Hello again.
I was after some general advice, but if you're prepared to have a go for me it would be very much appreciated. My GG grandfather was John Henry Johnson from Shetland, born 1855. I have his details and have traced his family further back with assistance from the Shetland Family History Society after I joined (great bunch of people, by the way). He married Margaret Clark in Liverpool on 23 Jan 1879. Her father is listed as William Clark, printer, on the marriage cert. They had a son, William, in England before travelling to Australia in 1885 (I have the passenger list) and having several more children there (I have all all of their certificates). After some years in Brisbane, they went to Goode Island off the tip of Cape York (very top of Queensland and about as far from anywhere as you can get) as missionaries. She got sick and died there on 9 Dec 1897 and is buried nearby on Thursday Island. He put the children into state care and went to work 'out west' and wasn't heard from again, other than a report of his death. The closest we can find is that he died near Hughenden about a year later but with no family around, there are no details on his death certificate to be sure.
It is her family that I am trying to trace. I have the certificates for all of the children which had her as the informant (births at least) and the marriage certificate already mentioned. From these, I surmise that she was born in Liverpool, most likely between March 14 and July 9 of 1857. Her death certificate and headstone I think are unreliable. The headstone misspells her name as Margeret and has her being 44 at death. The death certificate has the correct spelling but says she was 41. As she was not the source of information for either of these, I have so far discounted them. The death cert has John Henry giving her father as William Henry Clark, printer and her mother as Margaret Jane ---. This is the only mention of her mother anywhere, and the only mention of a middle name for her father. I'm not sure that I trust John Henry's recollection of people he probably only knew briefly more than a decade earlier. Interestingly, the children on their marriage certs give her name as Margaret Agness (or Agnes) and these are the only places that this is mentioned. Having said that, the children appear to have decided that their surname was Johnston instead of Johnson. Go figure.
Anyway, I have tried the free online Lancashire BDM searches (she consistently put Liverpool as her birthplace) for her birth in 1857 or a few years either side with no luck. I also tried searching for William Clark and William Henry Clark (including using Clarke as a surname) with no luck. I have no idea of the size of the family or weather Margaret was first or last born, but surmised that her father would've been born between about 1810 and 1840 but have also had no luck looking for his birth, death or marriage (to a Margaret).
I turned to the free online Lancashire census search and looked for a Margaret Clark/e born 1857 and came up with a few prospects. Noting their addresses, I searched for a William Clark/e and found one with the same address (sorry I don't have it with me, but I think was 5 Square something Street) who was born in Liverpool in 1835 with the spelling Clarke. His wife was Jane (source of the Margaret Jane on the death cert for her daughter?) born in Dublin in 1837 and he had an older son, James, born in Liverpool in 1855 and a younger one, William, born in 1859. This was on the 1861 census, so there may have been subsequent children as well. I also tried the later censuses without any luck as well as earlier ones but could not find him in them either (Margaret and John Henry Johnson are present on the 1881 census). Neither can I find any BDM records for this family. I would like to see the actual census entry for this family to see if he was a printer which would probably cement them as my ancestors but don't have access to that. Then I would ideally like to track down a marriage cert for them to find some parental details so that I can look for their birth records and so on. But at this stage, I have run into a brick wall.
I'd even wondered whether there was a printer's guild or something that may have allowed me to find something more about him, but I have no real idea of what records are available over there in the UK.
Again, any help or suggestions you could give are very much appreciated.
