Genealogy Chat

Often it was not the individual who has apparently changed their details (name/spelling of name, date/place of birth, age) who gave the information to the census enumerator, which is where many problems arise. These may be compounded when families moved from one area to another and the enumerator did not understand their accents.

I too have loads of people who changed their minds about where they were born from one census to another. Sometimes they said they were all born in the area they were living. Other times they might name the nearest large town to where they came from, or get confused about where their children were born if they had moved about a lot. One chap said he was born in Bradford in 3 different censuses - one said Notts, one didn't give a county & the final one said Wiltshire! I **think** I've found his baptism in Frome! Migration from rural/agricultural economies into cities was not uncommon during the Victorian era. Many of my families moved away from their home villages. I have one family who moved from the Medway area of Kent to Middlesbrough & two separate families moving to London from NE Somerset. The above mentioned chap pitched up first in Portsmouth, then London, and finally Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he died. He was a scale maker & I can prove its the same chap from his children.

It comes up as Child Okeford in the 1851 census

I have many examples of relatives changing their ages, names, birthplaces and even counties from census to census, but none that have moved from one end of the country to another. nell

N.B. I can find no such place as Ockford? Is there a birth of Edwin in either Gloucestre or Dorset in the indexes? Suzanne

Hi Stuart, I have rellies who think that they were born in the area they grew up in but their parents knew differently and so put their birth places down accordingly and then when that individual 'left home' they start saying that they wree born in the area they knew they grew up in, Hoe that makes sense. The other thing is if you gt a cert and confirmed parents names etc you would have anothre checking oint to either confirm or not whether indeed these two peple are one and the same. Suzanne

Yes but he wouldn't have been a mariner in 1861 when he would have been 8ish and he doesn't show up on that census. I might be clutching at straws perhaps.

Stuart your Edwin Blandford on the 1881 census is a Mariner he may have been at sea in 1871? Georgina.

I have a guy I am tracing called Edwin Blandford who pitches up on the 1881 census as living in Westoe, North shields aged 28 - birth of circa 1853. He was born in Gloucestershire. He is there in 1891 as well but not before or after (neither is his wife or children!) There is another Edwin Blandford in 1871 and 1861 in Exton Hants as being born in Ockford, Dorset(shire) circa 1850 (he is 21 in 1871). He does not show on the census after 1871. Is it possible that these could be the same person?