Elsie May THOMAS - another look at the 1921 census

Back in January 2022, I wrote about the release of the UK 1921 census, which is currently only available through FindMyPast, and about those ancestors I had expected to find in it. [That post, "First look at the 1921 census" can be seen here ]

At the time, I was unable to find my grandmother, Elsie May THOMAS, who was not at home with her parents, George and Rose THOMAS in Collington.  Six of her siblings were with them, including Elsie's older brother, Ernest:

As can be seen, the four youngest children are all aged under fourteen, and still in full time education, but Matilda, at 15, is already working as a servant for someone else in nearby Wolferlow.

Since the ages of the 'missing' older girls ranged from seventeen to twenty four, I suspected they were all living away from home, probably employed in some form of domestic service.  This was soon confirmed to be the case for the eldest girl, Edith, aged 24, who I found with her grandparents, John and Priscilla THOMAS, in Stoke Bliss, recorded as working for John, dealing with the poultry and dairy work.

The other two girls were not difficult to find: 

Hilda Mary THOMAS, aged 22, was in Mamble, Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, employed as a "Help" to a farmer and his wife, who had an eight month old baby.

And Ada Annie, at 17, was a domestic servant for another family in Collington. 

But there was no sign of Elsie.  I suspected that she was in the database somewhere, probably local to the rest of the family, but just mistranscribed to such an extent that it made her difficult to find.  I did try some possible alternative spellings, but without success.

This is always a problem when using computerised databases - if you don't search using the spellings that match what is recorded in the database, even with the use of wildcards, it can be impossible to find people.

Fortunately, in October last year, FindMyPast introduced an additional subscription covering the 1921 census.  So, for a relatively small payment (compared to what I could have previously spent trying out "possible" entries), I would be able to view all of the 1921 census images.  This meant that I could go back to using the "old" method for finding someone in a census, ie ploughing through the images page by page.

And it didn't take long.  

As I had suspected, Elsie was still local, in Upper Sapey, just a few miles from Collington, working as a general domestic servant.  She had been transcribed under the name of "Elsie Mary NAMAS"

 

After obtaining confirmation from some of the other Guild members, who agreed with me that it was "May," rather than "Mary," and also that the surname was more likely to be THOMAS, than NAMAS, I contacted FindMyPast, who also agreed and soon made the correction.

With hindsight, it becomes easy to ask, "Why didn't I try.... combination of search terms?" In my defence, all I can say is that I did my best, especially given that it was past midnight, and many of the combinations I did try were producing hundreds, if not thousands, of results. 

So I am just happy that Elsie had a job fairly locally and that the 'old' method therefore worked quite quickly.

The ongoing search for my ALLEN ancestry

I recently returned to looking at my mother's ALLEN ancestry.  The research on this line hit a 'brick wall' some years ago, with an Edward ALLEN, born about 1786 who moved into London from Hertfordshire, probably sometime around 1840.  He appears in Lambeth in the 1841 census, with his wife, Sophia, and four of their eight children, all of them recorded as born outside of the county.* 

The connection back to Hertfordshire had been made (after many years of searching!) following the discovery of the baptism of Edward's son, John Prosser ALLEN, my 2x great grandfather, in the parish of Thundridge, on one of the LDS Vital Records cds.    

In the later censuses, once the family are in London, they never seem to put their parish of birth, merely the county, and, in several of the census entries, it reads more like "Herefordshire" than "Hertfordshire".  Hence the long search for where they had come from.

Having finally identified the relevant parish, I'd viewed the parish registers on microfilm at my local LDS Family History Centre. The register for John's baptism gave the family's address as High Cross, Standon - which is actually a hamlet in the adjoining parish to Thundridge.  Working through the register, I found the baptisms of the other children who appear in the censuses, as well as discovering the burial of Edward and Sophia's eldest daughter, Louisa, in April 1841, with the address recorded as Lambeth. So that helped to confirm the connection.

But attempting to take the family line any further back stalled with the discovery that there were two Edward ALLENs born around the same time - one Edward born 1785, son of a John and Jane, and the other Edward born 1787, son of an Edward and Ann - and no obvious way to confirm which one was 'mine'.  

ALLEN is quite a 'popular' surname and so, with other activities to deal with at the time, it was easiest to pause the research there.  Returning to it again recently, I first refreshed my memory by grouping the various entries, which I'd previously collected in a spreadsheet, into families.  John and Jane had four children between 1779-1785: William, Ann, Sarah, and Edward, with a possible fifth, an Elizabeth, christened with parents, John and "Jenny", in 1789.  Edward and Ann had six children between 1781-1791: George, Christian, Hariott, Edward, Richard and John Canfield. [Note: two spellings of this name, "Canfield" and "Camfield," appear in the records so, for any references below, to searching for the name, I will have checked both versions.]  

Since the two couples were having children in the same place, over similar time periods, it seemed possible that Edward and John might be brothers.

The John Canfield ALLEN later used the middle name of "Canfield" for his first two sons, and then the middle name of "Kilham" for two others, but at least three other sons had no middle name.  In view of the fact that my Edward also only gave one of his seven sons a middle name, that seemed intriguing.  But, since I knew that this John Canfield ALLEN was not my ancestor, I had not paid a great deal of attention to him before.  

However, this time, I decided to research him, since he was the brother of one of the Edwards who 'might' be my ancestor.  Following him through the censuses - I promptly realised that, in 1851, he has his brother Edward living with him!*  Maybe I saw this and didn't realise the significance before, or maybe it wasn't available then (we forget how many records the genealogy companies have added over the years).  But, since I know that 'my' Edward had died in Lambeth in 1849, this obviously means that I can now discount the baptism entry for Edward, the son of Edward and Ann.  

