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ArgyllGran you're genius! My brain has melted over this..I couldn't find a possible surname for Elizabeth for love nor money. Poor Anne: she was only 28 - child birth? So I think your suspicion about 1891 is probably right on the money; poor Peter and family; so much grief. I am pleased to remain related to Abel and Mary Anne, though. There was an Arstall from Hollinsgreen in my class at school; he was a genius too; we nick named him " Eddie Brain"!

I'll sleep tonight :-D

George A Platt, listed in 1901, isn't Peter's son (presumably):

George Arstall
England, Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538-2000
christening:
14 December 1879
, Hollinfare, Lancashire, England
residence:
14 December 1879
, , Cheshire, England
father:
/
mother:
Elizabeth Arstall

However, I'm not sure that the Peter who is married to Elizabeth Beddows by 1891 is the same Peter.
Per 1891, that Peter is apparently born in 1839 in Prescot.


I think your Peter, who became Lilian's father, married Anne's sister:

Peter Platt
England Marriages, 1538–1973
marriage:
2 December 1883
St. George'S Church, Manchester, Lancashire, England
father:
Able Platt
spouse:
Elizabeth Arstall
other:
George Arstall


In the 1901 census your Peter has a daughter Martha A Platt, born c1885, in Hollinfare.
Here's her birth:
From England, Cheshire Parish Registers
Name: Martha Ann Platt
Event Type: Christening
Event Date: 06 Jul 1884
Event Place: , Hollinfare, Lancashire, England
Gender: Female
Father's Name: Peter Platt
Mother's Name: Elizabeth Arstall <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
GS Film number: 2069048 , Digital Folder Number: 004018845 , Image Number: 00146



Peter Platt, 1844, Woolston, who is in Rainhill Asylum in 1891, is yours, I think.
But I don't see Elizabeth or the children in 1891.

Aha! Proof? -

Peter's marriage to Ann Astall on FS gives YOB 1844, and father Abel:

Peter Platt
England Marriages, 1538–1973
birth:
1844
marriage:
5 August 1866
Warrington, Lancashire, England
father:
Abel Platt
spouse:
Ann Astall
other:
George Astall




And another entry with different marriage date -
Peter Platt
England, Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538-2000
residence:
15 July 1866
, , Cheshire, England
marriage:
15 July 1866
, Warrington, Lancashire, England
father:
Abel Platt
spouse:
Ann Astall
other:
George Astall

The Arndel (Arundel) "cousins" in 1871, all born in Woolston according to 1871, ought to be the way to determine if he's the same Peter.

Births Dec 1862 (>99%)
ARUNDEL Elizabeth Teal Warrington 8c 147

I don't see the births of Henry and Anne in that area, though.
Maybe???
Births Mar 1867 (>99%)
Arundale Annie Stockport 8a 12


Nor can I see any Arundels (or similar), living in Woolston area in 1861 or 1871, so don't know who their parents might have been..

In 1851, 1861, 1881, 1891, 1901 his YOB is given as 1844.

I think it's just a mistake re his age in 1871 - the enumerator has written 36 instead of 26.

Ah! I'm confused too!

Well, in spite of the age discrepancy, I think Peter in 1881, posted by Dea, is definitely the same Peter as the one in 1871, with wife Anne, and daughters Margaret & Elizabeth, which I posted above.

Margaret & Elizabeth's details match.


Probably Peter & Ann(e)'s marriage:
Marriages Sep 1866 (>99%)
ASTALL Ann Warrington 8c 159
PLATT Peter Warrington 8c 159

And probably Ann's death:
Deaths Jun 1875 (>99%)
PLATT Ann 28 Warrington 8c 93

One of these will be Margaret's birth:
Births Dec 1867 (>99%)
Platt Margaret Warrington 8c 137
Platt Margaret Warrington 8c 179

And Elizabeth:
Births Mar 1869 (>99%)
Platt Elizabeth Warrington 8c 189

Yes Dea, that's the 1881 to which I referred; I was trying to pull that family into the one that ArgyllGran discovered in the 1901 census where James Platt, future husband of my Nanna Platt ( Jean MacGilchrist) is aged 5 yes and the son of Peter and Elizabeth. Is this Peter the son of Abel and Mary Anne - I thought that bit in the middle might have changed things. Does it have Peter being 37 in 1881 and 36 in 1871? I then looked at a Peter from Martinscroft who ended up near St Helens with step children surnamed Beddows; I thought was that Abel's son who settled up that way following a spell in Rainhill asylum having suffered depression due to the death of his wife?

I'd hate to lose Abel after having so much info on him and getting to know him a little.

