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Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.
From Marilyn Ellis from Aberdeenshire:
‘For the last 40 years, I and my aunt before me have been trying to trace details of the life of my great grandfather. The elusive William Basterfield was supposedly born in Stourbridge Workhouse around 1858, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth ? Basterfield and a shoemaker by the name of Adrian Mountfield.
I cannot trace my Basterfield line because I cannot find my great great grandmother. All I know for certain is that her last name was Basterfield. I have researched every William Basterfield born from about 1855 onwards but I’ve had no luck finding his birth record.
The records for Stourbridge Workhouse for this period are missing. There are no entries on the 1861 census and a possible entry on the 1871 census showing him living alone in Halesowen and his profession as ‘shoemaker’.
My first real evidence of William is a marriage certificate dated 1880, which gives details of his marriage to my great grandmother Elizabeth Faulkner.
The strange thing is that his name is stated as William Mountfield, profession shoemaker, son of Aid Mountfield. By the following year, however, he is shown on the 1881 census as William Basterfield. He appears again on the 1891 census but that’s the last census entry for him.
My grandfather Joseph Arthur Basterfield was born in 1895, the seventh child of the marriage. By 1900, however, my great grandmother was living with a Stephen Price by whom she had two further children. The story in the family was that she had thrown William out of the house because of his hard drinking and he had gone to live in Worcester.
There is no record of him, however, after his name appears on my grandfather’s birth certificate in 1895. I have searched every available record but I can’t find anything! I am not sure when my great grandmother’s relationship started with Stephen Price but she never married him. His name does appear, however, on my great aunt and uncle’s birth certificates.
The unusual thing is that although I cannot trace my maternal great great grandmother or her son William, I have been able to trace the life of Adrian Mountfield. It seems that Adrian lived life to the full, drinking and womanising, never marrying and he finally died in Sedgley Workhouse in 1885. I have even traced the Mountfield line back to the 18th century.
My father is now 91 and it would be great if I could tell him what happened to his grandfather, a man whose name was never mentioned in the family.’
Stephen says:
‘I do not think this problem can be easily solved, but I would like to give a few thoughts and suggestions, just in case you have not already considered them, and just in case they might assist other family historians confronting similar problems in their own research.
Firstly, you do not identify in your email the source of the information that William’s mother was Elizabeth, so I am assuming this has come down to you as family legend. Assuming for now that the mother did bear this name and proceeding upon the basis that her child was born illegitimately, we need to consider the three possible scenarios:
Note that age and experience do not necessarily tie up simplistically. It is quite possible to play with these ages and come up with Elizabeth either as a young widow of 21 or as a spinster in her 40s at the time of birth of her child.
Now let us assume that the son William was indeed born in 1858. If so, our imaginary scenarios give a possible year of birth for Elizabeth ranging from 1813 (if aged 45 years at his birth) to 1843 (if aged 15 years at his birth). We would wish to extend this by a year or two on either side, not least because the year of birth of William is unproven.
I looked up the death of the putative father Adrian Mountfield and see that he was aged 55 at his death in March 1885, suggesting that he was born circa 1829/30. If so, he would have been aged 28 or 29 years when William was born in 1858.
A typical male/female relationship of that time would be where the parties were of similar age or the man being up to maybe eight years older. Of course we are dealing with degrees of probability only, but this would place Elizabeth’s birth most likely within the period 1828 to 1838, which would make her aged 20 to 30 at the birth of William.
Do not get carried away with trying to pin down anything more exact, as this will not be possible. I am trying only to outline the various possibilities and permutations, as it is important to consider them all as theoretical possibilities and then to decide what lines of enquiry are appropriate to examine each of these. In practical terms, this means looking for the mother in, for example, the 1861 census not just as a spinster, but also as a married woman with husband and children, or as a widow with children.
Actuality may also be disguised in the records available to us. For example, were Elizabeth a 15 year old girl living at home when she had her baby in 1858, in the 1861 census her by then three year old child might be shown as if he were the son not of Elizabeth but of Elizabeth’s parents (his own maternal grandparents). This is a quite common occurrence: when their ages do not make it too improbable, i.e., the grandmother under aged 50 at the time, the grandparents bring up their unmarried daughter’s illegitimate child as one of their own.
Such a child can conceivably pass through life believing he is his grandparents’ child and, therefore, perpetuating this misapprehension on his subsequent marriage certificate and other official documents.
I appreciate that everything I have written complicates rather than simplifies, but that is the multiplicity of human experience and most researchers will need to grapple will these issues at one point or another - as I am sure you have done already when pondering the way forward on your research.
If this is a problem that you really need and want to crack, you will need to identify every possible candidate for the mother Elizabeth, using census returns, civil and parish registers, and then descend their line to positively eliminate them or leave them in contention. Ultimately, the careful and painstaking process of elimination may be the only way forward.
My other advice would be to include the usual variants in everything you do. Think of the various spellings and misspellings of Basterfield, such as Bastefield or even Baskerfield. Be generous in your expectations of the accuracy of recorded ages in the censuses and on certificates.
It is common to track a single individual through four, five or more consecutive census returns and find that his or her age goes up or down by irregular amounts between censuses - in the 10 years between the 1851 and 1861 census a person may be shown as aging an impossible 12 years, only to then age by a mere 7 years in the decade to the next census.
When William was a shoemaker’s assistant in the Chatwin household at the time of the 1871 census, his recorded age of 16 years (which gives a year of birth circa 1854/55) may not have been accurate.
Finally, remember that the Stourbridge Union was an administrative district as well as shorthand for the poorhouse or workhouse. I know you believe that the child may have been born in the Workhouse and this may well have been the fact of the matter, but I mention the other meaning of union just in case.’
