Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Tricky relative - any help welcomed

Options
  • 19-04-2015 11:48am
    #1
    SherHist
    Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭


    We have an ancestor who we know existed - we know when she was born , married and died. Her mother died while she was a small child and her father remarried several years later. She didn't live with her father and step mother and we can't find her on the 1911 census. She died young and her husband told the children she was raised in a specific orphanage but she's not there on the 1911 census either.

    I'm guessing that her surname was incorrectly entered in the 1911 census but where should I look to find her - I've checked that she wasn't living with any of her father's family. Is my best bet to try and track down the names of all her mother's siblings and see if she's with them?


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,834 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    If she was in an institution as opposed to an orphanage she'd only be entered by her initials on a different (albeit still searchable) form - do you have a normal or special form for the orphanage you've been told of?

    Otherwise I'd dig through every single option for her first name and applicable birth year +/- 1 or 2 years if there is a risk of mistranscription. Surnames being made a balls of on school and similar multiple person returns is much more likely than on a family with one surname repeated.


  • Options
    #3
    SherHist
    Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭SherHist


    Thanks. I've checked the form for the orphanage I was told it was. Guess I will have to try a few different ones.

    Her mother was on the 1901 census and her details were right but digitised incorrectly. I'm wondering if she went by a different surname growing up (if she grew up with part of her mother's family). She used her correct name on her marriage cert (which is missing from GRO but which we got from the church)


  • Options
    #4
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,834 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    SherHist wrote: »
    I'm wondering if she went by a different surname growing up (if she grew up with part of her mother's family).

    Very possible. I've an interesting person in my tree who isn't actually a calculable blood relative - apparently there's a very distant connection - but who was my great grandfather's third wife; and she went by any random mix of her birth fathers surname, her mother's maiden name, her step father's surname and latterly but not always her husbands name depending on what form she was filling in. And three variants of her first name.


  • Options
    #5
    SherHist
    Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭SherHist


    Mad isn't it!


  • Options
    #6
    looksee
    Registered Users Posts: 28,113 ✭✭✭✭looksee


    Lol, my tricky relative is my husband, apparently his mother got an attack of posh when getting his birth certificate, so the surname, while correct, is the Hyacinth Bouquet version, and her own maiden name was done the same. Reckon she must have been trying to impress a nun! This has only just cropped up as the tax office and health office have now got the birth cert versions rather than the ones he has been using all his life.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #7
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,834 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    looksee wrote: »
    Lol, my tricky relative is my husband, apparently his mother got an attack of posh when getting his birth certificate, so the surname, while correct, is the Hyacinth Bouquet version, and her own maiden name was done the same. Reckon she must have been trying to impress a nun! This has only just cropped up as the tax office and health office have now got the birth cert versions rather than the ones he has been using all his life.

    Did you take on the Bucket, sorry, Bouquet surname? :D


  • Options
    #8
    SherHist
    Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭SherHist


    My mother filled out my birth cert wrong so I haven't been going by my correct (full) first name my entire life :-)


Advertisement