Targeted searches on Ancestry

Posted on 7th Aug 2019 by English Ancestors

In a previous post we looked at the usefulness of hints as a way of finding records, as well as at the difference between Ancestry and Find My Past, in terms of the quality and focus of hints.

What I want to move on to now is searches instigated by you, the researcher. We’ll look at this over two posts, this week focusing on Ancestry, and next week on Find My Past. In each post we’ll consider searches in the following order:

A general search from an ancestor’s profile page
A general search from the top menu bar
Narrower searches, focusing on a particular category of record
Focusing right down on one particular record set.

What I’d like to draw to your attention is that, by increasingly taking control of what your search focuses on, you’re increasing the level of your own research. You’re saying ‘I already know all about X, Y and Z, but I have a gap around A and B, and this is what I want to try to find out.’ This moves you on to intermediate level genealogy.

By the way, you can follow a lot of what is written here by working through it on Ancestry even if you’re not a subscriber. Obviously, you won’t be able to see the actual records.

And finally – just to say – if you already know all about general searches and homing in on categories, skip to point 4. There might still be something new for you there. 🙂

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In Ancestry then, let’s start with the kind of search most of us do when we’re just starting out as genealogists, or indeed when we’re just starting out with a new ancestor:

1. A general search of all records from an ancestor’s profile page
To do this, simply click ‘Search’ from an ancestor’s profile. The search engine draws upon all the information you already have about your ancestor, using this as filters. However, Ancestry treats all that information as ‘approximates’, resulting in years, places and even names on suggested records that are often way off beam. It might also default to ‘Search all collections’ – including all overseas records as well as the UK ones. And if you try to tighten up the search by moving the sliding scale to the right (see image below) to confirm you really do mean this exact surname, this exact place and year, more often than not it will tell you no matching records can be found.

So, from the profile page of my GG grandfather John Groves, a standard ‘Search’ automatically incorporating the search filters shown in the box to the left, returns 93,311 possible records. Even if I change the filter from ‘All collections’ to ‘UK and Ireland’ only, I still get 34,360 possible records. And whizzing down the first page of these 34,360 records, only two of them are correct.

2. A general search from the top menu bar
Go to the top menu bar on the screen, click on Search, and select Search All Records from the drop-down menu. Sticking with John Groves, but this time typing in his name, birth year, birth place and place of residence, instead of allowing the search engine to copy over the info from his profile page, this time I’m offered a whopping 352,536 records from ‘All Collections’, or 127,706 if I amend the collections to ‘UK and Ireland’.

3. A narrower search, focusing on a particular category of record
Those first two searches have their uses, but I think we’ll all agree that a way of narrowing down would be useful. We can start to do this by focusing on a particular category of record. Again, we can do this from two places on the website:

If we’ve already started the general search by clicking through from our ancestor’s profile page, immediately below the search filters box to the left of the Ancestry screen we’ll see a list of categories. Click on any one of these categories and you’ll see further options. e.g. Click on Census and Voter Lists, and you’ll be offered a selection of decades to home in further; click on Birth, Marriage and Death, and you can select which of these three you’d like to focus on, and after that even specific record sets, and so on.

If, instead of starting with your ancestor’s profile page, you start your search with the drop-down menu at the top left of the screen (the place where we did that second type of general search, above), it works a little differently. Now, depending on which of the categories you choose from the drop-down menu, you’ll be asked to input slightly different information. For census searches you’ll be asked for name, birth, where they lived and details of family members; whereas for a military search the information required is just name, birth, death and likely years spent in military service. Even though the number of records returned is still excessive, I find these more targeted searches a useful way of getting to the right record.

4. Focusing right down on one particular record set.
But there’s an even more focused way to search, and even if you already knew all of the above, this is something you may not know about. You can actually search individual record sets. The way to access these is from the drop-down search menu on the top menu bar. Click on Search, and then from the drop-down menu select the second option up from the bottom: Card Catalogue. This is where you can really get to know Ancestry’s record collections, find the ones more likely to help you and even develop your own favourites! (Yes, I know that sounds very nerdy.)

So, you’ve clicked on Card Catalogue, and you have this screen (above) in front of you. As you see, you can still use filters (down the left) to help you home in on the record sets most likely to be of use to you. And if you know the full name of the record set you want, simply type that into the ‘Title’ box. You can then search just that record set.

But you can also use the keyword search, and this is really useful. Try typing the name of a town or city of interest to you in that box. If the town name doesn’t return any records, try the county. Or you could also try specific words, such as ‘apprentices’ or ‘railway’ or ‘prison’. Spend some time playing around and see what you can find that might be useful to you

This is one of my favourite functions on the entire Ancestry website, and some of the greatest breakthroughs in my family research have come from homing in on specific record sets and searching them to death! My two very favourite record sets are Leeds, England, Beckett Street Cemetery, 1845-1987 – which includes so much information about the deceased that I never have to buy death certificates for ancestors buried there; and West Yorkshire, England, Select Apprenticeship Records, 1627-1894 – which includes many of my ancestors from the period and gave me a lot of insights into how apprenticeships worked in Leeds at the time, as well as helping to work out extended family relationships in one of my lines. These are unlikely to become your favourite sets, of course, but wherever your ancestors were based, I hope you find something that will help you.

