Trace your family tree
You’d be forgiven for thinking that some of your ancestors were amateur magicians performing disappearing acts. Discover a few tricks of your own.
All family historians will, at some point in their research, experience that unpleasant sinking feeling that comes when an otherwise entirely co-operative and predictable ancestor performs the genealogical equivalent of the famous magic trick and seemingly vanishes into thin air. One minute, you’re sailing back through the generations, with every individual ancestor appearing in each census, just as expected. Then you’re plunged into uncertainty, as your forebears disappear from the records without a trace. You might be tempted to flail around, searching blindly, and spending hours staring at long lists of names on www.ancestry. com.au or familysearch.org in the hope of stumbling across your missing forebears. However, if you take a step back, and approach the problem logically and methodically, you may be able to track down your elusive ancestors without wasting hours of valuable time.
It’s important to make sure you have a good grasp of the various reasons why ancestors might suddenly disappear from the main records. The most simple and obvious reason is that they were just doing what people do, be it marrying, dying or moving house – all the things that can pluck an ancestor from their expected place in the records. There are also more complicated reasons why someone might not be where you expect them. They might have emigrated, or simply moved to a distant part of the country, following a job. They could well have lost their spouse= and gone on to remarry in the gap between censuses. They may well have changed their name, joined the Army or gone off to sea. It’s also possible that they had their lives disrupted by some major event, such as a civil war or religious persecution. Also, don’t rule out that they could have been in prison or in a workhouse. There are a huge number of possibilities, but by looking at what was going on in the world at the time, you might well find there is an obvious line of enquiry to pursue.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Before looking at wars and epidemics, it’s probably worth starting closer to home, and looking for simple, personal reasons for an apparent disappearance. The first thing to rule out is a straightforward mistake in the records. Missing ancestors are most obvious where the census is concerned, due to the way in which it provides ten-yearly snapshots of people’s lives. If you’re using online census records, you might be missing an ancestor with a misspelt or mis-transcribed surname, so your first step should be to repeat your searches with other possible spellings, or using wildcards. You should also make sure that you look at the original returns. The transcription coverage is generally good, but oversights
There are complicated reasons why someone might not be where you expect them. They might have emigrated, moved to a distant part of the country following a job or lost their spouse and gone on to remarry between censuses.”
do occur. A younger child, or other household member might be recorded on the next page to the rest of the family, and it would be fairly easy to overlook this. If you are fairly sure that a household was in a particular place in a given census (for example, if they were there in the preceding and following censuses) then it’s worth browsing the actual returns, to see if a particular address has somehow been missed. Maybe your ancestors just didn’t answer the door on census night! You’ll find that some returns are missing, and it’s worth making sure that your ancestors weren’t in one of these areas.
WHERE DID THEY GO?
If you’re reasonably sure that you’re dealing with an ancestral disappearing act, and not a simple error in the records, then you need to consider the most obvious possibilities. The starting point should probably be to look at the age of the ancestor at their last appearance in the records. The older they were, the greater the chance that you’re looking for a death record, not a further census record. With an older ancestor after 1837, it’s probably worth focusing on the BMD records, and checking different versions of the name, in case the death entry is simply hiding behind a misspelling. A younger teenager might well have gone into service, or into an apprenticeship with a local tradesman. Again, it’s a good idea to search online, using information other than the surname. If the head of a large household was asked to provide the census data, he might not have known the correct spelling of the name of a lowly housemaid who had just been appointed. A young woman, in her late teens or early 20s, who is suddenly absent from the family home, is highly likely to have married. One simple way to find newly-weds is to search online census records by using only the woman’s first name, approximate age and
place of birth. This might well identify her under her new surname. If you’re browsing the actual census returns, check households in the vicinity of her parents’ home as people often married and remained near family – sometimes even next door! It’s not just younger women who might be hiding under a change of name. Widows often remarried, particularly if they had children to support. Where missing female ancestors are concerned, marriage should generally be the first assumption, but not the only one. If you can’t find any trace of a second marriage in the BMD records, or of a second family in the census returns, then you should always carry on searching, in case there is an entirely different explanation for the disappearance. Age is often a solid indication as to which line of enquiry to pursue, but you should also consider other personal and family circumstances. Is the family relatively poor? If so, check the local workhouse census returns to see if they have fallen on hard times. Is there a second marriage involved? Have a look for relatives of the first spouse, in case older children decided not to live with an unpopular stepparent.