So, potentially the Edward, son of John and Jane, could be the correct one for my line.  

But how could I be sure? 

As well as searching for John Canfield ALLEN on the genealogy sites, I'd looked in the National Archives catalogue, since the combination of his three names was likely to be easy to identify.  There I found a couple of relevant references, for example "Henry Allen of Wadesmill, Thundridge, son of John Canfield Allen, farmer..." and a conveyance to him of land in High Cross, Standon.

Then I tried just "Canfield AND Allen" - that resulted in a reference to a Court Roll in April 1744, which was described as "Admission of Mary Allen, widow, under will and surrender of Andrew Camfield."

Since this item is held by Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, I switched to their catalogue, where I found another interesting and very informative entry:

Title: Waggon and Horses

Description: (Formerly Gun and Catherine Wheel, formerly Gun), blacksmiths shop and yard; messuage abutting on its north side; 2 other messuages all in High Cross, copy will, Andrew Canfield of Highcross blacksmith proved 15 Sep 1741; copy will and codicil, Edward Allen the elder of Highcross, blacksmith, 29 Dec 1791; probate John Forster of High Cross, labourer, 1 May 1746; copy will, Edward Mason of Stanstead Abbott, cordwainer, proved 16 May 1788 (74)

Aha! Relevant names in the relevant place.  And, what was particularly interesting to me, they were both blacksmiths.  Because, although John Canfield ALLEN's occupation is generally recorded as farmer, or corn factor, the occupation of my ancestor, Edward ALLEN, was that of a blacksmith.  

Back on FindMyPast, I found a burial for an Andrew Canfield, blacksmith, in Great Hormead on 20 August 1741, which seemed to be the only one that fitted the Will reference.  Another entry among the results caught my eye - one, dated 1740, for an Andrew Canfield in the "Essex Wills Beneficiaries Index, 1675-1858"  Checking the details indicated that he was the father-in-law to the testator, a "W Allin", of Great Hormead.

The Essex Wills Beneficiaries Index is, as one might expect, an index of the beneficiaries in Wills - but there are a few 'unexpected' features.  It just covers Wills held in the Essex Record Office and primarily only lists beneficiaries who have a different surname from the testator.  The place given might be for the testator, and not the beneficiary.  Also the date given is the date of the Will, ie when it was written, not the date when it was proved, which could be some years later.  I found helpful information about the Index on the "Essex and Sussex Surnames" site at, https://essexandsuffolksurnames.co.uk/essex-wills-beneficiaries-index/ 

Having found the entry referring to Andrew CANFIELD, I then searched for ALLENs in the Beneficiaries Index and found the following, potentially relevant, entries:

BR22 383, dated 1731, testator: A Canfield [Standon] listing ALLEN beneficiaries of Mary (dau), William (son-in-law), and then William, John and Edward, all grandsons.

MR12 50, dated 1752, testator M BANGS [Standon] listing ALLEN beneficiaries of Jane (daughter) and John (son-in-law).

MR12 50, dated 1755, testator W BANGS [Standon] listing ALLEN beneficiaries of Jane (daughter) and John (son-in-law).

So, based on the first entry, Andrew CANFIELD had a daughter, Mary, who married a William ALLEN.  They had children, William, John and Edward.  Could the John and Edward be the two men in the "Edward and Ann" and "John and Jane" couples above?

At this point, several issues dawned on me:

• The marriage of Jane BANGS to John ALLEN (of Braughing), which, according to FindMyPast, took place in Standon in 1749, was not in my spreadsheet. Therefore my spreadsheet must be incomplete.
• If that's the John and Jane ALLEN having children between 1779-1785, then that's a long gap between their marriage and having children.
• Likewise, since Andrew Canfield listed his grandsons, William, John and Edward, when he wrote his Will in 1731, that John and Edward would have to be aged around fifty before having children, if they were the fathers in the two families I listed above. 

So clearly, despite the occurrence of the "right" names and occupations, the entries are unlikely to fit together in such a straightforward way as it initially might appear - which is why this is an "ongoing" search!

Next steps:

• Extract more of the parish register entries into my spreadsheet, widening the search to other parishes beyond my initial selection.
• Obtain copies of the relevant Wills, transcribe them, and confirm the relationships between the  individuals mentioned, as well as look for any further identifying features.
• Check out the tithe records relating to land and properties owned, and occupied, by the ALLENs to establish exactly who was living where.
• Explore, in more detail, the entries in the various archives' catalogues relating to land and property ownership.

The following is just a screenshot of a quick map, drawn in Google Maps and then opened in Google Earth, in order to show the relationships between the various places mentioned above.  The linear pattern is interesting, since I remember visiting an historic "Smithy" once, where it was mentioned that blacksmiths' workshops would often be along a main route. Had the family established themselves along a main route from London to Cambridge? [or is it just an artifact of how I produced the map! 😊]

* Additional information about sources:

1841 Lambeth census for Edward, Sophia and 4 children: HO107/1058/9/13/20/2387 (Piece/Book/Folio/Page/Schedule) Union Street, St Mary Lambeth, London.

1851 census for John Canfield ALLEN and his family: HO107/1705/570/1/3 (Piece/Folio/Page/Schedule) Plashes Farm, Standon, Ware, Hertfordshire, England

TNA Entry relating to the Court Roll: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/2e9b8cb6-8ad3-48ac-98bc-c9b0d1636a79

Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies entry about the Waggon and Horses: https://www.hertfordshirearchives.org.uk/collections/getrecord/GB46_CDESb_1_1_40_2