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The Lighter Side / Re: Myths debunked when doing family histroy.
« on: Today at 13:57 »Another myth is that you should be able to always find a record of a death of someone. It is easier from civil registration onwards but even then not always. Workhouse burials where the registers do not survive, non conformist burials, lost at sea, went missing and never identified etc, and so on.
Lots of overseers ratebooks and disbursement books for Essex are on FamilySearch for a number of parishes. I was able to pinpoint an ancestor's death year by this, as it said "William Ingram Snr" for September 1794 ratebooks but for Dec 1794 it said "Widow Ingram" for what seems to be the same property as the neighbours names are the same. No burial can be found in Leigh On Sea for him in 1794 but he may have been buried elsewhere or in a workhouse cemetery or NC grounds. Also the family were mariners so worked in a dangerous job, and he may have been lost at sea.
Handy to use such books if a burial cannot be found.
Many children were baptised late because they were just about to start work, and employers insisted on it. If the child did not know, then s/he'd be baptised again "just in case",
My maternal grandfather was baptised at the same time as his younger sister, which helped with his lying about his birthday!
My great gran was baptised as a baby in Oxford in 1895, then baptised again in March 1910 in Hackney, London. She was staying at a Hackney convent at the time and by 1911 census she was a servant at Bexhill in Sussex. The 1911 census says the convent had people "training for domestic service".