In my last blog post, I mentioned the large gap in the ages of my maternal great-grandparents, Charles and Florence Sanderson of Shoreditch. Charles was 46 when they married in 1903 and Florence was just 28. It made me wonder, was Charles Sanderson married before?
Formulating this question made it easy to progress with my genealogical research. Working on FindMyPast, I ran a search for an early marriage record for Charles Sanderson. I estimated that the marriage would have taken place around 1880 when Charles was 23, and restricted the search location to Yorkshire, the county in which he was born.
Sure enough, my search produced a result. Charles Sanderson married Emma Elsey in 1879 in York. The record I found confirmed that Charles' father was Thomas Sanderson and gave Emma's father's name as George Elsey. The Elsey family came from Surrey and George was an agricultural labourer.
Excitedly, I set about trying to find out more. A census record for 1881 revealed that Charles and Emma were living in Roundhay, a rural district of Leeds, Yorkshire and that Charles was working as a coachman in domestic service. This detail was encouraging because his occupation later in life when he was married to Florence was horse keeper. When I researched Roundhay, I learnt that it is an ancient green space outside the city of Leeds, originally enclosed as a deer park, subsequently opened to the public as a recreational area, and more recently developed in part with houses for the working class. Presumably, when my great-grandfather Charles lived in Roundhay, he was serving a rich landowner and driving a carriage pulled by two tall, strong horses like the Yorkshire Coach Horse shown in the picture.
The 1881 census also showed that Charles and Emma were starting a family. Emma had recently given birth to a daughter named Caroline. Caroline Sanderson was just 10 months old at the time of the 1881 census.
This was an extraordinary find. It meant that Grandma, born an only child, actually had a half-sister who was 24 years older than she. Nothing had been suggested about this before, causing me to have serious doubts about the veracity of my evidence.
Then I made an even more astonishing discovery.
Returning to the Sanderson family Bible, I scanned through the names. One name jumped out at me. In a slightly smudged hand, someone had written, "Carre Sanderson born 5th April 1880 at Roundhay, Leeds". I searched for a birth record online and found Caroline Emma Sanderson born in April 1880 with her mother's maiden name given as Elsey. The name, date and location of this record all confirm that Caroline Sanderson, daughter of Charles and Emma, was indeed one of my ancestors.
I then turned to MyHeritage to see if I could find out more. Another census record popped up, this time from 1901 in the suburb of Bethnal Green. Clearly, the person who took down the family's details had terrible handwriting because Caroline's birthplace of Roundhay is transcribed as "Roimdhay" and the county of her birth is shown as Leicestershire, suggesting a faulty transcription of Leeds. In addition, Charles is transcribed as "Marles". Even so, there was enough to convince me that they were the right people. I knew that Charles had married Florence in London in 1903, so this record for the 1901 census helped establish his move. It also confirmed he was a widower. He stated his occupation as "foreman/house keeper" which is probably another error in transcription, intended to read "foreman/horse keeper" as in the 1911 census. Caroline, at 20 years old, stated her occupation as "household duties".
My investigation then turned to Emma's death. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any trace of it online. All I know is that it occurred sometime in the 20 years between the 1881 and 1901 census. I tried to find evidence of Caroline getting married or, failing that, appearing on the 1911 census or 1939 register but again, had no luck. I couldn't even find a death record for her, since all the death records for women named Caroline Sanderson corresponded with census records that showed them married to men named Sanderson.
This isn't the end of the world, though. I have lots to investigate for now. Up to this point, the city of Leeds and its surrounding countryside held no interest for me, but that has changed. If I get the chance to travel to Yorkshire, I will definitely make a pilgrimage to Roundhay to walk in the footsteps of Charles, Emma and Caroline.
Photo credit: Cigarette card: Yorkshire Coach Horse by CigCardPix.
No comments:
Post a Comment