You can explore the Card Catalogue even if you’re not an Ancestry subscriber. Something to bear in mind if you’re thinking of taking out a subscription and can’t decide which provider to go with.

Stop Press! Wills reduced!

Posted on 31st Jul 2019 by English Ancestors

I’ve talked before about the government’s online Find a Will service.

Well… Big News! The cost of using this service has been massively reduced. Instead of £10 per Will, the cost is now £1.50.

I don’t know about you, but that makes a huge difference to me. I’m normally very careful about buying Wills and BMD certificates, only buying when I know it will give me information that will help me to progress in some way. But at £1.50 per Will, I can justify buying ones that have merely piqued my curiosity. I don’t know if this reduced price will be permanent, but if you can, it makes sense to go through your ancestors and see if there’s a Will or two you need. I’ve ordered eight.

Why might you need a Will?
It’s not about being nosy and seeing how much money and property they left – although of course that information will tell you a lot about the kind of lifestyle your ancestor might have enjoyed. But in fact a Will can tell us a great deal about family networks. There might be a child you hadn’t known about, or perhaps a complicated family network following divorce or separation. There could be a share of the inheritance to a child who seemed to you to have fallen off the radar. Prior to the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act, fathers might have made arrangements for their daughters, to avoid all the inheritance falling into the hands of an unknown future husband. In other words, a Will might give us a lot of useful information.

Some tips on using the service
The online Find a Will service deals only with probate from 1858 to the present day. You have to search in one of three categories:

Wills and Probate 1996 to present
Wills and Probate 1858-1996
Soldier’s Wills – these will usually only be on here if the person was killed in action. However, some of them have been lost.

Make sure you have the correct section highlighted before you enter your search terms.

Screen grab from UK government's Find a Will website search page

Although the search field asks for year of death, the information is in fact arranged by year of Probate, i.e. the year the Probate documents were finalised. This could be the year after death, or in some cases several years after death. So remember to search the following year or two if you can’t find your ancestor in the year they actually died.

If you find your ancestor you’ll see a short statement of who he or she is, where they lived, when they died, when and where Probate was granted and the names of Executors. This will help you to identify the correct deceased person, and you will also need some of this information to be able to order the documents.

Bear in mind that the Executors are not necessarily the beneficiaries, so the people listed on this note are not the full story. For that, you do need to buy the Will and Probate documents. For example, I’ve just ordered the Will below. I expect William Cass, son, and William Wade, son-in-law, to inherit, but not Edwin Wade, who is the very able older brother of William Wade but not directly related to the deceased.

After you’ve entered the search terms, sometimes Irish and Scottish records come up before the English ones start. Sometimes, too, you might find your ancestor listed on a page headed ‘Administrations’ rather than ‘Probate’. This means your ancestor didn’t leave a Will: they died ‘intestate’. If your ancestor died intestate but still had property of value to pass on, the courts would appoint an administrator to deal with the estate. In other words, it would be dealt with via Administration rather than Probate. There will still be documents relating to the sharing out of the inheritance, but there won’t be a personal statement from the deceased relating to how they want their property to be shared.

Finally – you’ve found your ancestor, you’ve ordered your documents and you’ve paid your £1.50 per Will. What a bargain! So what next? You’ll receive a link by email within a week or two, which will take you to images of the original documents. You will have 31 days to download your copy of each will.

*****

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Generations, pedigree collapse and mind-blowing stuff

Posted on 24th Jul 2019 by English Ancestors

Here’s something that’s quite obvious when you think about it, but perhaps you’ve never had much reason to do so. We each have:

4 x grandparents
8 x G grandparents
16 x 2G grandparents
32 x 3G grandparents
64 x 4G grandparents
128 x 5G grandparents
256 x 6G grandparents
512 x 7G grandparents
1024 x 8G grandparents
2048 x 9G grandparents
4096 x 10G grandparents

In other words, the number of grandparents doubles with every generation.

Since the earliest parish records start at 1538 (and most of them later than that), unless you have aristocratic lineage, you won’t be able to get back much further than 10xG grandparents. But look how many there are for you to find! Surely a lifetime’s dedicated work to track down the 8190 direct ancestors across all generations from you to your 10xG grandparents. That puts our results into perspective doesn’t it!

But there’s another important point to come out of all this: something referred to as pedigree collapse:

Continuing the doubling up of direct ancestors and going back just a few more generations, we each have 4,194,304 x 20G grandparents and 67,108,864 x 25G grandparents; and after that my calculator runs out of spaces for the required numbers, but people with better calculators (or brains!) have worked out that after thirty generations, which brings us to the Middle Ages, we each have roughly a billion ancestors – an impossibly high figure because this is greater than the total world population at that time. (See the Wikipedia entry on Pedigree Collapse here.)

