the age she was at that time, well, the age the informant thought her to be anyway.  This extra information should hopefully allow me to narrow down her date of birth even further. If I then combine that with other information gathered from her children’s birth’s, or from her spouse’s death, or from newspaper announcements, then I may even be able to narrow down her date of birth to a specific month.

By looking at each individual piece of information both separately and together in the larger picture, then educated guesses can be made, and if the missing record never turns up, then at least you have a year or even month as well.  Keep in mind though that sometimes people adjusted their ages for a variety of reasons, some we can guess at, but others we can only wonder why. For the same reasons, some people altered the place of their birth, either by mere kilometers, or sometimes by hundreds or even more. Then of course, putting marriage aside for women, some people changed their name – or had their name changed for them.

Name change reasons are much more varied but usually obvious. Literacy and the ability to check what another person has written is one main factor, another would be how a person thinks a name should be spelled based on how they hear the word being pronounced by the person saying it. Siddle, Siddell, Sidle, Sydall – all pronounced the same way, yet each spelled a different way, and there are probably more alternatives for this name as well.

Lastly, when looking for records that are apparently missing, keep in mind what the father’s occupation was. Was it one that could have taken him away from home frequently, could he have registered a child’s birth or death in another part of the country to where the event actually happened? Was he in the military, could the record be hidden in his military record or in the records of his regiment, rather than with the country’s records office?

Think laterally and outside the box, and keep your fingers crossed, but don’t spend every minute on it, but also, don’t give up until you are certain it doesn’t exist.

Happy hunting.