This story is from when I was helping someone out when volunteering in the library for Genealogy Drop-in. It shows the benefit of always viewing the images of a record and not just using the transcriptions, as you never know what might be scribbled on the record.
I’ve written before about how there is very sparse information in UK 1841 census returns. There are no relationships recorded on the census records like in later decades, although you can guess given the order the names are generally listed. And other things you learn to expect in later decade census returns are also missing. Read more here. However, although sparse, it should not be ignored altogether as this story will show.
We were trying to track down Ann Lampshire and her children. We could not find a marriage for her, nor any birth records or a father’s name for her children. This was not helped by two things we had found:
- She recorded herself as a Widow in the 1861 census – leading us to believe we could find a marriage and a husband’s name.
- She is commonly confused with another Ann(e) Lampshire nee Sobey, so pulling those two Anne’s apart was half the battle.
What the 1841 census showed us allowed us to realise that it was likely Ann was not married, and stating that she was a Widow in 1861 might just be a way of describing her marital status in a socially acceptable way for a grown woman with several children. Here’s the record we found.
Extra information scribbled in the “margin”
The four lines showing the children’s names are bracketed together with a word written vertically alongside which says “Bastards”.
Now to our modern-day ears this sounds like an offensive term, but in the time-frame when this was written, this was just a way to say that these children were illegitimate. Merriam Webster Dictionary has this to say:-
NOTE: This sense of bastard has not always been offensive. In fact, it was a relatively neutral term until as recently as the late 20th century, when it began to take on its offensive status. This shift coincided with a positive change in societal attitudes towards unmarried parents and a lessening of the social stigma of having children outside of marriage. The word bastard is still used relatively neutrally in historical references and historical fiction, but is usually considered offensive when used in present-day contexts to describe a child born to parents not married to each other.
Ann Lampshire and her Children
In addition to this handy annotation, I found an entry where Ann (and her child) spent 6 weeks in Bodmin Bridewell for the offence of having been delivered of a male bastard child. This was in 1833, so it was her second child, Joseph.
| Institution | Bodmin Bridewell |
| Date Of Admission | 09 Apr 1833 |
| Register No | 7147 |
| Forename | Ann |
| Surname | LAMPSHIRE (& child) |
| Abode | Gwennap |
| Offence Sentence | having been delivered of a male bastard child chargeable to the parish of Budock, 6 weeks HL, no previous |
| Personal Details | age 25 , 4.1 tall, hazle eyes, brown hair, fresh complexion, read not write, married 1 child, pockmarked |
| When Discharged | 21 May 1833 |
| Remarks Behaviour | orderly |
The interesting thing to note in this record is that it suggests Ann is married with one child (William) at the time of giving birth to her second, and illegitimate child. So perhaps she was married and widowed, and William is a legitimate child.
So now, we are back to where we were, wondering whether Ann was married and what her husband, and William’s father’s name was. Is Lampshire her maiden name or her married name?
Sowburn, Otago is now called Patearoa. It is a small settlement in the heart of the Maniototo Plain that is a rural farming community that has links going back to a gold rush in the 1860’s. The location he lived in New Zealand and the occupations listed on various records, suggest he went to New Zealand for the gold rush.
I’m normally an Ancestry girl so I tried out Findmypast with my local genealogy group the other day. They have the same data essentially it would seem, but choose to display it in a different format. For example, for census records, Ancestry shows you one record at a time on the page with the list of other household members at the end, whereas Findmypast shows all rows from that household on the page at the same time (rather like the image shows you).
Once I get through all the records I am currently processing, my next problem to work on will be finding all those families that emigrated to New Zealand. I know there are many of them, although some of them I may not yet have even identified as having gone anywhere, they’ll just have disappeared off the face of the planet! This is my basic research strategy.
Wir Unst Family 