My History
Introduction
WWII Memories
National Service Part 1
National Service Part 2

Genealogy
Resources
Software
Research

FAQs
Contact Details
Accuracy of Information
Privacy Filter

 
People frequently lied about their age, and official documents often reflect expected social norms rather than the reality. For example, in many areas it was expected that a husband should always be older than his wife, but it was also expected that the differences in ages should not be too large.  In the event that a wife was older than her husband, it led to the wife understating her age and her husband overstating his.   In the event that the husband was many years older than his wife, it led to the husband reducing his age and his wife increasing hers, and in the event that the wife was in their early teens it led to the wife increasing her age to a more acceptable age.

Ages of adults on census returns are notoriously inaccurate in some years because they are rounded down to the nearest 5 years. For example, someone listed as 20 may be any age between 20 and 25, and that is assuming the person concerned told the census person the right information in the first place. The ages of children aged 15 or below were not rounded down so it is more likely that these ages were correct, but still by no means certain.

Places of birth may also be wrong on census returns and should not always be blindly accepted as correct. Sometimes the person may not actually know where they were born even though they knew where they grew up, so it became easier for them to state the place they grew up as their place of birth.  County and town boundaries also changed.  Someone could be born in a town in one county, but the same town could be in a different county at the time of another census.  Sometimes the fact that registration area may cover several towns causes confusion.  You may have been born in one town and had the birth registered in another (and been baptised in a third town).  In various census returns you may find the given town of birth as any of these alternatives.

Illiteracy was also a problem and many people could not read or write. Forms were distributed to every household in advance of the 1841 census which the householder was instructed to complete.  This would have proved to be impossible if the householder couldn’t write, and if the householder couldn’t read then they wouldn’t have been able to read the instructions. This resulted in forms being completed by children (if they could read and write) or on collection by the census collector (who would have been in a hurry or who simply misheard).  

The 1939 Register is also sometimes hard to read. Registration took place on the eve of the Second World War, but it was constantly updated and amended until 1991.  Until 1952 (when the wartime National Registration ended) it was a legal requirement to notify changes of name, so women had to notify their change of name when they got married.  The Register contains many instances where a woman was first listed in her maiden name, but the maiden name was subsequently crossed out and replaced by her married name.  In the event that a woman was widowed and remarried twice, the original entry would have been altered twice, and the original entry may not be clear.

One other problem when researching is spelling. Surname spelling has evolved over centuries and until the 20th century the spelling of a surname was not fixed. Before then, it was not unusual to see the same person's surname spelled in different ways from record to record. In the 1800's and before, when many people were illiterate, names were written by clerks, officials and priests as they heard the name pronounced. This lead to different spellings for the same name. Spelling continued to evolve until the 20th century.

Ballard seemed to have been consistently spelt correctly. Gillham was recorded with either one or two “l” Morell had a variation of one or two “r”s and “l”s. Where possible I have used the modern-day spelling of surnames so as not to cause confusion.