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Find My Past Blog - Your experiences - the beauty of the variants search

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  • Find My Past Blog - Your experiences - the beauty of the variants search

    Thanks to all of you who sent us your experiences of researching your family tree. We’ve received lots of fascinating stories - read on for Michael Lonsdale from Tarleton, Lancashire’s story:

    ‘My great grandparents, Thomas Barlow Lonsdale and his wife Helen Elizabeth nee Wilson, have always been something of a mystery.

    I tracked Thomas and his family from 1900 to the late 1500s in Burnley, Lancashire and found they had connections to the Pendle Witches.

    Thomas married Helen Elizabeth Wilson on 19 February 1899 in Kilburn and I knew that a son (my grandfather) Thomas Alfred Lonsdale had been born 29 May 1900 at 6 Claremont Road, Willesden, Middlesex, but search as I may they were nowhere to be found in the 1901 census.

    I found the records on findmypast within seconds. The original enumerators sheet showed Thomas Lonsdale with wife Helen and son Thomas living in Linden Avenue, Kensal Rise, Middlesex. The name was quite clearly Lonsdale - how it had been transcribed as Southall I will never know.

    From the information from the findmypast 1901 census I was now able to start to look for my great grandmother’s birth. This hasn’t proved easy and even now I know nothing about her before the day she married my great grandfather. The 1901 census says she was born in Yarmouth, Suffolk in 1872. Her marriage certificate tells me she is the daughter of a fisherman named John who was deceased and that her aged tied in with a birth in 1872. I have been unable to locate her in either the 1881 or 1891 census and can find no registration of her birth.

    I hoped that the 1911 census would shed a little more light but it was the complete opposite. In 1911 my great grandmother was living in 3 rooms in Clifford Gardens, Willesden, Middlesex but there was no sign of my great grandfather or his 2 children.

    They had had a daughter, Edith, who was born in 1902 and I eventually found her living with an aunt in South London. I’d expected to find my great grandfather close by but eventually found him in a convalescent home in Bognor Regis, but there was still no sign of Thomas Alfred now aged 11.

    Over the years of research I had found many spelling variations for my surname and I had tried all these. I had even searched for variations on both his first and last name, but nothing. I put that research down and started on another part of the family.

    Some months later I went back to look for my grandfather but with wild cards and variations in use - still nothing.

    I don’t know what made me do it but instead of putting in Lonsdale/Lansdale/Landesdaile/Sonsdale and all the rest of the variations, I put in Lousdale and up came my grandfather and a few other Lonsdales.

    My grandfather was living with the Cripps family in Maidenhead in Berkshire. My first thought was to wonder who the Cripps were. When I checked the 1901 census I found they were living at the same address as my family. I wondered why, when the father had 2 sisters, a brother 2 half-sisters and a half-brother, his son was living with strangers.

    After some months of research I have found many coincidences between the 2 families and I am hoping that I will find a link between them and my great grandmother Helen.’

    If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!



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