Off The Record
Alan Crosby wrestles with a relation who stubbornly refuses to give up her secrets
Alan Crosby points the finger at his most elusive relation
Sooner or later, all family historians know the frustration of coming up against a brick wall. With a bit of patience and some careful searching using the tips suggested in this excellent magazine, we can often overcome the obstacle. However, in other cases it seems impossible to resolve the problem to our satisfaction, perhaps because of the fecklessness of a forebear. If only they’d filled in the forms correctly!
My grandmother’s grandfather, Barnard Mason Routledge, was born in Selby Union Workhouse in Yorkshire in late February 1844. He was illegitimate. His father, a clearly precocious youth of 17, was a blacksmith in the small village of Gateforth, four miles south-west of the town. Blacksmiths had a reputation for being somewhat ‘vigorous’, and evidently the young man in question, John Thomas Routledge, lived up to the image. The writer DH Lawrence would have thought that his forenames were all too appropriate!
I’ve been able to trace his ancestry. He too was illegitimate, born in November 1827 to Hannah Routledge, who already had a nine-year- old daughter. Hannah herself was baptised in 1797 (like her own daughter and son, in Selby Abbey), the 10th of the 13 children of John Routledge and his wife Eleanor. Their baptisms are recorded in glorious detail, because the abbey used the ‘Dade’ type of register. Entries very often give the names, occupations and place of residence of grandparents and even great grandparents, and this enabled me to trace John and Eleanor back to Hampsthwaite, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, and to follow her ancestry back to the beginning of the 17th century.
No such luck with Barnard’s mother, Elizabeth Mason. She conspired to make things very difficult for her 3x great grandson, the family historian. For a start, she had a common name, although in fairness that’s not her fault. More seriously, she was inconsistent and careless about her personal details. When she and John Thomas did the honourable thing and got married a couple of years later, for unknown reasons they chose the church of St Peter in Leeds, instead of somewhere in the Selby area. They married by licence and the document is uninformative… but much worse, and to my exasperated annoyance, in the parish register the spaces for the names and occupations of their fathers are left completely blank. John Thomas probably did not know who his father was, and I imagine Elizabeth left out her parent’s name to spare him embarrassment. Even a Victorian marriage register can let you down.
Then there’s her age. In census returns she’s unclear or underhand about this, with birth years varying from 1821 to 1825. She was possibly six years older than her husband (who is also unreliable about his age, usually adding a couple of years), but her birthplace varies. In 1851 it was Gowdall, a hamlet near Snaith; in 1861 (by which time they were in Manchester) an incompetent enumerator wrote “Yorkshire” for all the family; in 1871 they were living in Sheffield and her birthplace was given as Hambleton (a couple of miles from Gateforth); and in 1881, back in Manchester, it was Selby.
Finding a baptism has so far proved to be impossible, especially as I don’t know her father’s name. The 1841 census has an Elizabeth Mason living near Snaith, but she was a female servant in another family so that’s no help. There was a family called Mason at Hambleton in 1841, and it’s tempting to say it must be them. But making assumptions is one of the worst sins in genealogical research. Until I find her baptism it’s a case of so near and yet so far. In the meantime Elizabeth gets the award for being my most infuriating ancestor!
‘Finding a baptism has so far proved to be impossible’