LOOK FURTHER AFIELD
If none of these clues lead to any information, it’s time to start widening the search. Try to identify locations with some connection to the missing person, however tenuous. Look at the place they were born, or at the home parish of siblings or cousins. Is there a large town or city nearby? Perhaps they moved there, seeking work. For coastal parishes, check the census returns for ships, or search records of merchant seamen. The profession of a missing ancestor is often a good lead to follow. Some jobs were relatively static. Farmers, for example, were likely to remain in one place for their entire life, while sailors could be anywhere in the world at any given time. But there
A young woman, in her early 20s, who is suddenly absent from the family home, is likely to have married. A simple way to find newly-weds is to search online census records using only the woman’s first name, age and place of birth.”
were also some trades that were heavily affected by external factors. Many weavers, for example, suffered extreme hardship with the introduction of the power loom. This might have led to a weaver moving to another area, to work in a fabric mill, or to seek other work altogether. The clergy also moved around a good deal, so be prepared to search widely if your ancestor was in the church. Mining is another good example of a profession that led to whole families relocating to other parts of the country, or even overseas. Cornish miners were renowned for their expertise, and many of them moved to other areas, seeking better pay and conditions, particularly when the Cornish tin mines began to decline. The majority of the estimated 250,000 Cornish emigrants between 1861 and 1901 were miners. If your missing ancestors were from a mining family, look for them in other counties with strong mining links – Cumberland, Devon and Durham are good starting points.
STRAYED FROM THE PATH
Some researchers have compiled lists of ‘strays’ in other counties, and it’s worth seeing if anything like this exists for your ancestors’ home county. Also, try searching online census records using a combination of county of birth and other counties, as well as an approximate age. For example, search for people born between 1810 and 1830, born in Cornwall and living in Cumberland, to identify ex-pat mining communities, in which missing kin might be hiding. If you think emigration is a possibility, look at the countries that might have appealed to people with your ancestors’ skills, or others from their local area or religion. There are many places you can search for passenger lists, or details of people entering or leaving a country ( www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/
Mining is one profession that led to whole families relocating to other parts of the country and overseas. Cornish miners were renowned for their expertise, and many moved to other areas particularly with the decline of the Cornish tin mines.”
looking-for-person/passengers.htm is a great example if you're looking for British relatives.). This kind of situation is where the internet really comes into its own. If your ancestor has decided to abandon his family, change his name and move to the other end of the country, it could take years of traditional searching to find out what happened to him. With online archives, you can have that information at the touch of a few buttons. Creative searching is the key to solving this kind of problem. Surnames aren’t always the best way to find missing ancestors as they’re easily misspelt and are far more likely to be changed than a first name – a given name is a fairly fundamental part of identity, and people are far more likely to hang onto it than to a surname that might give them difficulties, which reveals their illegitimacy or ties them to parents with whom they’ve fallen out. Try to work out what details are the most likely to be true. People generally knew how old they were, to within the right decade, at least. So searching for a ten-year age range should catch an elusive ancestor. First names are more likely to be spelt correctly than surnames, so try combining these with other information. But do be aware of short forms, or variants – Eliza for Elizabeth, or Harry for Henry. Try adding a parent’s name, or a sibling and search for heads of households, wives or daughters. If you’ve exhausted all possible searches for a particular census year, then leapfrog forward to the next one, to see if your mysterious ancestors reemerge. Their whereabouts in a later census may allow you to work backwards and find something you’ve missed. Check that later census for other family members, not just for the elusive relative. You may find a sibling or cousin living in an unexpected place, providing a link to a previously unexplored area. Often, a missing ancestor will be
lurking in the census, often somewhere unexpected, but there will be situations where someone simply isn’t there. They might have been overseas or travelling, or they might have decided to avoid the census-taker, for reasons of their own. If you have tried every possible search and you still can’t find them, it’s probably time to start looking at alternative sources. Start by looking in the place you would expect them to be. If someone is living in a parish in 1851 and in 1871, then the chances are that they were there in 1861 too, no matter what the census says. Check at the record office to see if there are any local sources – trade directories, lists of voters – that might offer an alternative to the census. Remember that some of the major sources overlap. Parish registers carried on after civil registration was introduced. If you can’t find a death record in the BMDs, try looking in the parish registers for the area, as there might be a burial record. While manorial records are greatly associated with the 17th and 18th century, some manor courts continued to operate well into the 19th century, and might provide details of householders in rural areas, even if those individuals have somehow slipped through the census net.
