ARC TBC - Two new walls, one WILD, another ATKINSON-WILSON

[YorksClare]

Dear All

I have searched these two brick walls through freeBMD and FamilySearch and I am completely stuck.

1. The WILD connection is for a Lily K Wild who married James H Hutchinson in Hull in 1920. They had four children, three girls and a boy (also James, how imaginative) and they were all born in Hull. However, I cannot find the birth records for Lily, or a death record for either of them. I want James' death record to try to work out which of two birth records, one for Grimsby, one for Hull, is correct for him. According to the family oral history, Lily said she was illegitimate and was so ashamed that never told anyone about her family.

2. The ATKINSON WILSON problem is also tricky. I know that those two surnames go together to find all of the births for their 13 children born between 1914 and 1941 in Selby. However, the family remember the names George for the father, and I cannot find a marriage record at all that would make sense, or help me to confirm the mother's first name. What is more, I cannot find enough information to fill in the second names of several of the children. This is making life difficult!

We went through a load of old photos at the weekend, and there were cries of "oh, and that one is Muriel" etc, and also "Nana Brenda said she was always sat at one end of the table to look after the latest in the endless stream of new babies, and she hated it because Eric always nicked the meat off her plate while she fed the baby". They mentioned Kitty, who had a nasty limp and died young. Tim's parents also tried to count up and name all Nana's brothers and sisters, which included an Elizabeth, a Kenneth and an Ella. Only, there is no Eric, just a Charles E, no Kenneth but a Norman K, and there are two girls - Florence and June - who have M as an initial which could be Muriel. The only Elizabeth I could find on the BMD records was born fully 14 years before this brood was started which would be simply impossible... unless Amy E was Amy Elizabeth, and sometimes they shortened Elizabeth to Ella. The alternative is some sort of complicated scandal, but I think that this could be explained logically without getting all Jeremy Kyle about it.

The only assumption I am confident of is that Kitty was short for Kathleen. If you think I'm going potty, now you know why! The other children's names fit, so I just need a suitable source to find out the middle names and see if they clear up the mess.

[peterd]

do you have this wed cert ?


Marriages Jun 1920
Hutchinson James H Wild Hull 9d 731
Wild Liuly K Hutchinson Hull 9d 731



if so what are the details age, fathers, witnesess ?

[rockyfowler]

Do you have Nana Brendas Birth cert that would at least give parents names? Best RF

[peterd]

. The ATKINSON WILSON problem is also tricky. I know that those two surnames go together to find all of the births for their 13 children born between 1914 and 1941 in Selby. However, the family remember the names George for the father, and I cannot find a marriage record at all that would make sense, or help me to confirm the mother's first name. What is more, I cannot find enough information to fill in the second names of several of the children. This is making life difficult!

you would be best sending for a birth cert unless you can find a baptism

[gardener]

Have you tried looking at genesreunited?
If you search for the surname, born Selby over those years then you get lots of connections. Most of these will be remote ones and probably not going to take you anywhere but there are some by "Gail" which give the street address for the birth, suggesting that a birth certificate lies behind it? That includes the one for Brenda.
If you are subscribed to genesreunited then you might find somebody willing to send a query.
(Unless it is you and the addresses come from family knowledge)

[YorksClare]

I don't have subscriptions anywhere just yet, though it does look as though I might have to choose one and stick with it. The problem is choosing...

I see huge gaps in the stuff on the free site FamilySearch, which is particularly poor at anything from 1900 onwards, as far as I can tell. What it does know is usually a portal to records on subscription websites, and some of the transcribing is dreadful (obvious spelling mistakes or misreading of letters).

I was not impressed by the idea of the sites that charge for "credits". On searching some of my family a few years ago I got "free credits" from one site as an introduction pre-purchase, but the credits got eaten up every time I opened the same document, which was underhand, I felt. No way am I paying for access to something where reviewing information online is going to mean paying twice or three times for the same thing! So I don't want them.

That leaves Ancestry. At least you get a membership where you can go through the data back and forth as you need to without running out of credits, which is good, but I will probably need an international access subscription. £19 a month is not cheap, so I would have to be sure it was worth it in terms of finding the right documents in the right degree of detail.

I'm not so sure about GenesReunited. Surely a lot of the stuff that ends up on there will be more or less what I am trying to clear up? The family oral history that means someone who everyone called George was actually Joseph, or whatever? It only gets resolved when several people come to an agreement as to who is right or wrong, or they find the documents (probably on Ancestry or FindMyPast). Ho hum.

Anyway, I'm off out to see if I can find the graves of my great-grandparents. This could be fruitless, but the sun is out, I am off work, and a tramp around in the Dales is called for!

[gardener]

Hi
Yes, Familysearch is patchy. It is good for earlier baptisms and marriages, and you do have to know your way around it so that you can assess how reliable the transcript is. You can also get some access to census information from it - enough to make it possible to request a proper look-up from somebody on here.

