Where is my great great grandfather’s birth record?

QI’m seeking the birth record of my great great grandfather Henry Kaye, born c1858. On his two Liverpool Church of England marriage banns records, his father is listed as “William Kaye, deceased”.

The census records of 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 and his headstone (right) all indicate a birth year of 1858, but I am unable to find a birth record. Karen Smyth

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales in 1837, but only became compulsory in 1875. In the 1850s, therefore, some families did not bother to record births with the state, although they did often still record a child’s baptism in a parish register. Many of these are now online, but some are not. I suspect that this is the case for the record of the baptism of Henry Kaye.

Baptismal records of Henry’s siblings, if any, might help us to locate Henry’s own baptism. In the 1871 census, a likely looking Kaye family is recorded as living in West

ADerby, Liverpool. Henry Kaye, aged 13, is an apprentice, living with his widowed mother; brother William, 23; and sister Mary, 21. Frustratingly, this census gives no place of birth for any of the family, and a further search of the 1861 census yields no likely record of a three-year-old Henry Kaye in Liverpool.

A speculative search for the marriage of Henry’s parents (William Kaye senior and Ann) reveals a William Kaye marrying an Ann Orton in Great Boughton in Cheshire in

1844. Among their other children, a son William was born in Liverpool in 1847 and a daughter Mary was born in Liverpool in 1849

(in both cases, the mother’s maiden name is recorded as Orton, which suggests that this is probably the same family).

A baptismal record for a Mary Kaye can be found at St Nicholas’ Roman Catholic Church in Liverpool, on 6 February 1850. The registers for St Nicholas are online ( ancestry.co.uk) but I could not find a younger brother Henry there or older brother William. You could look at further Catholic records, although there are no clues on Henry’s gravestone to suggest he was Catholic.

Your next step might be to look further into the Kaye family in West Derby in 1871.

Ruth Symes