If you think you may have connections with any of the people mentioned here, please email me on su -at- tingewick.org.uk (changing the -at- to @ - I'm having problems with spammers!) and I'll send you a full gedcom version with all their details & my sources.
In December 2001 I finally located the birth certificate of my grandmother, Hannah Heath. I had already built quite a good theoretical tree for her grandparents and beyond, but I had needed the final confirmation of how she was connected to them.
| The first step, obviously, was to obtain a copy of the marriage certificate of her parents ( from Hannah's birth certificate I knew they were Thomas Heath and Amelia Sankey). They married on the 25th January 1875 at Runcorn All Saints, Lancashire. | |
Thanks to my nephew Charlie, I already had details from the 1881 census of Penketh of Thomas and Amelia and their three older sons:
Dwelling: 28 Ockleshaws Row Warrington Road Census Place: Penketh, Lancashire, England Source: FHL Film 1341906 PRO Ref RG11 Piece 3790 Folio 67 Page 9 Marr Age Sex Birthplace Thomas E. HEATH M 24 M Widnes, Lancashire, England Rel: Head Occ: Plumber Amelia Ellen HEATH M 25 F Runcorn Rel: Wife James HEATH 4 M Farnworth Nr Bolton Rel: Son Isac Thomas HEATH 3 M Runcorn, Cheshire, England Rel: Son Ebenezer HEATH 1 M Runcorn, Cheshire, England Rel: Son
Now that we had an address for the family in Stockport at the end of April 1891 (when my grandmother was born) we could almost certainly find the family there at the 1891 census earlier in the same month. While in Manchester at the Commonwealth Games, Jo and I went to the library at Stockport and found it -
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Folio 15? - [Parish of] Heaton Norris [Municipal Borough of] Heaton Norris [Urban Sanitary District of] Stockport ... [Ecclesiastical Parish or District of] All Saints |
The Internet index of Cheshire Births, Marriages and Deaths has a death entry for an Ebenezer Heath in 1882 at Sankey. There would also normally be two more children between Harriet (b. 1884) and my grandmother (b 1891).
Later in the year I was contacted by a 3rd cousin once removed (I was her father's 3rd cousin, and she is 4th cousin to my children) - of whom more elsewhere. She found the Thomas' family in 1901 - now in Bolton, which is where my father said they came from! Thomas has apparently now died (I haven't looked yet for his death) but the children are all as before:
1901 - GR 13 Piece 3627 Folio 169 Page 34, Bolton Schedule No. 203, 46 Ramwell St. Amelia E. Heath Head Wid F 46 Ches Runcorn James do Son S M 24 Mail D........ Worker Lancs Farnworth Isaac Thos do Son S M 23 Ca.. Conductor Worker Ches Runcorn Amelia E do Daur S F 19 Cotton Frame _ender Worker Lancs Penketh Harriet L do Daur S F 17 do do Worker do do Hannah do Daur F 9 do Stockport
However yet again we are left with a mystery. My father said that my grandmother had two sisters (who would therefore have been his aunts) - Dorothy and Cissie (or Lizzie). Dorothy was very real - she was the mother of Dorothy Ponsonby who married Abel Ward! Are these the two missing children between Harriet & Hannah? If so, why were they not with the rest of the family in either 1891 or 1901? And if they WEREN'T Hannah's sisters, then who were they?