Concentrating on the Atkinson bit first:
Really what you need at this stage is a birth certificate for one of the children. This should give you a maiden name for the mother. Someone in your family may have a certificate already.
I suggested Genesreunited as a possible way of avoiding this. Someone on there has submitted a tree containing many of the family that you are looking for. Brenda is on there and her birth address given as 58 Kitchener Street. June, Barbara, James and Kathleen are said born there too. I presume that the submitter has based this on some hard evidence so perhaps she is a family member who is also researching the family and has purchased certificates and would be willing to share?
You have to be a subscriber to Genesreunited in order to make contact but some people who are members are sometimes willing to pass on a message so that contact can be made.

One possibility for the lack of marriage certificate is that the mother was a widow when she married Mr Atkinson. The children's births would go down under the mother's maiden name but the marriage would be under her married name from the first marriage.

For the Hutchinson side, then the marriage certificate would be the way forwards. It may not tell you much about Lily but should give you a father for James. With that you can find him on the 1911 census and that will give his birth year and place which could help in locating a death certificate.

You may well be able to use Ancestry for free at a local library, many have a subscription. FreeBMD is not very good for some years (around 1930ish?) as the transcriptions have not been completed. You can see teh charts on the website if you want. Ancestry has more complete records I think.

Have a nice walk! I am looking out at snow today

[YorksClare]

Hi gardener. I'll be visiting Iceland the last weekend in January, on a short break in hopes that we get to see the Northern Lights! It seems a bit bleak to have snow already. I hope you have plenty of things planned to keep the winter months bright...

I didn't get to go grave-hunting anyway. The car seems to have developed an electrical fault, and I don't need a diagnostics computer to know that the fan belt seems to be out of sorts. So that rules out driving back from the Dales in the dark. The garage is going to sort it out for me tomorrow first thing, so I should be able to get on with things, just a lot later than I wanted to.

Back to the subject - I know that the maiden name given on freeBMD of Wilson for the Atkinson-Wilson family is correct, and what I will find on the birth certificates. After all, the document scans on freeBMD are from the actual GRO books, which were written up from the birth certificates. My problem is that the next logical step is to find the marriage, and so far there isn't so much as a sniff of one...

It is interesting that someone else has found something on GenesReunited, and might already have done some work in this area. I will have to get at least a basic subscription to communicate with them about it. My only problem then is that this family is not my personal genealogical link - it is part of what I hope to make into a Christmas present for Tim's family, so I hope that it will not seem like an intrusion to people looking for blood relatives.

[YorksClare]

Gave in and subscribed to Ancestry. Still mystified about Atkinson-Wilson marriage, though it may be that I am struggling with the format a bit. At least I can save my results, and I have found someone else looking for my own family, so that is a positive!

[gardener]

Good luck with sorting it out!
Hope that you get clear skies when you visit in January. Don't forget your swimsuit!

[YorksClare]

Well, the WILD link is still a mystery. Not one sensible suggestion in the files for the parents of Lily K Wild, or Liuly as someone had transcribed it somewhere. Rats! Even with an Ancestry login, the records seem mute. Does anyone else know how to search Hull for the one Lily Wild I want to find?

I have solved the Atkinson Wilson problem, mostly by realising that a lot of birth certificate names have been embellished (Anne becomes Hannah quite a lot I find!) and some have used middle names or pet names instead.

[BC Wench]

Hello YorksClare,

Peter gave you this:-

Marriages Jun 1920
Hutchinson James H Wild Hull 9d 731
Wild Liuly K Hutchinson Hull 9d 731

and this is what I have found.

On http://www.yorkshirebmd.org.uk

Yorkshire Marriage indexes for the years: 1920
HUTCHINSON James Hugh WILD Lily Kirk St James (Hull) Hull SJH/12/460

As she is stated as Lily KIRK Wild I looked on the 1911 and 1901 censuses for a Lily KIRK and found

1911 – Helmsley, Yorks
Joseph Collier 62
Phillis Collier 50
Frank Collier 12
Lily Kirk – Stepdau – 14 – Bilsdale, Yorks
Edward Kay 35
Charles Hunt 30

1901 – High Street, Helmsley, Yorks
Joseph Collier 52
Phillis Collier 46
Kate Collier 14
Alice Collier 11
Lily Kirk - 4 - Stepdau – Bilsdale, Yorks
Frank Collier 2

Marriage of Joseph & Phillis Collier

Yorkshire Marriage indexes for the years: 1898
COLLIER Joseph KIRK Phillis Hawnby, All Saints, Ryedale Harrogate C25RY/1/276

Birth of Lily KIRK

Lily Kirk
Date of Registration: Oct-Nov-Dec 1896
Registration District: Helmsley
Inferred County: Yorkshire North Riding
Volume: 9d
Page: 441

Possible?

[rogerneilson]

Is this sorted now?

[BC Wench]

Is this still a Brickwall, or have you solved it?
Unless otherwise advised this will be moved to the Brickwalls Archived section
within 24 hours