Grow Your Family Tree Flesh out your ancestors’ early lives

Researching school records and baptism details, Nick Peers explains how you can…

One of the joys of genealogy is going deeper with your research to expand your ancestors’ life story beyond a simple collection of dates and places. Here, we’ll focus on the early lives of your ancestors, particularly those born in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

You’ll need a rough outline in place, including their birth date (an exact date courtesy of their birth certificate, an estimate based on the birth index – accurate to within three months – or census records) and name of at least one parent. From here, you can build a more complete picture of their life before they became adults.

Christening and school

If you’re struggling for a birth date, try your ancestor’s baptism record (it’s highly likely they were christened). It will also contain the parents’ first names, although not the mother’s maiden name.

Baptism records are widely available online, complete with images of the original document. Use Familysearch’s maps ( www.snipca.com/29377) to identify the record provider most likely to contain the details you need. Select the area where your ancestor lived to see what records are available, and where to find them.

From 1870 the Government encouraged the take-up of free, universal and (from 1880) compulsory education. Early school records are now being digitised and placed online. Ancestry (best for Londonbased records) and Findmypast have various districts and counties covered, though they are far from comprehensive.

Details include the child’s date of entry to the school, but crucially also their exact birth date, father’s name and home address – useful titbits, but also helpful to confirm you’ve found the correct ancestor. For example, the record in our screenshot (left) appears to be the perfect match for my great-grandfather John Peers (born in 1877 in Nantwich), but inspecting the document (using the View Image button) reveals a different birth date and father.

Employment records

Your ancestors were likely to have started work in their teens. View their two earliest census records and you should see them go from infant or ‘scholar’ (the term officials used to mean ‘in education’) to employment, with an apprenticeship at some point between the two. Armed with this information, you may be able to find out when their working life began.

Take John’s elder brother Frederick. The 1891 census revealed the 17-year-old was a boilermaker’s apprentice. His father had worked on the railways, so I checked Ancestry’s UK Railway Employment records and found Frederick’s start date: 20 November, 1888. The term ‘boilermaker’ proved useful elsewhere, helping me trace his move from Crewe to the south coast in 1900, as well as his emigration to the US and death aged just 35 in Philadelphia (see undertaker’s certificate above).

When searching for employment records, check Ancestry and Findmypast, but also visit www.genuki.org.uk/big/ Occupations for more general guidance, including links to apprenticeship records, businesses and trades.