I agree with Dea.
That's the 1881 I was referring to when I said Mary Anne/Margaret was Mary A in 1881.

David & Mary A's details in 1881 fit with the 1871 below:

Mary Anne Platt in the 1871 England Census
Name: Mary Anne Platt
Age: 46
Estimated birth year: abt 1825
Relation: Head
Gender: Female
Where born: Martinscroft, Lancashire, England
Civil Parish: Martinscroft and Woolston
Ecclesiastical parish: Padgate Christchurch
Town: Woolston
County/Island: Lancashire
Country: England
Registration district: Warrington
Sub-registration district: Rixton
ED, institution, or vessel: 3
Household schedule number: 47
Piece: 3909
Folio: 36
Page Number: 9
Household Members:
Name Age
Mary Anne Platt 46
Thomas Platt 24
Jonathan Platt 17
Margaret Platt 15
Abel Platt 12
David Platt 10
Source Citation
Class: RG10; Piece: 3909; Folio: 36; Page: 9; GSU roll: 842047


Peter in 1871 was with his first wife and the daughters listed in 1881:

Peter Platt in the 1871 England Census
Name: Peter Platt
Age: 36
Estimated birth year: abt 1835
Relation: Head
Spouse's Name: Anne Platt
Gender: Male
Where born: Woolston, Lancashire, England
Civil Parish: Martinscroft and Woolston
Ecclesiastical parish: Padgate Christchurch
Town: Woolston
County/Island: Lancashire
Country: England
Registration district: Warrington
Sub-registration district: Rixton
ED, institution, or vessel: 3
Household schedule number: 38
Piece: 3909
Folio: 35
Page Number: 7
Household Members:
Name Age
Peter Platt 36
Anne Platt 24
Margaret Platt 3
Elizabeth Platt 2
Elizabeth Arndel 8
Henry Arndel 6
Anne Arndel 4
Source Citation
Class: RG10; Piece: 3909; Folio: 35; Page: 7; GSU roll: 842047

The Arndels are Peter's cousins.


Mary A's children Thomas, Jonathan, Margaret, and Abel, listed in 1871, match with the ones in 1861 (below), when, as you've already noticed, Mary is listed as Margaret, and is married to Abel:

Margaret Platt in the 1861 England Census
Name: Margaret Platt
Age: 40
Estimated birth year: 1821
Relation: Wife
Spouse's Name: Abel Platt
Gender: Female
Where born: Martinscroft, Lancashire, England
Civil Parish: Woolston with Martinscroft
County/Island: Lancashire
Country: England
Registration district: Warrington
Sub-registration district: Rixton
ED, institution, or vessel: 2
Neighbors: View others on page
Household schedule number: 32
Piece: 2798
Folio: 27
Page Number: 25
Household Members:
Name Age
Abel Platt 45
Margaret Platt 40
Peter Platt 17
Thomas Platt 15
William Platt 10
Jonathan Platt 7
Margaret Platt 5
Abel Platt 2
Source Citation
Class: RG 9; Piece: 2798; Folio: 27; Page: 25; GSU roll: 543030


Death of Mary Anne's son William, who doesn't seem to appear on censuses after 1861??? :
Deaths Sep 1861 (>99%)
Platt William Warrington 8c 79

Is this the 1881 you refer to Stephen?


1881 England, Wales & Scotland Census Transcription
Giggs Lane, Woolston with Martinscroft, Warrington, Lancashire, England

Learn more
Print transcription View image
Household Members
First name(s) Last name Relationship Marital status Gender Age Birth year Occupation Birth place
Mary A Platt Head Widow Female 56 1825 Farmer Of 30 Acres Employing 4 Labourers Woolston, Lancashire, England

David Platt Son Single Male 20 1861 Farmers Son Woolston, Lancashire, England

Peter Platt Son Widower Male 37 1844 Farmers Son Woolston, Lancashire, England

Margaret Platt Grand Daughter Single Female 13 1868 - Woolston, Lancashire, England

Elizabeth Platt Grand Daughter Single Female 11 1870 Scholar Woolston, Lancashire, England

Abel Platt Grand Son Single Male 8 1873 Scholar Woolston, Lancashire, England

I am confused (not unusual for me ;-) ) - If you believe this to be 'your' Peter then surely this census seems to confirm parents are probably Abel and Mary yet you now say that these are not your relatives??

Baptism: 1 Oct 1843 St Elphin, Warrington, Lancashire, England
Peter Platt - [Child] of Abel Platt & Mary
Abode: Woolston
Occupation: Husbandman
Baptised by: John Slatter
Register: Baptisms 1838 - 1845, Page 310, Entry 2476
Source: LDS Film 1562963

Have I got lost somewhere?

