For anyone doing Family History research, the best approach is to start with what you know and work backwards through time. Start with what you know, verify things that you are not sure of then discover things that you never imagined. I decided to start with a branch of the family which had a distinctive and unusual surname - Caesar. My grandmother was born Ruby Caesar and I knew that she had 3 siblings but I didn’t know of anything before that. It was easy to look up her birth registration in the General Record Office indexes and then purchase a copy of her birth certificate. As she was born in the late 1800s, I was also able to look her up in the census returns of 1891, 1901 and 1911 and find out more about her family, their occupations and the places where they were born. In 1891, grandma was 3 years old and living in an area of Westminster with her parents, Frederick and Lydia, her 4 year old sister, Daisy, and her Aunt Louisa. Her father was a tailor as were many of the adults in neighbouring houses. This information allowed me to find the marriage registration for her parents and again purchase the certificate. Frederick Charles Caesar and Lydia had been married in Battersea in 1886 and the certificate told me that his father’s name was William Caesar and her father was James Emerson, a cordwainer or shoemaker. Continuing backwards, the 1886 birth certificate for Frederick Charles gave his mother’s name as Louisa Emily nee Smith From there it was possible to go back another generation and find the marriage of William and Louisa in 1861 which gives his father’s name as also William Caesar , a smith, and her father was Frederick Richardson Smith, also a smith. Confusing? Yes! And lots of double and triple checking needed as there were several William Caesars at the time, quite a few Fredericks and lots of Smiths (and smiths!). At this time the various branches of the family were based in and around Farnham, Surrey. I found the birth and matching baptism record for William Caesar in the parish registers for Tilford in 1839. Unfortunately for me, this showed his father’s name was also William and his mother’s name was also Louisa! By this time my brain was hurting and I’m sure yours is, too. So here’s a little diagram of the journey so far .... At this stage I went back to look in the census returns for 1841 to try and clarify who was who in this family and this is what I found. At the bottom of the left hand column, residing in the Hamlet of Tilford are NAME AGE OCCUPATION William Beldham 75 Batmaker William Caesar 30 Smith Louisa Caesar 25 William Caesar 2 Henry Beldham 30 Ag Lab (agricultural labourer) Knowing that Louisa was a Beldham before she was married, I concluded that William Beldham must be her father. This was backed up in a subsequent census where William Beldham was the head of the family (occupation retired Victualler) and Louisa Caesar was listed as his daughter and William Caesar as his son in law. Stay with me - it’s about to get really interesting.... I like to find out more about my ancestors than just a name and some dates so I decided to go to Tilford (a hamlet near Farnham) to see where these people lived and visit the local history museum in Farnham. I found the museum quite easily and headed for the front desk to see if they had any suggestions about where to look for information about the area at that time and in particular what a bat maker might make. Obviously bats of some kind but for what?
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About MeI've always been interested in the Past Stories of my family and have recently found the time to delve deeper into the lives of the people who went before me. Previous Posts
1. Making a new start 2.The Qui Vives 3. From Ruby to Silver 4. A postcard and a passenger list 5. Louisa's story Part 1 6. Louisa's story - the second part 7. Three generations of Joseph Shearsbys 8. The Down-Under Adventures of Thomas and Catherine Skitteral Categories |