The only explanation is that some of our ancestors are related to each other. Sometimes this is quite obvious. For example, a marriage between cousins (which has always been permissible in the UK) means their offspring will have six rather than the usual eight G grandparents, and therefore 12 GG grandparents, 24 GGG grandparents, and so on…

But what about less obvious connections? I’ve found that a member of my family and his wife (and me!) are descended from the same 9xG grandparents, making them 10^th cousins. I’m also on the hunt for a connection between my paternal grandparents who seem to be related at around 8^th cousin or earlier, their ancestors having moved off in different directions before reuniting in Leeds in the 20^th century. I’ll probably never know their most recent common ancestors, since their connection may be just before records began, but I know the surname and I know whereabouts they lived. And although I love this idea and will never cease to be delighted at finding such connections, bearing in mind all of the above it seems this is to be expected rather than the wonderful coincidence it seems to be.

It’s even suggested that every single one of us is related to every other person on Earth as 50th cousin or closer. Go back far enough and we are all family!

St John’s College Library, Cambridge

Posted on 17th Jul 2019 by English Ancestors

Ancient library with rows of dsecorative dark wood shelves and a large stained glass window at the far end

My 7xG grandfather, Lister Simondson, studied at St John’s College, Cambridge. I found him there quite by chance while doing a general search on Ancestry a couple of years ago. I could never have imagined then, that within two years I would be walking in his footsteps inside the Upper Library at St John’s.

The library was completed in 1624. That date is affixed in stone to the exterior of the building on the brick parapet above the oriel window, and clearly visible from the river, which flows immediately outside, as well as from the adjacent Bridge of Sighs (which is where I was when I took the photo below). By the time Lister arrived in 1696, it was still fairly new, but even so the Library of St Johns College could claim to be the largest and most impressive in Cambridge. The books are arranged on 22 beautifully carved tall, dark oak bookcases alternating with 20 ‘dwarf’ cases. At the end of each of the taller cases little doors open onto a tiny cupboard, inside which are itemised, in various hands contemporaneous with Lister’s time in the library, the contents of the shelves. It seems likely, then, that the library remains pretty much as it was when he was there. In 2005, it was designated by the Museums Libraries and Archives Council as of national and international importance.

The library isn’t usually open to the public, but a year ago, by some strange quirk of fate, a distant cousin from the US on my husband’s side was awarded a visiting fellowship at St John’s, and a few months ago I was able to visit. Since I was with a Visiting Fellow, we were able to go up there and wander round, just three of us, alone. We weren’t allowed to touch any of the books but we could take photos without flash, and I took quite a few.

I was looking for any books that Lister, who graduated from St John’s in 1700, might have used. This little set seemed likely – the Holy Bible in Ancient Greek, Latin and German. I happen to know Lister was a talented linguist, and he went on to become a Church of England vicar. Of course I can’t guarantee he used these books, or even that they were in the library at the time he was there (1696-1700) but online research confirms that they were published in 1596, edited by David Wolder and printed by Lucius Jacob. So I’m thinking they were. Imagine that!

Ancient leather-bound Bible in 3 volumes, in Ancient Greek, Latin and German

The Cambridge University Alumni records for 1200-1900 are available on Ancestry. Or you can search without any subscription here.
Oxford University Alumni records, 1500-1886 are also available on Ancestry.

Side by side maps

Posted on 10th Jul 2019 by English Ancestors

When I’m working on a person’s life I like to plot out their movements from one part of the city to another, and to see where they were in relation to other family members or to the locations of significant events. Used in combination with records and photos of old buildings, or even occasionally old paintings, I find this really helps me to get inside their story.

So I wanted to share with you a brilliant online resource I was introduced to recently.

The National Libraries of Scotland website has a wonderful collection of maps, and although some of the resources are just for Scotland, others are not.

The two resources I’m finding most useful are Find by Place and the Side by Side Viewer, both accessed via that link to the main page. It’s worth spending some time playing around with the settings to see the different kinds of maps that are available.

In Side by Side you can view an old map in split screen whilst simultaneously viewing the same location in modern-day satellite view. Whatever you do with one side (zoom, point to a specific building with the cursor, move the map, etc) happens to the other.

You can find the exact map of part of Oxford I’ve screen-grabbed above here. Try playing about with the zoom and cursor, and moving the map around, to see how easy it is to use this. You can also use the drop-down menus above each side to change the style of map you see. This is a great resource for helping make sense of street layouts that have changed over the years.

My Ancestor was a Railway Worker

Posted on 3rd Jul 2019 by English Ancestors

My Ancestor was… is a series of books published by the Society of Genealogists. They cover a whole range of topics, including My Ancestor was a Coal Miner / Leather Worker / Lawyer, and others that are not about occupations, such as religions (Jewish, English Presbyterian, etc) and even Lunatic and Bastard. I’ve read a couple of them and know them to be extremely focused overviews, full of facts and useful information.

