RootsChat.Com
England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Durham => Topic started by: Mainsforth on Thursday 07 May 20 12:50 BST (UK)
-
Some of the information I have about the family of THOMAS TRUEMAN FLETCHER, my paternal grandfather, is a bit confusing.
The 1911 England and Wales Census - taken on 2 April - has Thomas T, his wife MARY JANE (née DICKSON), my father EDWARD and his sisters NORAH and ELIZABETH living at 17 HACKWORTH STREET, DEAN BANK, FERRYHILL, CO:DURHAM
The birth certificate of my father’s brother JAMES DICKSON FLETCHER says he was born on 13 October 1911 at 5 EMILY STREET, WHEATLEY HILL, WINGATE, Co: Durham.
Wheatley Hill was in the Easington Registration District in County Durham.
Wheatley Hill is roughly 13 miles from Ferryhill.
There is an outline of Jim”s place and date of birth on his Death Certificate.
I had initially assumed that Thomas T had moved his family from Ferryhill to Wheatley Hill between April and October 1911 when Mary Jane would have been heavily pregnant.
Info in findmypast.co.uk records of County Durham Electoral Rolls for the relevant period is
The 1911@ and 1912* Electoral Rolls for the DEAN BANK N Polling District of the township of FERRYHILL in MID DURHAM Polling Division of the Parliamentary County of Durham also have Thomas T living at 17 HACKWORTH STREET, DEAN BANK,
[The qualifying date for entry in Electoral Rolls for years between 1979 and 1914 was 15 July.]
Price Smallwood occupied 5 EMILY STREET, WHEATLEY HILL, WINGATE in 1908, 1909, 1911, 1912 and 1913 - Electoral Rolls for the Wheatley Hill Polling District Nn of the township of Wingate in Durham South-Eastern Polling Division of the Parliamentary County of Durham.
No results were found when Find My Past was searched for 1910 Wheatley Hill Electoral Roll entries for Thomas Trueman Fletcher’s family, for Price Smallwood and some of his 1909/1911 Emily Street neighbours.
5 Emily Street appears to have been a private house.
I have no record of any known relatives of Thomas T or Mary Jane living in Wheatley Hill in the relevant years.
Thomas T and Mary Jane were living in SHERBURN HILL, Co: Durham when my father and my mother married in 1933.
I should be grateful for any help to remove some of the confusion.
Sources
& https://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=gbc%2f1911
%2frg14%2f29700%2f0217%2f3
@ https://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=bl%2fer%2fd19%2ffmp000002746%2f0264
* https://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=bl%2fer%2fd13%2ffmp000002745%2f0256
GRO Certified Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates for nearly all Thomas T’s immediate family.
-
Please can you outline what exactly you are confused about as I'm not quite following? Is it that James wasn't born where you expected him to be? Wheatley Hill and Ferryhill aren't that far apart. My own grandma was born in a Co Durham village where there were no records that the family ever lived there . I'd wondered if she was visiting a relation when great grandma gave birth, though I haven't been able to prove who they might have been visiting. If your family were miners, they often moved about quite a lot, going where the work was.
-
Is there any particular reason why the address is of such importance? Presume the family stayed together so no marriage break up?
-
Thank you for visiting my post.
Nearly all of my family history info has been gleaned from online sources. Family commitments make it impossible for me to visit County Durham and record offices elsewhere.
The problem mentioned in my post is one of two similar anomalies I have found in looking into my ancestry.
Experience has taught me to look for official documentation e.g electoral roll, and parish records before accepting data found on internet family history websites - errors in the transcripts on them are not unknown.
I raised the question because Jim’s place of birth on his birth certificate is a different from the address which, according to the relevant Electoral Rolls, my paternal grandparents occupied in the years around that in which Jim was born.
I have a lot of downloaded pdfs of the Census and Electoral Rolls for Thomas T over the years from and including 1909 - pdfs for the years 1914 to 1917, 1925, 1926 and 1932 to 1938 are missing for my collection.
There are entries for Thomas T and Mary Jane in 1918 Electoral Roll for the Seaham Polling District, in The Seaham Division of the Durham Parliamentary County. Their address was 5 Gowland Terrace, Wheatley Hill, County Durham.
I should perhaps have included a bit about my coal mining pedigree when I asked for help.