Dea x

O oh, I think maybe Abel Platt and Mary Anne Hankinson are not my great great grand parents as I found a Peter Platt living with his mother in 1881..and he was a widower. I'm wondering if this is the Peter who was a patient at Rainhill Asylum ten years later. My great grand father, Peter Platt, definitely had a daughter called Lilian. Confusing :-S

Hi ArgyllGran,
Wow, Manchester Cathedral seems a bit grand; Warrington town would usually naturally draw folks from Woolston..and yet they are indeed back in Woolston for the babtizing of baby Jane. Despite our discussion about coincidences and the as nothing discrepancy in the spelling of Bri(m)milow, I reckon you must be right and the families are one and the same. I rooted out that census record that had Henry Hankinson living next door to Abel ( Abel, Abel? Who the ...) and was alarmed to see he was married to Enid, but then I noticed that he and his wife were only 21 when Abel was 45: he must be Abel's cousin, son of Henry senior. I looked back, too, to my letter from Ian Platt and he writes of his memory of Aunt Lilian..which is more evidence that Peter and Elizabeth are the right Platts :-) I saw that there are quite a few Henry Hankinson father of the bride/ groom records and clicked one to find the spouse to be a Robert Ellison; I already have Ellisons in my tree, and googling have found another Platt and Ellison ,milk lad and maid in service at Woolston Hall..I am going to look closely at any Ellison's I come across from now on.

I reckon I'll never be sure about the "Burns mystery" but thanks to this community; the efforts of Glasgowlass sfc and yourself I now know about more of my family history than I could have dreamt of just a month ago.

Thanks again,
Steve

As this child is one of several possible siblings of Mary Anne, perhaps Jane Brimelow/Brimilow/Brimmilow is Mary Anne's mother??

From FS:

Jane Hankinson
England Births and Christenings
Name: Jane Hankinson
Gender: Female
Christening Date: 05 Feb 1832
Christening Place: WOOLSTON-RC,WOOLSTON,LANCASHIRE,ENGLAND
Birth Date: 30 Jan 1832
Father's Name: Henry Hankinson
Mother's Name: Jane Brimilow <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Indexing Project (Batch) Number: P00690-1 , System Origin: England-ODM , GS Film number: 942 B4C V. 17


Marriage (from FS)???

Henry Hankinson
in the Manchester, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1930 (Cathedral)
Name: Henry Hankinson
Marriage Date: 14 Feb 1819
Parish: Manchester, St Mary, St Denys and St George
Spouse's Name: Jane Brimmilow
Archive Roll: 694

Image says he's a porter.

Ah, thanks again, Argyllgran! I have been trying to research Mary Anne Hankinson, myself, today but was coming up with no results; it was on FS as well...I was beginning to think that I had imagined the census record ( I didn't think to check this thread as I thought I had asked gr to notify by email any responses) . Abel's Hankinson neighbour appears to have been his father-in-law then: he really did fall for the girl next door! Thanks to you I now have another mystery Jane to discover, too.

PS. It's amazing how often what you might reasonably expect to be extremely unlikely events, such as that with the lodgers, occurs. My Uncle John Lovell was once hospitalised whilst living abroad in Australia. Not only was the previous occupant of his bed also called John Lovell, but according to the nurse, who came and chatted away like they were old friends, he looked like the other bloke, too!

I agree about Mary Anne Hankinson - YOB fits with age at death:

From FamilySearch:
Mary Ann Hankinson in the England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975
Name: Mary Ann Hankinson
Gender: Female
Baptism Date: 10 Nov 1822
Baptism Place: Woolston-Rc,Woolston,Lancashire,England
Father: Henry Hankinson
Mother: Jane
FHL Film Number: 942 B4C V. 17



Mary Anne Hankinson in the England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973
Name: Mary Anne Hankinson
Gender: Female
Marriage Date: 6 Aug 1843
Marriage Place: Christ Church, Warrington, Lancashire, England
Spouse: Abel Platt
FHL Film Number: 2068609



Re your ghostly man with dog - it's certainly a very small world.
In 1911 the young single man who eventually became my paternal grandfather was a lodger in a house.
A fellow-lodger (born a couple of hundred miles from the lodging house) had the same unusual surname as my mother's sister's husband.
My cousin says the lodger was his 1st cousin twice removed, on his father's side of his family!