I first heard about My Ancestor was a Railway Worker while doing an online course a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking, well, what’s so different about working on a railway that it needs its own book? Recently, though, I’ve been researching a family involving successive generations working on the railways; and I immediately started to see that this was no ordinary occupation. The impression I had was of a huge community, not unlike the armed forces, with marriage between the families and seemingly a welcome wherever they went. I had some specific questions, and from my previous knowledge of this series, I was sure this would be a good place to find the answers.

My Ancestor was a Railway Worker was written by Frank Hardy. A Fellow of the Society of Genealogists, prior to retirement he worked for almost fifty years as a railway civil engineer, so he knows his stuff from both angles. The book covers a wide range of occupations on the railways, from construction and maintenance of the tracks and infrastructure, building and maintaining the trains, administration of the service, including related commercial activities and of course operating the trains. There is also information about smaller, non-mainline railways, and overseas railways with a historic connection to our own. I was astonished at the full range of activities, and although I was reading this for insights into someone else’s tree, I realised in the process that apart from one of my own ancestral families who were early investors in the railway at York, I do also have two railway workers in my own ancestry and never realised the true nature of their work – a platelayer (that’s the term for the people who lay and maintain the track) and a mechanic with the London and North Western Railway at Crewe, where they manufactured all the equipment needed for the operation of their service.

The people in the tree I’ve been researching worked on the trains themselves. I learned that there was a specific progression to becoming an engine driver, starting with cleaning the engines in the locomotive shed, a seemingly menial task but one that develops a thorough knowledge of the engine. Next came fireman (stoking the engine) and shunting, and finally the ‘aristocrat of the railway’: the locomotive engine driver. Along the way were assessments and knowledge requirements. If you wanted to progress through the ranks you had to attend classes and study, and you had to be prepared to move to another company in a different part of the country for a promotion to the next level. Health & Safety was taken very seriously: throughout the engine driver’s working life he would be regularly tested for fitness and colour vision. All of this is borne out by the Service Record of one of the men whose life I’ve been investigating.

But there was a huge range of other activities: railway hotels; laundries; goods transfer facilities at harbours and docks; shipping to offshore and overseas destinations including the Isle of Wight, Channel Islands, Dutch and French ports; and buses – all owned and operated by the railway companies. And here’s a bit of trivia for you: the first time a dining car was operated on a train was during the 1870s, on the London Kings Cross service to Leeds.

By the end of the nineteenth century an astonishing 650,000 people were employed by the railway companies. Bearing in mind that working on the railway was a ‘job for life’, that’s a lot of people, many working for 30, 40 or 50 years. A lot of the records survive for employees, particularly for the 19^th century, and their likely whereabouts is given in the book. I found a full Service Record for one of the people I was researching on Ancestry.

What I really wanted to know about, though, was the ‘community’; and my original hunch had been correct. Families that moved around the country for promotions, with sons following their fathers into the industry and maybe marrying the daughters of other railway men were known as ‘railway families’. The companies built and provided housing for their employees, close to their ‘home’ stations – and of course they employed bricklayers to do the work. (I found one of them in the family I was looking at too.) So it would be quite natural for sons and daughters of employees to meet and to marry. A sense of community was also encouraged by activities such as ‘Best Kept Stations’ and ‘Best Kept Gardens’ competitions. Plus there were early forms of employee insurance and free rail passes for employees and their families.

In conclusion, I now understand exactly why there’s a need for a book specifically about railway worker ancestors! I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand more about the work and way of life. The record location information, together with bibliography for further reading will be useful for anyone requiring more, but this little book covered all that I personally needed to know.

Click the image to find this book on Amazon.co.uk.
(Affiliate link)

Genealogy on a budget

Posted on 26th Jun 2019 by English Ancestors

If you’d like to get started on your family tree but cash is limited, this one’s for you.
Even if the costs of family research aren’t a problem for you, it’s still nice to save a little money when we can.

And remember that these ideas can be used in combination – subscribe for a month, take advantage of a free weekend, use the library facilities, google online records…. Challenge yourself to see how far you can go on a fixed budget.

Access genealogy websites without a subscription
These are places that might have subscriptions to one of the genealogy websites (most likely Ancestry or FindMyPast if you’re in the UK). They will be free for you to use, although you may have to become a member (also free):

Your local library
The central library for your area/ city
The local archives/ county record office
Your nearest FamilyHistory Centre.

Look up records online for free

Familysearch All records are free but you have to have an account and be signed in.
Search the births and deaths indexes for free at the General Register Office website.
FreeBMD Search for births, marriages and deaths here.
Even if you’re not subscribed, these record sets at Ancestry and these at FindMyPast are freely available.
At certain times of the year (e.g. Bank Holidays, St Patrick’s Day) the main sites offer free access to their main collections. You can get an awful lot done in a long weekend if you set your mind to it. 😊

Special offers to subscription sites
Look at the Genealogy Discount site to see if there are any special offers currently available.

Or try googling the sites and adding ‘free trial’ or ‘month trial’. They often have special offers at times of the year when they think people will have free time and minded to find out more about their families, e.g. Christmas.