GAPS IN THE RECORDS
The further back you go, the less likely it is that you’re looking at a genuine disappearance. Record coverage becomes patchier as you move back through the 18th century, and it’s quite hit-and-miss by the time you reach the 1600s. There was also less mobility in earlier years, so you’re far more likely to be dealing with a gap in the records, than with an ancestor who suddenly upped and left his ancestral farm to go to the other side of the country. However, it’s always worth doing a little bit of extra searching for pre-census ancestors, as there will be situations where
“From 1851 onwards, the census returns included information about an individual’s place of birth. This is obviously extremely helpful when trying to track down the origins of ancestors, but be aware of potential inaccuracies.”
they will pop up somewhere unexpected long after you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that they’re a victim of a gap in the records. For example, check the parish burial records carefully for deaths before 1837. If there’s no trace of your missing forebear, it’s worth looking at neighbouring parishes, or at any parishes where you know that your ancestor had close family. A widowed mother could have moved in with a married daughter in a nearby parish and be buried there.
AS IF BY MAGIC…
If you can’t establish what happened to some of your ancestors after they’d raised the next generation, it isn’t the end of the world in terms of your research. Sometimes people’s lives took an unlikely change of direction, and you might never know where they went. But what can often be fatal to a particular branch of your research is an inability to find earlier generations, or details of an ancestor’s birth or early life. In some ways, this type of stumbling point is about sudden appearances, rather than disappearances. Sometimes a family simply appeared in a new area between one census and the next. This is the other side of your disappearing ancestors. Somewhere, some researcher is probably scratching their head, wondering where their Bristol-born 2x greatgrandfather disappeared to between 1871 and 1881, while you are frantically searching the London census returns, trying to work out why there’s no trace of him before his sudden appearance as a witness at a Southwark wedding in 1875! From 1851 onwards, the census returns included information about an individual’s place of birth. This is obviously extremely helpful when trying to track down the origins of ancestors who’ve flown the nest, but be aware that this information isn’t always entirely accurate. Somebody who
“Whichever direction you are searching – forward, to find a death or burial of a disappearing ancestor, or backwards, to find where out-of-area family came from – the most important thing is to be methodical.”
left an area when they were very young might not always know the correct parish name, or they might give a general area, rather than a specific parish. Similarly named places might also cause confusion. For example, there is a North Sunderland in Northumberland, and a Sunderland in neighbouring Durham. Try searching the online census returns by name and county of birth, without including the parish name, to catch people who only had a vague idea about their place of birth. The 1841 Census is a whole different matter. It has no detailed birthplace information, and includes only yes/no answers to the question “Born in county?” If the answer to that question is “no” then you have no further information around which to build a search. Try searching for other individuals in a parish who answered “no” to that question, as it’s possible that your ancestor might have moved with other family members, or that they were part of a community of people from another part of the country. For example, if a particular area of a large southern city has a big population of labourers from the North West, it might be worth narrowing your search to see if your ancestor also came from that area. Origins.net ( www.origins.net) allows you to search the 1841 Census for “out of county” people. If you can’t find your ancestors by creative census searching, then you need to reverse the process you used to track down your vanishing forebears. First, look at their age at their earliest appearance in the records. Would they have been too young to be living independently in the previous census? If so, try searching for parents of approximately the right age in the previous census, in case a child’s name was misspelt or their age calculated incorrectly. Use what you know about their personal circumstances. Look at their profession, and see if you can find them in another area
with high instance of that particular line of work. Do they have an unusual name? Could they be immigrants who have anglicised their name? Search for that name on FamilySearch as sometimes the search engine throws up known variants or misspellings of a mutated name. Is there a second marriage involved? Try separate searches for a husband and wife, to see if they were married to other people a few years earlier. Alternatively, might a couple be unmarried, and hiding it by the woman taking her partner’s name, after moving to a new area where no one knows them? LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS Whichever direction you are searching – forward, to find a death or burial of a disappearing ancestor, or backwards, to find where out-of-area family came from – the most important thing is to be methodical. There are many potential reasons for ancestors to disappear from the records, and many possible ways to track them down. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s often tempting to simply draw a line under a particular ancestor’s life, and fill in an approximate date of death on your family tree, but it’s worth looking further, and making sure that you widen your research to include more unusual scenarios, as well as the obvious situations. It’s highly likely that your 99-year-old ancestor died peacefully in his bed in the Cornish parish in which he was born, married and raised all 21 of his children. But do a bit more digging – you might just find him, aged 103, gleefully heading off for a new life in Australia, with the second wife he met on a midnight hike round the Lake District on census night. Our ancestors might seem to be master magicians when it comes to disappearing into thin air, but keep searching and you might just reveal the smoke and mirrors behind their vanishing act.