![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarielSpurred on by yesterday's look at surname distribution, and because I was looking at the National Statistics site for work, I had a poke around the 1901 Census for family members. My mother had sent me some good handwritten notes about my grandparents on both sides, so I started some confident searches on my dad's family.
And drew a complete blank on McCormacks in St Helens. This is complete madness, since they were both local councillors there, active in the fledgling Independent Labour Party. I knew for a fact they were there in 1905, when Michael Davitt (a cousin or second cousin of my grandmother) spoke at a local election meeting they had organized in St Helens. And I knew that they had two baby sons who should have been showing up on the records. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing. This was really disconcerting: like all the oral family history had somehow been completely disproven. Identityquake!
Anyway, I gave up, and started looking for information on my mother's family. Since her father didn't come over till the 1920s, he wasn't going to be on the 1901 Census, but her mother should be. And there she was - two years old. And her older sister (aged 4). When I brought up the whole record for the household, I was a bit confused again: there was a woman with the name of my great-grandmother, Mary Ann McGurk, aged 29, head of the house (she was a widow by this time), but the household had four other people listed. One of whom, a Martin Marron, was listed as the father of the head of the house...? But my great-grandmother had been born Mary Ann Murray... So I got the image of the Census entry itself (as a PDF), and there was my great-great-grandfather's name, entered wrongly and then written over - and definitely Murray.
I rang my mother to tell her what I was looking at. We were excited to learn that my great-grandmother's birthplace was Durham (she hadn't known that), and were also intrigued by the other members of the household - two boarders (probably father and son), and a 16 year old servant girl. So Mary Ann McGurk, despite being widowed so young, was doing well enough to pay for a servant.
I told her about the odd mistake about my great-great-grandfather's name and then I had a flash of inspiration. There is a family joke about my paternal grandfather's name being misspelled on the board above his insurance broker's shop (-ick, not -ack). I should have remembered that much sooner. Enter in the new search term... There were Francis and Ellen, and two of their sons (not my dad yet), and his younger brother, James, about whom I'd known nothing. (Sadly, I couldn't find any relatives of Ellen, whose brother Edward married the famous Auntie Ada, she who once said to my mother (concerning my father): "Gerald Never Married." But I'll keep looking.)
Moral: trust oral history, it's loads better.
And drew a complete blank on McCormacks in St Helens. This is complete madness, since they were both local councillors there, active in the fledgling Independent Labour Party. I knew for a fact they were there in 1905, when Michael Davitt (a cousin or second cousin of my grandmother) spoke at a local election meeting they had organized in St Helens. And I knew that they had two baby sons who should have been showing up on the records. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing. This was really disconcerting: like all the oral family history had somehow been completely disproven. Identityquake!
Anyway, I gave up, and started looking for information on my mother's family. Since her father didn't come over till the 1920s, he wasn't going to be on the 1901 Census, but her mother should be. And there she was - two years old. And her older sister (aged 4). When I brought up the whole record for the household, I was a bit confused again: there was a woman with the name of my great-grandmother, Mary Ann McGurk, aged 29, head of the house (she was a widow by this time), but the household had four other people listed. One of whom, a Martin Marron, was listed as the father of the head of the house...? But my great-grandmother had been born Mary Ann Murray... So I got the image of the Census entry itself (as a PDF), and there was my great-great-grandfather's name, entered wrongly and then written over - and definitely Murray.
I rang my mother to tell her what I was looking at. We were excited to learn that my great-grandmother's birthplace was Durham (she hadn't known that), and were also intrigued by the other members of the household - two boarders (probably father and son), and a 16 year old servant girl. So Mary Ann McGurk, despite being widowed so young, was doing well enough to pay for a servant.
I told her about the odd mistake about my great-great-grandfather's name and then I had a flash of inspiration. There is a family joke about my paternal grandfather's name being misspelled on the board above his insurance broker's shop (-ick, not -ack). I should have remembered that much sooner. Enter in the new search term... There were Francis and Ellen, and two of their sons (not my dad yet), and his younger brother, James, about whom I'd known nothing. (Sadly, I couldn't find any relatives of Ellen, whose brother Edward married the famous Auntie Ada, she who once said to my mother (concerning my father): "Gerald Never Married." But I'll keep looking.)
Moral: trust oral history, it's loads better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:06 pm (UTC)Have you been watching Who Do You Think You Are? It's been like a whole window opening on the past.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:12 pm (UTC)I've been loving Who Do You Think You Are?, although the Sky+ box failed to record the one with Paxman, which I'm gutted to have missed. Sheila Hancock's was fascinating.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:22 pm (UTC)So have we. What a pity you missed Jeremy Paxman as that was just as fascinating as Sheila Hancock's but in a completely different way. There was incredible poverty on both sides of his family and he was terribly moved by it.
I haven't done much family history research recently but it was quite addictive while I was doing it. I found out my great-grandmother was illegitimate, which was a bit of a shock but made sense as no-one seemed to know where she came from. Unfortunately I couldn't tell my great-aunt, her only surviving daughter, as she had angina and my mum and I thought the shock would kill her!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 12:07 am (UTC)I'm not surprised you didn't tell your great-aunt, would have been genuinely shocking.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:52 pm (UTC)I bet there was a lot of mishearing of Irish accents.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 06:06 pm (UTC)Family legend has it that the reason I have a bunch of relatives named Gordon because there was an Gordon advertisement painted on a brick wall visible in Ellis Island, so it was a default value when the immigration Babel fish was taking a lunch break. I have *no* idea what the name was originally.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 08:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 09:54 pm (UTC)