Limit your subscriptions to when you know you’ll have more time
In my early years as a genealogist I limited my subscriptions to the winter months. Other commitments meant I didn’t have much time throughout the rest of the year. Per month, a monthly subscription is more expensive than an annual subscription, but if you subscribed for one month out of every three, it will save you money. Remember to deactivate automatic renewal each time you subscribe.

Alternate subscriptions and reading
If you limit your subscriptions you can use the time between subscribed months to read around your family / your localities by visiting your local library, heritage centre or archives. It’s all valuable research and will help you get a better understanding of your family.

You can also take advantage of ‘free weekends’ during your unsubscribed periods.

Even if you do keep a regular subscription, you can still save money
Keep an eye on public online trees. Sometimes people share digital copies of BMD certificates or other records they have found on a different subscription site. Sometimes you may even get photos of your ancestors. If you’re sure this is the same family, that could be several documents you don’t have to pay for.

Try to find out if someone has transcribed the registers for your parish of interest
GENUKI is a good place to start. Click on your county, then your parish. If transcriptions are known to exist they will be listed.

Also try Googling ‘online parish clerks’ and adding your county of interest. e.g. Cornwall online parish clerks has a page for each parish. As an example, Altarnun parish page includes transcripts of census returns, registers, and even some apprenticehip indentures, wills, bastardy and resettlement hearings. This is a volunteer service so what’s available will of course vary from place to place.

Occasionally you’ll come across a real nugget, like the Wharfegen & Craven Genealogical Study. This is an ongoing project to construct the family lines and histories of individuals and families who have lived the Wharfedale and Craven areas of Yorkshire. You only come across things like this by googling or recommendation, so see what you can find.

Don’t buy a civil BMD for every event
Refer back to my previous posts for ideas on how to find the same or similar information from alternative records:

Civil BMDs: Births
Civil BMDs: Marriages and Deaths
What can death records tell us about life?
Plus of course, digital images of these records kindly shared by others on their public trees.

These are some ideas to get you started. I’m sure others will be able to add to this list, so please leave a comment if there’s a money-saving idea you’d like to share.

Annie Elizabeth: marital relations masterclass continued

Posted on 19th Jun 2019 by English Ancestors

In my last post we left James having bigamously gone through a marriage ceremony with Margaret in 1872. Margaret and James were leaving Leeds for Manchester. Annie Elizabeth and her new man, John William, remain in Leeds and by 1881 there have been five more children, although four of them have died. The family provisions business in the centre of town is doing very well. However, contrary to all appearances, they are not married. Annie Elizabeth is, in fact, still married to James. And this wrankles.

Facts: divorce petition
On 22^nd February 1881 Annie Elizabeth swears an affidavit as follows: that she was married to James in 1866 and had borne his child; that in February 1872 he had gone through a second marriage ceremony with Margaret; that this pretend and illegal marriage had been consummated; that James had committed adultery on that day and on diverse occasions since; and that he had deserted her without just cause, ever since leaving her destitute. As Annie Elizabeth picks up the pen to sign this as a true version of her sworn affidavit, she is seven months pregnant with her seventh child by John William. The divorce petition is officially filed the following day.

James does not contest the charges. The Decree Nisi is awarded on 5^th July 1881 on the basis of adultery plus bigamy. The hearing, reported over the following two days in newspapers in London, Leeds and Manchester, does include the true reason for James’s absence (7 years penal servitude). However, the detail surrounding his release is economical with the truth: ‘In 1871 he was returned to Leeds, but instead of going home he went to the residence of another woman […] whom he afterwards married…’ ‘Severe comments’ are made on the conduct of James’s sister Mary Elizabeth who had been present at both marriages. The Decree becomes Final on 17^th January 1882.

Analysis
The hypocrisy, injustice and cruelty of this petition shocked me. James had a great deal to lose, and although it’s true that he had bigamously ‘married’ another woman, he did so in the knowledge that Annie Elizabeth was with another man and had a child. In other words, Annie Elizabeth had already committed adultery long before James did.

Only by understanding the contemporary grounds for divorce, was I able to make my peace with Annie Elizabeth. Until 1923 a woman could bring an action for divorce only on the grounds of adultery combined with an aggravating factor, e.g. bigamy, cruelty, desertion. Annie Elizabeth had no alternative but to cite bigamy and desertion alongside her claim of adultery. She was, even so, taking a huge risk: as petitioner for divorce her behaviour must be seen to be unblemished. Any petitioner found also to be an adulteress/ adulterer would be denied the divorce. Having by now given birth to six of John William’s children, there could be no doubt that Annie Elizabeth was also an adulteress.

The fact of having the finances to file for divorce also sits uneasily with the claim that Annie Elizabeth has been left destitute. Although the Marital Causes Act of 1857 had opened up the possibility of divorce to all, the cost of obtaining one remained out of the pocket of the vast majority of people. The location of the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Court in London meant that petitioners had to be willing and able to pay travel and living expenses for themselves, as well as respondents and any witnesses.

