New here. Ball and Abbott

[SumnerBall]

Hi, I apologise if I am doing this wrong.

I've run aground trying to do the family history at my great grandma Ann Ball, said to be of an irish traveller family.

She was fully Irish, her mum may have been an Abbott or Riley. Possibly Bargee, Pavee or Showmen.

None of the census give the same birthplace, I am not even sure if her birth year is correct, 1878 is what I have. We were told she was born in Cork, but the census give sometimes Barnsley, sometimes Blackburn, so nothing lines up. She was catholic, very irish in personality and mannerisms, and would talk of how her mum and others suffered during the famine.
She was naturally very gifted musically as are many of her decendents.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Talacharn]

SumnerBall, welcome to Rootschat. Trying to locate is one of the problems in tracing travellers as birth, registration and baptism may be different places. I have one born in Pontypridd on the censuses, but I cannot find a registration, and the baptism was in Swansea 4 years later. There were certain churches they used, probably in receiving a welcome.

Another issue is trying to blend in with the locals, so rather than saying Ireland they would give a local town. Birth years are often inaccurate, partly as they added or subtracted years to suit. They also might not know.

Do you have a husband and possible marriage as that certificate should give both father’s names, though many did not marry? It might be worth asking on the Irish page as there are some very knowledgable members, who helped me a while ago.

Added: Do you know her death details as that registration could give a birth year?

[SumnerBall]

Hi there Talacharn,

Thank you for responding.

You are right about the birth registry, we do not have a birth certificate or registry entry. One theory is that she was taken in by a different family to her birth family/mother, I can see a line going back from the Abbotts and Balls but none go to Ireland, yet we know she was fully Irish from the percentage of Irish that I inherited from the paternal line (DNA test).
She died in 1943 at the age of 65, so we worked out her birth year, 1878, from that, it does tally with the census, but that's if she was born then, if she was born to another mother and handed to them as a babe-in-arms to raise it may be a year or so out.
We do have a marriage certificate for her and great grandad Sumner in 1899, her father on there is Robert Ball, deceased, he died in 1892/3, he would have been about 42. And her mother on the census was Alice Ball nee Abbott.
Like I say, though, they did move around, and the census birth location info is never the same. I suppose in those days, when, as you say, there was a motivation not to be percieved as Irish or Traveller, that they may not be honest on the census, and they never knew that over 100 years later we (the curious descendents) would be able to view the different census side by side.

I can see that further back in the Ball line there were horse husbandrymen and carters. There are also Constantine and Buckleys in that family line, but I do not know where they fit in.
The most frustrating, though, is that I cannot find a record of her in Ireland, certainly not Cork, as we have always been told, which is what is making me suspect that she may have been sent to live with a family in England in the late 1870s as the Potato Blight took hold again. But she must have known her Irish mother and spent time with her growing up because some of the stories her mother told her about the Irish famine were passed on to her own children and then on to us.
The music and horse husbandry has stayed in the family to a large degree, and I can't help thinking the horses are the link to Cork.

Any thoughts?

Kindest,

Karen

[CaroleW]

Welcome from me too. 

Can you clarify if Ball was her birth surname or her married name?

If it was her birth name - did she marry - when & where as later census entries will be in her married name.

Do you have her marriage cert showing her fathers name & occupation

Can you post at least one of the census entries you have found her on to give us a starting point - in particular - the names and birthyears of any children she had

[SumnerBall]

Hi Carole W and thanks,

Ball was the family name Great Grandma Ann grew up with, her parents on the census being Robert Ball, born 1849/50, (died 1892), and Alice Abbott who became Alice Ball when she married him.
Ann Ball (great grandma) married James Sumner of Preston in 1899.

On the marriage cert it says that Ann's father was deceased, but at the time of the 1891 census he is listed as a house painter.

So her children I can do, because my Grandad was one of them, Stephen Sumner. The BMD register has Ann's mother (according to the census) Alice Abbott, but I couldn't find Robert, her father, or Ann herself on there. I've included the 1891 census, the year before her father, Robert died, and the 1921 census, when most of Ann and James's children were born, there was one more son born in 1922. Great Grandad James (Ann's husband) died in 1923 of pneumonia from malaria, leaving her with alone with all the kids.

Kindest,

Karen