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| No: 103 |
September 2014
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News September Seminars 6: North Adelaide heritage walk WEA Centre Adelaide 2:00–4:00pm 14: Semaphore heritage walk WEA Centre Adelaide 2:00–4:00pm October Seminars 5: The Courts system in Scotland GenealogySA 2:00–4:00pm 8: Introduction to family history research (1st session) WEA Centre Adelaide 8:00–9:30pm 11: Researching in England prior to Civil Registration Gold Coast Family History Conference 10:45–11.45am 11: Researching the maternal line Gold Coast Family History Conference 1:30–2:15pm 11: Identifying and dating 19th century Family photographs Gold Coast Family History Conference 4:00–4:45pm 14: The centenary of World War 1: researching your military ancestors WEA Centre Adelaide 6:30–8:30pm 15: Introduction to family history research (2nd session) WEA Centre Adelaide 8:00–9:30pm 19: Adelaide heritage walk(central-east) WEA Centre Adelaide 2:00–4:00pm 22: Introduction to family history research (3rd session) WEA Centre Adelaide 8:00–9:30pm 24: Researching your English ancestors WEA Centre Adelaide 6:30–9:30pm 29: Introduction to family history research (4th session) WEA Centre Adelaide 8:00–9:30pm See the seminar program for more details and bookings. Newsletter 102 A subscriber has alerted me to further records available for researchers—Mental Health hospitals records. He writes… 'There is an electronic data base, which accesses all the extant nineteenth and early twentieth century case books. This data base and case books (which have been microfilmed by SAGHS) largely makes redundant the registers and ledgers held by State Records. Those records that State Records have, which post date the data base, are probably not accessible if the 100 year access policy extends to them.The records include the name of the institution, ward, date of admission, date of discharge/transfer/death, next of kin and town of residence.' Thank you Andrew. Gravesend KEN parish burials FindMyPast has added 30,000 burial records for this Kent parish. |
In
this issue: |
Graham Jaunay Services |
| Interpreting census records Researching trying to locate homes using the 1911 Census can face two problems. Firstly the homes in most rural areas were not numbered and secondly the street numbering may have changed. There are a number of steps that can be taken to address the matter. The following process assumes you do not know the address until a person has been located in the Census. For that matter you may be faced with the same issue when looking at parish register entries and other documents and the following may also assist in clarifying these entries as well. Step 1: Locate the person in the Census and ascertain the address. There are a number of online sites that enable this process—FreeCen (incomplete but free) FindMyPast, The Genealogist and Ancestry. If you cannot find the person at one site try another. All have their shortcomings. If that strategy fails try another member of the family or drop the given name in your search altogether. For example if I attempt to find one of my ancestors in the census I find that if I name the specific place in FindMyPast it fails to reveal him – be less specific and success may be the outcome! In this example we looked for the Grummitt family in Clophill, Bedfordshire where no street number is given.
Step 2: Locate the entry in the 1910 Finance Act Field Book created by the Valuation Office. In this example the reference is IR 126/2/227
Step 3: Use the Assessment number from the field book to locate the property in the 1910 Finance Act Map which is an overprinted 1901 Ordnance Survey Map—OS Sheet Reference: Bedfordshire XXII 10. In this case we want 166. How is this done? Go to the National Archives site: Valuation Office survey: land value and ownership 1910-1915 where you can read the guide for the process outlined below:
Step 4: Compare the 1910 Finance Act Map with a modern online map. As a consequence we are able to identify the house on a contemporary or earlier map... 
Earlier censuses are not quite so straightforward but there are a number of published maps and books available online that may tighten up the location. For example the Harris family and families that married into this line lived in Pimlico, London up until the 1870s but that area has undergone major changes since then due to reconstruction following the War, the expansion of business houses into the area and the demolition of the huge Millbank Prison. Many streets recorded in the 1841 to 1901 Censuses no longer exist and others have changed their names.  Charles Booth, a successful businessman, created a map in the late 1800s. Booth believed that social reformers had exaggerated London's poverty levels as studies made at the time estimated that a quarter of the population lived in unacceptable conditions. In 1886, Booth decided to find out the truth of the matter, and began work on a new study of London's poor. His research revealed that the reality was even worse than official figures suggested: as many as one third of Londoners lived in poverty. Booth's study was published in 17 volumes under the title, Life and Labour of the People in London. This map was included in the published work. Using a colour code, the map represented varying levels of poverty in different districts across London. Step 1: Obtain a general understanding of where the street was located using Charles Booth's notes. The notebooks and maps are online. The material is interested in levels of poverty which will also be an interesting insight into your family but in this exercise we are trying to find out where the family lived. This means it is the notebooks that will prove useful. The above comparison online maps show the area the Harris family lived in which was worked out by following the route taken by the census enumerator as he went from residence to residence. This indicated that the Harris home at 15 Clarkes Cottages in 1871 was somewhere off or near Causton Street, Pimlico. Step 2: Use Stanford's Library Map of London and its Suburbs 1862 simply because it is clearer and more manipulative than the above mentioned Booth online map. It includes a street index making location very easy. You can also locate a district using the overview map. Note that the 1872 and 1878 maps are also available although the image quality is not as good. (Mapco have a significant range of good historical maps freely available.) This map clearly shows Clarke Cottages (1) – the other numbers refer to other homes occupied by the Harris family from 1840 to 1880 and the homes of other people who married into the Harris family.  Tithe maps were drawn under the authority of the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act. Before this, people had to give a tenth of their produce to the vicar or curate of the parish and the new legislation allowed payers to commute this payment in kind to a money payment, which was a lot more convenient. In order to work out exactly how much people had to pay, the Tithe Commissioners visited every parish to draw up maps and Apportionments or Awards. Each property on the tithe map was numbered, and the corresponding number on the Apportionment gives details of landowner, tenant, the types of crops grown, the acreage and value of land. The maps were drawn up mostly between 1838 and 1850. Unlike Ordnance Survey maps they were all drawn to different scales and with different degrees of accuracy. Tithe maps give family historians a detailed picture of almost every parish in the country in the mid nineteenth century and as such they are an invaluable resource because we can pinpoint individual properties. These maps are usually available from County Record Offices and some will sell you the appropriate copy via their website. A comprehensive listing of early map image sites is available online.   The following publications are further examples of material readily available online that may assist in establishing the location of residences. These examples were used to support the Booth book in locating the Harris and associated families as outlined above. The site, Open Library, provides many free to read publications online and searching their index can reveal useful books that may facilitate the above objectives. Not all books located are available to read online. Typing Bedfordshire into the Open Library search engine revealed twenty or more online old books and one, Bedfordshire by Clifford Gore Browne Wyatt Chambers published in 1917 contained a paragraph about market gardening at Clophill of interest given my Grummitts had been market gardeners. Slater's 1850 Directory is a usual family history resource and complements the 1851 Census. While the other books are a little off-topic, their significance to family historians makes their mention worthwhile! The visitations of Bedfordshire: annis Domini 1566, 1582, and 1634. by William Harvey first published in 1884 could prove very interesting to those with potentially armigerous ancestry in the county. Likewise, Bedfordshire county records by the Bedfordshire County Records Committee, first published in 1907 is a potential rich source of material for those with links to the county in their ancestry as it contains the Quarter Session Rolls from 1714 to 1832. In the case of this book there are a multitude of references to Clophill! While, Genealogia Bedfordiensis by Frederick Augustus, 1890 is preoccupied with the landed gentry its extracts of parish registers, bishops transcripts and Wills may prove helpful to some researchers. |
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