Thank you for posting that information, ArgyllGran; the twelve year old Peter would indeed be Jean's brother-in-law and Mary Ann his grandmother on his father's side I think. I hadn't known when Mary Ann had died. I think she was Mary Anne Hankinson married to Abel Platt. I recently went for a drive, one early morning, to discover where Martinscroft is exactly, as it is only about five or six miles from where I live. Nowadays it mostly appears to be motorway and industrial units, but as I stopped at a dead end on an industrial park a brown Labrador tore by from a gap in a hedgerow; it was after a rabbit, but then from the mist the dog's owner appeared: when the man addressed me by name I nearly fainted, lol. It transpired that he wasn't the ghostly apparition of one of my ancestors but a Mr Williams who had been at school with one of my sisters about forty years earlier - random : )

What wonderful stuff to discover!

Just a footnote -
re-reading this thread, I see you mention a brother or brother-in-law Peter.
Presumably her brother-in-law:

1901 England Census
Name: James Platt
Age: 5
Estimated birth year: abt 1896
Relation to Head: Son
Gender: Male
Father: Peter Platt
Mother: Elizabeth Platt
Birth Place: Martinscroft, Lancashire, England
Civil Parish: Woolston with Martinscroft
Ecclesiastical parish: Orford and Padgate
Town: Woolston with Martinscroft
County/Island: Lancashire
Country: England
:Registration district: Warrington
Sub-registration district: Rixton
ED, institution, or vessel: 2
Neighbors: View others on page
Piece: 3586
Folio: 40
Page Number: 15
Household schedule number: 86
Household Members:
Name Age
Peter Platt 57
Elizabeth Platt 45
George A Platt 21
Martha A Platt 16
Mary E Platt 15
Peter Platt 12 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Ernest Platt 9
Lilian Platt 11
David Platt 6
James Platt 5


(How I wish Ancestry hadn't finally abandoned the old version of transcriptions - they were so much easier to copy & paste!)


Re Mary Anne or Margaret Platt -
You mention the 1851 and 1861 censuses.
(You may have got this later info but you don't say so, so I'll post it here.)
She's Mary Anne again in 1871, and Mary A. in 1881.
Also Mary Ann when she died:

Mary Ann Platt
England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991
birth:
1823
burial:
14 April 1887
Warrington, Lancaster, England
residence:
Woodston

I still cannot be sure what Jane Cunningham's maiden name was who was born around 1805 and was married to a Gavin Cunningham as there seems to have been quite a few about at that time; they were the parents of Isabella Burns Cunningham so I suspect that Gavin's folks were a John Cunningham and Isabel Burns ( this got me excited as I know that Rabbie Burns had a sister of that name...but it is well documented that she married a certain John Begg. I did come upon a source that said that Gavin was from Sorn..so there's an Ayrshire link...

Anyway I was able to find my long lost Uncle Ian to ask him, amongst other things, what had become of John MacGilchrist who I had on the good ship "California" leaving Glasgow and bound for New York in the early spring of 1914; Had he escaped the horrors of the looming world war?? It was quite an emotional experience when I received a reply..and I was astounded by what he told me: look him up on YouTube! http://www.historicaviationart.com/background.html :-D

I don't know; I've been trying to get my head around their comings and goings all day; Wandsworth was a complete blind side r ( had to space the 'r' as the cheeky checker insists on blind spider) as was the Rochdale link - I had not for a moment thought to find Martha MacGilchrist having been born in England, believing her surname to be her maiden name; I did expect Robert Dickson to be found in a border town and most likely on the English side. They didn't sit still for long in the old days - I've hardly moved from where I started. The Platts seem to have all been farmers and I expected them to have stayed put, but James got about a bit, too. I could possibly connect Maltster and a barley growing farmer but Robert Mac was a wood machinist. I know James would have travelled to London markets regularly to sell his produce..but Wandsworth? Perhaps following the first world war, London had an insatiable need for house builders and Robert's son: John the architect Is the missing link; certainly lots for me to think about. It looks like the Ayr story might just have been a little romance to connect to Robbie Burns' neck of the woods.

Thanks again, Glasgow Lass.

Just going back over your opening post.
I'm not exactly sure about the story relating to James Platt and Jean MacGilchrist meeting in Ayr?

Robert McGichrist and Martha Holden married in Lancashire 1890.
At 1891 and 1901 they were living in Glasgow.
At 1911 they were living in Robert's home town of Alloa

The next sighting is 12 years later in 1923 when daughter Jean McGilchrist married James Platt in Wandsworth, Surrey

Robert and Martha McGilchrist also appears on Electoral rolls in Surrey from 1923 until Robert's 1933 death.

So it seems that Martha left Surrey after Roberts death and went to live with her daughter Jean Platt who was by now, living in Lancashire