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peterd wrote:long shot
Births Mar 1895
Smith Henry James Highworth 5a 16
highworth covered swindon before june 1899
Maths girl wrote:peterd wrote:long shot
Births Mar 1895
Smith Henry James Highworth 5a 16
highworth covered swindon before june 1899
1901
Isaac Brown 53 General Labourer (illegible)[/) Totbury
Henry J Brown 19 (illegible)[/) in City Works Warborough
Elizabeth Brown 12 Cricklade
Frank Brown 9 Cricklade
Martha Smith 36 S Boarder House Keeper (illegible) Black
Henry J Smith 7 Boarder Pinton (is Pinton near Highworth?)
Frances L Smith 5 Boarder Swindon
Matilda Smith 9 months Boarder Swindon
No obvious father - suggests possibility -link to need for Barnardos boy
Did I read somewhere that Barnados are beginning to release their records (for a fee) - anyone know anymore details on this?
mgjsmith wrote:Hi Mathsgirl and thanks for the explanation.
I have a feeling I am going to get completely hooked on this matter in the coming months (better warn my wife that the home diy could suffer!!!).- No doubt about it - it is addictive
Next steps
I am going to visit our local Records Office in Carmarthen soon to see what I can uncover. One of the ladies at the office today told me that the marriage certificate for my grandfather's marriage to my grandmother would show his father's name - is that a certainty, Nothing is ever a certainty because it relies on human beings telling the truth! and relying on human memories not computersHowever there is certainly a space for the father's name on marraige certificates and it is possible to see old church records providing you go to the right one - do you know which church he was married at - has the lady at Carmarthen said they have that church there - even then sometimes infuriatingly the one you want is illegible for some reason but you should be luckyas my father did suggest at some time a number of years ago before he became ill, that there were some possible skeletons in the family cupboard!You will need to be prepared - I certainly was amazed at how many "7month babies" survived in my good Methodist family back in the 19th Century!!
Would a visit to the Wiltshire Records Office be productive. If so, I was considering taking a couple of days off work and spending the time doing some research in Swindon.My suggestion here is if Carmarthen is closer is to go and get a bit of practice with their records first and their machines- they may well have copies of the English Census etc on microfiche - if you go to Wiltshire having some idea of what you are looking at and what you want and how to use the machines you will get more out of your time there
The data you folks have obtained does look promising. In 1901, my grandfather would have been 7 years old - if his birth year of 1894 is correct. This piece of information is certainly worth following up.
I cannot find any information on a place called Pinton. This could be because it is a small village or hamlet that has now been absorbed into a town or even renamed/disappeared
Could that be some Barnardos reference - a house name possibly?I think this is unlikely as I was assuming the Barnados bit would have come later when his mother was unable to cope alone - this is only my thought
I understand from the Barnardos website that they can for £15.00 confirm whether a Henry James Smith was indeed a Barnardos child. The provision of details gets somewhat costly!It can get expensive - I have to prioritise - but if you are reasonably confident about the connection and the name as there are not a lot of obvious ones on the 1901 census with the same name in this case it might be worth it
My father told me many years ago that is father lived in a house in Poplar Avenue, Swindon when he was a child. Is there anyway a search can be done on properties alone to identify occupants, and can this be done solely on the census data? Are there other methods of looking at properties in Poplar Avenue? This is where my knowledge gets shaky - certainly after 1911 there are problems finding data due to Data Protection Act and 100 years rule and ... whether other paid sites let you search by road I don't know but certainly on Ancestry I have to trawl through page by page. I don't know what details the land Registry cangive out and again there is almost certainly a charge. Electoral lists are another one i know nothing about.
Certainly a visit to Carmarthen is a useful place to start - having said that is you need to go further back on a Welsh line there are different problems but more on that another time.
Question:
Are there any "night school" classes near you on the basics of family history - I went on one and although only about 8 weeks it was a good starter
Thanks for the assistance so far. Martin
peterd wrote:cannot find pinton how clear the image as there a purton that is a village just outside swindon ?
purton and highworth about 7 mile apart
mgjsmith wrote:The interesting thing is that the Full Household Schedule shows the head of the household as Isaac Brown (widower and 53 years old) and Martha Smith (servant/single and 36 years old). There are also of course the two Smith siblings Frances L (5 years old) and Matilda Smith (less than 1 year old). Now this is starting to get interesting. I wonder what was going on in that household - widower and single mother/servant. The plot thickens! Martin
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