*****

Facts: Freedom to remarry
Annie Elizabeth and James are now divorced and free to marry. James, having not contested the divorce, does not celebrate any change in his marital status by legally marrying Margaret, although the two of them will remain together for life. It also seems there is no trial against him for bigamy.

For Annie Elizabeth and John William, however, the divorce enables them to put their life together in order. Thanks to the relative anonymity afforded by life in a large, industrialised town, it would have been easy to disguise the fact that they were unmarried. However, a marriage at this late stage might not go unnoticed. They therefore marry in Halifax, on 23^rd January 1882. Annie Elizabeth’s marital status is correctly recorded as divorced, but a Halifax address is given as her residence.

Analysis: Why is James not prosecuted?
The criminal act of bigamy (regulated by the Offences against the Person Act 1861) is dealt with separately from the citing of bigamy as grounds for divorce. By this time the granting of divorce on grounds of bigamy did not necessarily lead to a separate criminal prosecution. It is, in any event, not in Annie Elizabeth’s interest to have the facts open to further scrutiny.

*****

Facts: Domestic Violence
Back in Leeds, Annie Elizabeth and John William have had more children. By 1886, excluding George, there have been ten live births, although five of these have died. All is not champagne and roses…

In March 1887 John William is arrested and charged with having assaulted Annie Elizabeth on three occasions by striking and kicking her. On 1^st and 2^nd April, three Leeds newspapers carry reports of the hearing against him for domestic violence. John William, ‘a respectably dressed man’, is said to have recently been frequently drunk. His attitude does not endear him to the court: ‘When asked if he had anything to say, the accused replied in a flippant manner, “I have not been my own man. It’s never too late to mend, is it?”’ The magistrate grants a separation order. John William is fined £5 and ordered to pay Annie Elizabeth 15s per week.

The separation is temporary. By March 1888 Annie Elizabeth and John William are reunited, since their final baby is born 31^st December of that year. At the time of the 1991 census they are still together.

Analysis
The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878 enabled magistrates to grant protection orders to women who were victims of violence from their husbands. These protection orders differed from ‘judicial separations’, which were granted in the High Court. However, they amounted to the same thing, giving the woman custody of the children, and frequently including a requirement that the husband pay a regular sum of money to the wife.

*****

I hope this has helped you to see how, by reading around the subject, using the two books by Rebecca Probert, I was able to make sense of this very complicated series of situations Annie Elizabeth found herself in. I wouldn’t do this amount of work for all my ancestors, but as I’m sure you’ve found for yourself, some of them leap out as having more to say.

As for Annie Elizabeth, John William dies in 1898, leaving her a further 28 years in which she seems, sensibly, to have decided enough is enough. No more marital relations!

Annie Elizabeth & James: a marital relations masterclass

Posted on 12th Jun 2019 by English Ancestors

In this post and the next we have a case study in two parts: a sort of marital relations masterclass courtesy of my ill-starred biological GG grandparents. I used Rebecca Probert’s books Marriage Law for Genealogists and Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved to help me clarify the legalities. I hope it will help you to look at any marital inconsistencies with fresh eyes. You’ll also see how understanding the law and context of events can (sometimes!) help you see them from the viewpoint of your ancestors.

*****

The marriage
15^th Jan 1866: James and Annie Elizabeth are married at St Peter’s church, Leeds. It’s likely they have known each other only a few weeks: James is not long out of prison, having been sentenced in April 1865 to 8 months for larceny. Both give their age as 18, but Annie Elizabeth is not quite 15½. Their only witness is James’s older sister, Mary Elizabeth. James and Mary Elizabeth sign; Annie Elizabeth (who we shall see from later documents is literate) only makes her mark.

Analysis: Is the marriage legal?
From the perspective of age?
Yes. Until the Marriage Act 1929 the minimum age for marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. (After that Act it was raised to 16 for both.)

From the perspective of lack of parental approval?
Being under 21, both Annie Elizabeth and James were minors. Not until 1970 would the age of majority be reduced to 18. However, marriage after banns did not require an active, public statement of parental approval. Rather the dissent of parents during the three-week period of the publishing of the banns would prevent the ceremony from going ahead. Here, there was no voiced dissent, therefore the marriage was not invalidated by lack of consent.

From the perspective of elements of deceit?
What if James thought Annie Elizabeth was 18? What about the fact that Annie Elizabeth was able to sign and yet didn’t? The issue here would seem to be around the concept of ‘knowingly and wilfully’ failing to comply with the law, a concept introduced by the 1823 Marriage Act. However, if it wasn’t a problem in the eyes of the law that Annie Elizabeth was just 15, then it’s likely that even if James thought otherwise this would not be an issue. Similarly, although Annie Elizabeth may have been trying to distance herself in some way from the event by not adding her signature to the paperwork when she could have, a ‘mark’ was sufficient for the law. In any case, we don’t know if Annie Elizabeth did deceive James; and even if she did, the fact remains that the marriage was not contested. It is therefore valid.