I was born and raised in the coal mine villages of South West Durham. I left the county in March 1967 for the South of England.
A lot of the male direct line ancestors that I have traced were coal miners. The earliest such employment record I have is in a parish record of a birth in 1800.
My grandfathers and father were all coal mine officials.
My grandfather John Charles Hunter was a Fore Overman when he retired.
At one time the Secretary of State responsible for the Coal Industry could grant a Colliery Under Manager’s certificate to a man who had not sat a written exam but who had had the daily supervision of part of a mine. Thomas Trueman Fletcher was granted [Colliery] Under Manager’s Certificate No: 3836 dated 2 Sept 1899 on that basis. He retired as an Overman.
My father held both an Under Manager’s Certificate and a Colliery Manager’s Certificate. I have a copy of the official announcements of him passing the exams.
I was an NCB Mining Engineering Trainee for 10 years. I hold Colliery Managers’ Certificate number 9782 dated 17 January 1967.
My father held Colliery Under Manager’s posts from at least 1937 until he took up his first Colliery Managers post in 1943/44.
Between 1937 and 1967 my parents lived in about 9 house tied to my father’s job. The shortest we lived in one house was about six months, the longest 7 years.
Jim Fletcher spent his working life as a colliery electrician.
Everything I have seen in The Records suggests that Thomas T and Mary J lived together the whole of the time between 3 Oct 1903, the date they married, and the date Thomas died. Thomas Trueman and Mary Jane lived at 9 East view from at least 23 June 1933 until his death on 24 March 1942.
As I said in the third last paragraph of my initial post I have no record of any known relatives of Thomas T or Mary Jane living in Wheatley Hill in the relevant years.
-
Is the place of birth on his certificate the same as that of the informant
-
Rosie
Thank you for asking your question.
I had not noticed previously that it was Mary Jane who reported the birth on 20 November 1911. She gave her address as 5 Emily Street, Wheatley Hill.
Have you come across this before? I would be grateful for any guidance you can give me.
-
If if understand you correctly you are saying that on James birth cert, it says he was born at Wheatley Hill and the informant on registration was his mum , who's own address was the same address at Wheatley hill. The logical conclusion is that at that particular point in time, mum and son were living at Wheatley hill. As I indicated in my earlier post, my own family had a birth in a village not quite where I was expecting them to be,( but not far away) but miners moved where the work was as you know, so they probably moved to Wheatley Hill for a while for work.
-
I had just wondered if James had been born while his mother was visiting in another area.
I obviously have no idea what the electoral registration officer did in the early 1900's as far as registering someone to vote but I was employed by a local authority some years ago who just transferred over the records from the previous year unless there was evidence that the occupants had vacated. You have to bear in mind that a lot of people fail to complete and return these forms or are 'not at home' when the enumerator calls.
-
It took quite some time from the 'qualifying date' for an electoral register to be compiled, get printed and be in effect. If they moved the week after the forms were collected then its quite possible they could be elsewhere when the baby was born?
For example, I have seen people recorded in a register as being eligible to vote, yet I know for a fact that they died between the qualifying date and the effective date.
As others have said people moved around (often) for work, sometimes they only stayed in a particular place for a matter of weeks or months.
EDIT - sorry forgot to add that I have one family who moved around a lot, I have them (on certs and census returns) moving from one address to another and then back to the first address - twice!
Boo
-
Thanks for your help.
I particularly want to thank Rosie99 for what I believe is the key to the solution i was seeking. I have to accept that the info I have on the Birth Certificates of my mother and of Uncle Jim is much more reliable than that I have found in Electoral Rolls entries for their respective parents.
Rosie99’s last message prompted me to read The British Library pdf - https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/subjects%20images/government%20publications/pdfs/parliamentaryconstituencies.pdf?la=en&hash=8FEF7B348A6E0A7DB7E00E8F9A1A771B - again. Rosie99’s explanation of how some enumerators went about compiling Electoral Rolls is within the spirit of the content of one page 18 paragraph.
Before reading Rosie99’s explanation I assumed that, in the early years of the twentieth century, Electoral Rolls entries were compiled by copying info from forms submitted by say the head of the household. Other content explains that the Rolls were not compiled from such forms until 1918”.