Genealogy Chat

thank you all for your feed back on this.
facinating stuff isn't it.

for your information martha BREWERTON did marry john joseph SMILES (6 months after thebaby was born) who's family also lived at the same address in the 1881 census and the 1891 census. he was probably john joseph BREWERTON's father. they went on to have more children and named the first one after marriage john.
why oh why!
in the 1901 census the brothers are john j and john but by the 1911 census they were known as joseph and john.
our young man died in 1918 in France and the cwgc has him as john joseph SMILES.
my grandmother was child number 3.
my father only knew his aunts and uncles by their pet names,which has made it fun to locate the right ones.
they were known as
jack -john
mattie - martha
bill -william
andy -andrew
nora
edie - edith

PS. try googling SMILES. you normaly find dentistry sites, not family connections.

A recently acquired copy of an 1882 birth certificate shows no father named in the appropriate column, although the informant is the father.
The certificate is indexed in the mother's surname only.


Gwyn

Nothing unusual about this, It denotes the capacity in which the informant was acting.i.e. the owner or occupier of the house or institution. The description 'Grandfather' isn't a valid option.....!

We have similar examples.

I like that Piglet, my neighbour has a similar story. They lived in a very rural area and the midwife who delivered him said she would register the birth. It was to be Michael but as she cycled into Cambridge she thought she liked Harold better so she registered him in that name!

I registered our three children
My wife told me to register the second as Paula.
On the day I registered her as Pauline.
At the time my wife was unhappy but now concedes that I made the right call.

Looks like Martha married that same year:

Marriages Dec 1898 (>99%)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BREWERTON Martha Sunderland 10a 1056
Hann Sarah Jane Sunderland 10a 1056
Morralee John Sunderland 10a 1056
SMILES John Joseph Sunderland 10a 1056

A postem says she married John Joseph Smiles, 14 Nov, 1898 but gives har father's name as John.

On the 1901 census she's married to John J. Smiles with son John J. age 3 and another son John age 1.

On the 1901 census he's a corporation labourer.

Description of informant. The current list of eligible informants reads, in order of preference

(1) In all cases - mother

(2) Father - if he is married to mother

(3) Father and mother jointly where they are not married to one another

(4) A person present at the birth

(5) The owner or occupier of the house or institution

(6) The person in charge of the child

Have a look here:-

http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/births.htm#COL7

It's a good site for finding out about all certificates.

You will see that someone who owns the property where a child was born is eligible to be the informant. He was probably just trying to stick to the rules by describing himself as the "occupier".

Kath. x

just received a1898 birth cert for john joseph BREWERTON, born to martha brewerton a single woman.
the informant was james BREWERTON listed as
'occupier 10 robinson terr sunderland' .
this was the address that john joseph was born.
james was the babies grandfather.

my question - why if he was the grandfather, would he have the word occupier as his discription?

posibilities
-do you have to be a parent to register a birth.?
-he was so annoyed at his daughter having a child out of wedlock that he 'may as well be the 'occupier' for all the good his parental teaching did! '
-or he just wasn' asked the right question, he did not sign (illiterate?).

i would be interested to know what other informants discriptions people have found on cert's