Hello everyone,
I have been trying to trace any record of my 4x ggf, Charles Benjamin Fear (I assume he went by his middle name as he is most often recorded as that in various documents) before his marriage to Sarah Bailey in Manchester in 1853. I have found him and his family in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 censuses (living in Manchester) but they all contradict each other as for his birthplace. 1861 says "Somersetshire Bristol", 1871 is faded and rather illegible, A* says it's Dorset, but it can't be as the word is way too long (I might ask in the Handwriting recognition group to see if anyone can help), and 1881 says "Summerseat, Lancs"! His marriage records say he was a finisher (later became a greengrocer/some variation of that) and that his father was a joiner called Thomas Fear. I have started to suspect that Benjamin may not have been fully truthful, and that Thomas the Joiner could very well be fiction as I have searched for baptism records/ censuses for these places, and then for the whole of the UK and have hit a brick wall...
There is a prison record from 1849 saying a Charles Benjamin Fear aged 15 (so the dates stack up) from Bristol was imprisoned in Gloucestershire for a month and whipped for having stolen pigeons, which could be him, but how did he go from stealing someone's tame pigeons in Bristol to starting a respectable family business in Manchester?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thank you for your time
SapereAude
