Hello,
I hope someone can help me solve this mystery!
My Great-Grandmother seems to magically appear out of nowhere in 1918, aged about 27!
She was known to the family as 'Nanny Dinah/Diana' or 'Big Aunt Doll'.
This is what we know:
Pre-1918: We have photographs. One of Dinah as a child, taken in a studio in
Maidstone.
Another photo is taken c1915 and she's wearing a Munitionette's uniform, so evidently worked in a
Munitions factory - although she never told anyone about this.
1918: The informant of her first child's birth. She records herself as
'Dorothy Staples formerly Shepherd'.
1920-1934: The informant of her other five children, but on these birth certs, she appears as
'Dorothy Staples formerly Langley'.
The two different maiden names are a mystery to us!
1929: She marries my Great-Grandfather Walter Edward John Ernest Staples in Islington Registry Office. My Grandmother is still alive and this was a total surprise to her. She said they were all raised to believe they had been married in a church and before the first child was born! (Nan finds much of my research very amusing! - As it turns out, she was the only one born in wedlock!)
Also, on the marriage cert, they appear to give a false home address and nobody alive today, recognises the two names of the witnesses.
She records her father as 'William Langley, Deceased, General Labourer'.
Nan is sure that her mother grew up in
Blue Bell Hill with an Aunt.
It's so strange that i can't find a birth record for her or in the 1891, 1901 or 1911 censuses!
Can anyone help please?!
Many thanks in advance,
Glen.
