Why can’t I find a death record for my great great grandfather?
QI am trying to find a death record for my great great grandfather Thomas Horton. He was born on 13 June 1847 at Newcastle-under-Lyme and married Margaret Parry at Trinity Church, Northwood, Stoke-on-Trent, on 2 December 1877. On the 1881 census, he was living at
13 Albert Street, Hanley, and was a plumber/ house painter. I can’t find him after this. By 1891, the couple’s two children were living with Margaret’s sister and she was working as a maid for the potter Thomas Meakin. Margaret remarried in 1893, describing herself as a widow.
I’ve looked everywhere to find out what happened to Thomas with no luck…
Vicki Bentley
AAt the time of the 1891 census, Margaret Horton claimed she was a widow. We need, therefore, to begin by searching for Thomas’ death between 1881 and 1891. It is possible that the surname ‘Horton’ was misspelled at the time the death was registered. The commercial genealogical sites offer options to search for similar-sounding names under Soundex (on ancestry.co.uk), Name Variants (on findmypast.co.uk) and Phonetics (on thegenealogist.co.uk), but these facilities aren’t foolproof. You should try searching for your Thomas under Haughton, Houghton, Horeton and even Whoreton or Whorton. Don’t forget, too, that the first name ‘Thomas’ might instead have been recorded as THM, Tho, THos or Tom.
If, however, Margaret was lying about being widowed on the 1891 census (a real possibility in an age when divorce was virtually unobtainable), we should search generally for a likely Thomas Horton at any point from 1881 onwards. Depending on the type of record, results might be narrowed down by including (as a search term) Thomas’ year of birth (1847), or by adding an optional keyword such as ‘Newcastle-under-Lyme’
(his birthplace), or ‘painter’ or ‘plumber’ (his occupation). You should start by scrutinising the 28 Thomas Hortons living in Staffordshire in the 1891 census, although an initial survey suggests that none of them fits the bill.
You should also search the rich variety of other records that are available on commercial genealogy websites, such as passenger lists (in case Thomas emigrated, or went to work abroad), electoral registers, newspaper records and trade union records.
Ruth Symes