*****

Two lots of nine months
4^th June 1866: James is brought before magistrates at Dewsbury, charged with stealing a horse. He is also ‘wanted’ in Leeds for another similar crime. On 4th July he is found guilty and sentenced to seven years penal servitude.
At the time of the arrest Annie Elizabeth is about 4 months pregnant. The baby, George, is born in November 1866. By this time, James is serving an initial nine months under the ‘Separate’ system at Wakefield Convict Prison. Designed to ‘break’ new prisoners, this involved keeping the individual in solitary confinement, allowing them to see and speak with only the prison warders. Possibly he doesn’t even know he has a son.
By the time George is baptised in July 1867, James’s nine months under the Separate system are over and he has moved south for the next stage of his sentence. Meanwhile, aged just 16, Annie Elizabeth is facing life as a single parent with no support, alongside the expectation that she respect the sanctity of her condition as a married woman.

Analysis: What are Annie Elizabeth’s options?
Could the marriage be annulled on the grounds of the falsifications?
No. And to attempt to rely on them now could be an admission of perjury.

Might she have considered remarriage?
There was great confusion at the time about the seven-year rule under which if, after a period of seven years of no contact the abandoned partner genuinely believed their spouse was dead, the marriage could be considered at an end. Many focused only on the ‘seven years’ aspect of this rule, believing they were safe to marry after seven years living apart. But a remarriage in such circumstances is always bigamous. It would not have been a legal option for Annie Elizabeth.

*****

2^nd April 1871: the census
James is an inmate at Chatham Public Works Prison.
Meanwhile, back in Leeds:
Little George has a new surname and is listed with his aunt Mary Elizabeth (she who witnessed the marriage) and husband.
Annie Elizabeth is eight months pregnant and listed as the wife of John William. When their baby is born the following month, she will be baptised as the illegitimate daughter of Ann Elizabeth whose ‘absent husband was transported 5 years ago’.

Analysis: adoption and adultery
At some point between George’s baptism in July 1867 and the census of April 1871, George has been adopted by Mary Elizabeth and her husband. This suggests he was given up by his mother either because she couldn’t support him, or because the new man in her life refused to support the child of another man. Prior to The Adoption of Children Act of 1926, such informal adoptions in England and Wales were the norm.

Has Annie Elizabeth committed a crime?
Not so many decades earlier, Annie Elizabeth and John William would have been hauled before the church courts and punished severely for adultery and fornication. However, they have not gone through a marriage ceremony, therefore their relationship is not bigamous, and therefore no criminal act has occurred.

*****

James returns
14th December 1871: A Licence is signed for James’s early release: a reduction of 19 months for good behaviour. He returns to Leeds. Does he believe Annie Elizabeth will be waiting for him? Is he shocked to find her with another man and new baby? Or perhaps the last 5½ years have provided time enough for James to reflect on past errors, and he now wishes to move on with his life?

Analysis: What are James’s options?
Legally, James and Annie Elizabeth are still married. However, it’s complicated: their son is now settled as the child of his sister and her husband, while Annie Elizabeth is living with another man, with whom she has a baby. James has two legal options: to ask Annie Elizabeth to return to him, and presumably to accept her child as his own, or to divorce her.

Since 1858 (Matrimonial Causes Act 1857) divorce has been available in England and Wales. From the perspective of the husband, the only ground for divorce is adultery, which in this case can easily be proven. On the other hand, petitioning for divorce is far too costly for a labouring man, newly released from prison. It is out of the question.

*****

What James actually does
14th February 1872: James marries Margaret. Given the time lapse since his release from prison, they cannot have known each other more than a few weeks. James gives a false name for his father. The address given for both on the marriage certificate is Mary Elizabeth’s, where little George, now aged five, also lives. No doubt James is aware of George’s true identity.
After the ceremony James and Margaret move to Manchester.

Analysis: What crimes has James now committed?
Legally, James has not remarried; rather he has ‘gone through a second marriage ceremony’. It is that which is the definition of bigamy. The ‘marriage’ to Margaret has no legal standing at all, and children born of that marriage will be illegitimate.

However, in ‘going through a second marriage ceremony’, James has not only committed the crime of bigamy; he has also violated the conditions of his Licence, which stipulate that he ‘abstain from any Violation of the Law’. Any violation would result, in addition to any new sentence, in reimprisonment for the remaining months of the original sentence.

*****

The story continues next week…

Marriage Law for Genealogists

Posted on 5th Jun 2019 by English Ancestors

Last month I reviewed Rebecca Probert’s book Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved. Today’s book, Marriage Law for Genealogists, is by the same author. The contents are pretty much summed up in the subtitle: ‘What everyone tracing their family history needs to know about where, when, who and how their English and Welsh ancestors married.’ Dealing with marriage law from 1600 to the present day, it applies to our English and Welsh ancestors only because English law doesn’t extend to other parts of the United Kingdom.

