No geek
is an island

Three marriage certificates I ordered online last weekend popped through my letterbox this morning, and all three were curious in their own way.

The first recorded the marriage of my great-great-great-grandfather Henry Beard to my g-g-g-grandmother Sarah Payne in Reading in 1843. I didn’t know the names of Henry and Sarah’s parents, so I was particularly interested in the “Father’s Name and Surname” column on the certificate for each of them. This showed Sarah’s father as James Payne (although gave no occupation), but this box was crossed through for Henry.

A missing father’s name can often indicate illegitimacy. I don’t mind if that’s the case, but the missing father’s name doesn’t help my research.

I moved on to the second certificate, which recorded the marriage two years later of Joseph Gibbs and Eliza Alleway, who were also two of my g-g-g-grandparents. I was surprised to see that Eliza’s father’s name was missing from this certificate. Two illegitimate ancestors in one morning seemed a bit of a coincidence. Although Joseph’s father, James, was recorded, his occupation was again not recorded.

It turns out that both couples were married in the same church - St Laurence’s (recorded as St Lawrence’s) - and both by the same vicar, John Ball. As the early 1940s were the first days of civil marriage registration, my suspicion is that this may have been a case of the vicar having a particular approach to recording the registrants’ parents: he didn’t record fathers’ occupations, and he left off fathers’ names if they had died - as opposed to the usual practice of putting “(Deceased)” after the name.

That practice was demonstrated on the third marriage certificate that came today, from 1902 (and soon enough after the turn of the century that the registrar was still using “18__” cetificate with the 8 crossed out). This records the marriage of my great-great-uncle Frederick Pinnock to Annie Batttison. My previous research suggested that Frederick was born to my g-g-g-grandmother Harriet Pinnock five or six years after the death of her husband Thomas, so I was interested to see who Frederick recorded as his father.

This time, there was a father shown: “Thomas Pinnock (Deceased)”. Frederick’s age is given as 32, which confirms census evidence that he was born in 1869 or 1870. But I have Thomas Pinnock’s death certificate and he definitely died in 1864. Maybe Frederick never knew, but that would mean that none of his eleven older siblings ever spilt the beans.

Next task then is to try to find the four ancestors from the 1840s on the 1841 census - but that may have to wait until after the local elections…

In days gone by, the printed indexes of births, marriages and deaths (BMD) were housed at Somerset House. Then they resided at the Family Records Centre in Islington, an excellent resource in its own right. Sadly, the FRC is closing down. The upstairs National Archives resources (censuses etc.) are moving to Kew from early next year. The paper BMD indexes - owned by the General Register Office - have moved to Christchurch as detailed on the GRO site.

Microfiche versions of the BMD indexes have for a long time been available in local libraries and record offices, but the FRC was a key central resource. As I understand it, the Office for National Statistics had committed to placing the indexes online in a fully searchable form by spring 2008, but this project has been delayed and won’t be able to take over from the FRC search room.

On the up side, other online resources continue to offer some access to the BMD indexes. The FreeBMD project, for which I used to be volunteer transcriber, has manually copied millions of entries from the indexes into a searchable database. It’s an invaluable resource and a testament to the benefits of collaborative working online. FreeBMD continues to grow, and is nearly complete now for the Victorian era.

A number of commercial websites provide access to scanned versions of the indexes as part of their subscriptions. These aren’t directly searchable, but you can browse for the page you need just as you would with a paper index. Both FindMyPast.com and Ancestry.co.uk offer this service. Helpfully, Ancestry (which is the one I have experience of using) also provides access to the FreeBMD data, and to the electronic BMD database that replaced the paper version in 1984.

While it’s a familiar refrain - and good avice - from family history guides that you shouldn’t rely solely on the internet for research, the increased availability online of scanned or indexed copies of physical sources is extremely welcome, and BMD indexes are a prime example. It’s a shame that the ONS’s promise of a fully searchable online index to replace the paper versions has, in the short term, fallen through, leaving family history researchers worse off than before.

Via Norfolk Blogger comes the news that Tony Benn’s granddaughter Emily has been selected by Labour to be their parliamentary candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham.

As I’ve noted before, my dad’s second cousin is married to Hilary Benn’s second cousin, so I guess I should add the latest political Benn to the diagram:

You’ll be relieved to hear that I, at least, have no plans to become a Labour MP.

Great news from the Archives: the 1911 census of England and Wales will get an early release following a ruling by the Information Commissioner in favour of a genealogist who was seeking information under FoI rules.

An online version will go live in 2009, 3 years earlier than planned, with a some sensitive data excised until 2012. A limited £45 per search service will be available until 2009.

As it’s 11/11 today, it seems fitting to recount an event that happened during the Second World War, 63 years ago yesterday. That was the day on which my great-uncle Frank Howells died.

He was born in north London on the 4th of March 1915, one of twins, the ninth child of Thomas and Emily Howells. Like his late father and his two brothers, Frank was an insurance agent. He was 24 when war broke out and became a lieutenant in the Reconnaissance Corps.

I grew up knowing the my Great-uncle Frank had died in the war, but didn’t know the details. As part of my family history research, I checked the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and was surprised to see that he was buried in Yorkshire. I obtained his death certificate which confirmed that he wasn’t killed overseas or in action. He died in the Military Hospital at Scotton and is buried in Catterick.

Inquest reports rarely survive, so the genealogist has to turn to the local press. A few years ago, I visited the public library in Darlington to search in the newspapers held there. The Northern Echo of 12th November 1943 covered the inquest.

TRAGEDY OF LIVE ROUND IN BREN GUN
— Catterick Inquest

At an inquest at Catterick Hospital yesterday on Lieut. Frank Howells, aged 28, who died the previous day, Dr. F.R. Eddison, the Coroner, returned a verdict of “Death by mis-adventure, he having died from a gunshot wound which caused haemorrhage and shock.”

Lieut. A. Harbottle told the Coroner that he heard a report and an exclamation from Mr. Howells. The witness saw that Howells was leaning on a table and was conscious. He did not speak. A corporal had also been wounded. A lance-corporal told him that a Bren gun had been accidentally fired during instruction. The witness thought that an inexperienced soldier could inadvertently load a live round with drill cartridge when they were of a mixed type. The rounds in use at instruction were examined at the beginning.

Capt. W. O’Brien said that Howells suffered from severe loss of blood.

L. Cp. K. Fraser, an instructor, said he himself examined the gun. He was sure that there was not a live cartridge among them. A trooper failed to do the instruction correctly and he told him to do it a second time. When he pressed the trigger he heard an explosion. Trooper G. R. Trueman said he was under instruction and could easily have recognised a live cartridge.

So it turned out to be an absurd and tragic accident that took his life. He was older than many of those who died in the two world wars, but still only a year older than I am now.

Wednesday night is family history night, so I’m currently watching Who Do You Think You Are?, featuring Jeremy Irons. They’ve just shown the marriage certificate of his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Irons. He was a Chartist, and prior to that was a London policeman living at 10 Cowley Street, Westminster - a few doors away from the building (or the site at least) that became the SDP headquarters and currently home to the Liberal Democrats.

Thomas Irons was subsequently arrested in connection with a planned insurrection and ended up with an 18 month sentence in prison.