Can you break down my bricklayer’s brick wall?
QBricklayer Samuel Dennis and his ‘wife’ Sarah Ann Hawkes travelled the UK in the late 1800s. Sarah Ann (b1851 in Essex) doesn’t appear to have married Samuel, although she is listed as a widow on the 1881 census.
They had two children – George (b1872 Kingsland) and Sarah Ann (b1874 Nottingham). Both children were baptised in 1876 in Baildon, West Yorkshire.
Although I can follow the path of Sarah Ann and her children, I have lost track of Samuel. His son is listed in the admission and discharge register for St Clement’s Road School in August 1880; Samuel’s address is given as 13 Fowell Street, Notting Hill. Between August 1880 and April 1881, Samuel just disappears.
Kelly Cornwell
A Finding the death record of someone who might have been living anywhere in the country – such as the itinerant bricklaying Samuel Dennis – can be an offputting task. First, reduce the parameters of your search. If you guess that Samuel was born at around the same time as Sarah Ann, you could enter his date of birth as 1850 (plus or minus five years). Sarah Ann’s birthplace was Essex, so you could make a further assumption that Samuel was also born there.
Since your last address for Samuel was in London in 1880, and his ‘widow’ was living in Kensington at the time of the 1881 census, it’s likely that Samuel died in London. With the advanced search facility on findmypast.co.uk you can enter a keyword (such as ‘bricklayer’), which might help to reduce the number of results. There are a few potentially correct death records for a Samuel Dennis who died in 1880/1881, which you could follow up by obtaining certificates.
Consider also the possibility that Sarah Ann might have lied about being a widow in the 1881 census. She appears to have been looking after two nephews and a niece at this time, as well as her own two children; is it possible Samuel baulked at this and scarpered?
If Samuel was, in fact, still alive in 1881, then where was he? Was he the Samuel Dennis who married in Biggleswade in 1880? A labouring Samuel Dennis, born in 1850, was sentenced to hard labour for three calendar months in 1886 because of “an attempt carnally to know a girl under 13 years” (Findmypast’s ‘England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770–1935’ records). The key to your mystery might lie in examining records other than those that immediately spring to mind. Ruth Symes