The first edition of this book pre-dated Divorced, Bigamist and Bereaved, and you might think it would have made sense for me to read and review them in that order too. However, I had urgent divorce and bigamy knowledge requirements (which I will outline in next week’s post, a sort of marital relations masterclass provided courtesy of my natural GG grandparents…)

Rebecca Probert is a rare thing: a Professor of Law, the leading authority on the history of the marriage laws of England and Wales, and also a keen genealogist. She is therefore able to debunk a number of common misunderstandings relating to marriage that have been published in other genealogy texts, and she does that in the first chapter.

One of the most important things I’ll take away from this book is the central point that the authorities actively wanted couples who wished to marry to be so. There were indeed severe punishments for ‘fornication’, including excommunication (not to mention the eternal punishment in the hereafter), fines, the stocks and whipping. Marriage was also central to the operation of the Poor Law, in the sense that a wife and all legitimate children took their father’s settlement rights at birth. Illegitimate children, on the other hand, took the settlement not of their mother, but of the parish in which they were born. A destitute, unmarried family, therefore – even if the father were present – could be resettled in (i.e. sent back to) several different parishes – the father to his, the mother to the parish of her birth, and the children each to the parish in which they were born. Legitimacy of children was also an important factor if there was property to be shared out after the death of the parents: illegitimate children (even if the parents remained together) would not inherit. Younger, legitimate offspring would easily succeed in an action preventing the passing of a share of an inheritance to an older child born before the parents’ wedding. It wasn’t until 1926 that children could be legitimised retrospectively by the eventual marriage of their parents.

So they are the downsides of not marrying; but what I hadn’t realised was that the Law would bend over as far backwards as possible to ensure that those who did go through a marriage ceremony would indeed be considered married, even if the ceremony fell short of certain statutory requirements. These are dealt with over four chapters:
Who your ancestors married – including mental capacity, bigamy, divorce, same-sex marriage and the ‘prohibited degrees’;
How they married – including banns, licences, civil marriages and non-Anglican religious marriages;
When they married – including age restrictions, parental consent, and restrictions/ preferences for time of day, year and days of the week;
Where they married – including ‘clandestine’ marriages, with reasons for marrying in another parish, marriages at The Fleet, and marriage of English/Welsh nationals in other parts of the world.

I must admit that as I was reading this, at times I wondered what to do with the information I now had. My concern is with the life and times of my ancestors, not with the impropriety or voidability of a happy union. Take as an example the section on ‘prohibited degrees of kinship’ (chapter 3). Contrary to popular belief, English Law has never forbidden marriage between cousins. However, other close relatives have fallen within the ‘prohibited degrees’, and of course some still do. These include siblings, parent/child, grandparent/grandchild and marriages between uncle/aunt and nephew/niece. But prior to the first half of the 20^th century the rule didn’t stop there: historically in the eyes of the church, upon marriage a husband and wife became ‘one flesh’. Consequently, the in-laws were as much a part of one’s family as one’s own parents, siblings, etc. Therefore in the event of the death of a spouse, remarriage to one of the in-laws from the above categories was also considered incestuous. Whether such a marriage would be void, voidable or even valid, depended on the year in which the marriage took place – the rules changed several times over the centuries. As it happens I do have at least two marriages in my tree that fall within the prohibited degrees on account of remarriage after the death of the first spouse to an in-law. In one of these, I took the fact of being prepared to marry for a second time within the same family as evidence of a good relationship between my great grandmother and her mother-in-law, particularly as my grandmother was named after that mother-in-law (my GG grandmother). So a happy thing. I now understand that legally these marriages were void – as though they never happened, and any children of the union were illegitimate. However, it seems no-one realised, and they died still ‘married’ and probably blissfully unaware that they had been living in sin these past decades. Really, then – what difference does it make, other than as a saucy bit of gossip – which doesn’t interest me anyway?

I then realised I was looking at this the wrong way. The usefulness of knowing about such rules is to help us to troubleshoot. Yes, these two couples in my tree ‘got away with it’ and no harm was done. But what if your 4xG grandfather Robert marries Sarah and then six months later marries Mary? No possibility of divorce, no burial record showing for Sarah. Is Robert a bigamist? He may be, and it’s also possible that Sarah’s burial record has been lost or mis-transcribed. But this book gives us the information to be able to think of other possibilities – an annulment, perhaps? If we know of the rules around void and voidable marriages, when we see something that doesn’t sit easily, we can use our knowledge to start to explore what might have happened. In this example we could look to see if the marriage might have been within the prohibited degrees, or perhaps there was another reason for an annulment.

One thing I’ll now be exploring is the possibility that some of my missing marriages may have taken place in a different part of the country. Evidence presented in chapter 6 shows that a surprising number of couples married out of their county of residence, or at the very least in a different parish, perhaps because of a family connection with that parish.

So, to conclude, this is a very useful book, but one you have to work at, and not aimed at beginners. Not only is it a harder read than Divorce, Bigamist, Bereaved, but also following through on the information presented will require a fair bit of research and thinking outside the box. That said, it has already resolved a few questions for me; and with an idea of what to look out for, it will be a useful addition to my bookshelf when I need to consult for the detail.

Click the book cover image to find the book on Amazon.co.uk
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