If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!
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From Marilyn Ellis from Aberdeenshire:
‘For the last 40 years, I and my aunt before me have been trying to trace details of the life of my great grandfather. The elusive William Basterfield was supposedly born in Stourbridge Workhouse around 1858, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth ? Basterfield and a shoemaker by the name of Adrian Mountfield.
I cannot trace my Basterfield line because I cannot find my great great grandmother. All I know for certain is that her last name was Basterfield. I have researched every William Basterfield born from about 1855 onwards but I’ve had no luck finding his birth record.
The records for Stourbridge Workhouse for this period are missing. There are no entries on the 1861 census and a possible entry on the 1871 census showing him living alone in Halesowen and his profession as ‘shoemaker’.
My first real evidence of William is a marriage certificate dated 1880, which gives details of his marriage to my great grandmother Elizabeth Faulkner.
The strange thing is that his name is stated as William Mountfield, profession shoemaker, son of Aid Mountfield. By the following year, however, he is shown on the 1881 census as William Basterfield. He appears again on the 1891 census but that’s the last census entry for him.
My grandfather Joseph Arthur Basterfield was born in 1895, the seventh child of the marriage. By 1900, however, my great grandmother was living with a Stephen Price by whom she had two further children. The story in the family was that she had thrown William out of the house because of his hard drinking and he had gone to live in Worcester.
There is no record of him, however, after his name appears on my grandfather’s birth certificate in 1895. I have searched every available record but I can’t find anything! I am not sure when my great grandmother’s relationship started with Stephen Price but she never married him. His name does appear, however, on my great aunt and uncle’s birth certificates.
The unusual thing is that although I cannot trace my maternal great great grandmother or her son William, I have been able to trace the life of Adrian Mountfield. It seems that Adrian lived life to the full, drinking and womanising, never marrying and he finally died in Sedgley Workhouse in 1885. I have even traced the Mountfield line back to the 18th century.
My father is now 91 and it would be great if I could tell him what happened to his grandfather, a man whose name was never mentioned in the family.’
Stephen says:
‘I do not think this problem can be easily solved, but I would like to give a few thoughts and suggestions, just in case you have not already considered them, and just in case they might assist other family historians confronting similar problems in their own research.
Firstly, you do not identify in your email the source of the information that William’s mother was Elizabeth, so I am assuming this has come down to you as family legend. Assuming for now that the mother did bear this name and proceeding upon the basis that her child was born illegitimately, we need to consider the three possible scenarios:
- The mother was a spinster
- The mother was a married woman, perhaps but not necessarily separated from her husband
- The mother was a widow
Note that age and experience do not necessarily tie up simplistically. It is quite possible to play with these ages and come up with Elizabeth either as a young widow of 21 or as a spinster in her 40s at the time of birth of her child.
Now let us assume that the son William was indeed born in 1858. If so, our imaginary scenarios give a possible year of birth for Elizabeth ranging from 1813 (if aged 45 years at his birth) to 1843 (if aged 15 years at his birth). We would wish to extend this by a year or two on either side, not least because the year of birth of William is unproven.
I looked up the death of the putative father Adrian Mountfield and see that he was aged 55 at his death in March 1885, suggesting that he was born circa 1829/30. If so, he would have been aged 28 or 29 years when William was born in 1858.
A typical male/female relationship of that time would be where the parties were of similar age or the man being up to maybe eight years older. Of course we are dealing with degrees of probability only, but this would place Elizabeth’s birth most likely within the period 1828 to 1838, which would make her aged 20 to 30 at the birth of William.
Do not get carried away with trying to pin down anything more exact, as this will not be possible. I am trying only to outline the various possibilities and permutations, as it is important to consider them all as theoretical possibilities and then to decide what lines of enquiry are appropriate to examine each of these. In practical terms, this means looking for the mother in, for example, the 1861 census not just as a spinster, but also as a married woman with husband and children, or as a widow with children.
Actuality may also be disguised in the records available to us. For example, were Elizabeth a 15 year old girl living at home when she had her baby in 1858, in the 1861 census her by then three year old child might be shown as if he were the son not of Elizabeth but of Elizabeth’s parents (his own maternal grandparents). This is a quite common occurrence: when their ages do not make it too improbable, i.e., the grandmother under aged 50 at the time, the grandparents bring up their unmarried daughter’s illegitimate child as one of their own.
Such a child can conceivably pass through life believing he is his grandparents’ child and, therefore, perpetuating this misapprehension on his subsequent marriage certificate and other official documents.
I appreciate that everything I have written complicates rather than simplifies, but that is the multiplicity of human experience and most researchers will need to grapple will these issues at one point or another - as I am sure you have done already when pondering the way forward on your research.
If this is a problem that you really need and want to crack, you will need to identify every possible candidate for the mother Elizabeth, using census returns, civil and parish registers, and then descend their line to positively eliminate them or leave them in contention. Ultimately, the careful and painstaking process of elimination may be the only way forward.
My other advice would be to include the usual variants in everything you do. Think of the various spellings and misspellings of Basterfield, such as Bastefield or even Baskerfield. Be generous in your expectations of the accuracy of recorded ages in the censuses and on certificates.
It is common to track a single individual through four, five or more consecutive census returns and find that his or her age goes up or down by irregular amounts between censuses - in the 10 years between the 1851 and 1861 census a person may be shown as aging an impossible 12 years, only to then age by a mere 7 years in the decade to the next census.
When William was a shoemaker’s assistant in the Chatwin household at the time of the 1871 census, his recorded age of 16 years (which gives a year of birth circa 1854/55) may not have been accurate.
Finally, remember that the Stourbridge Union was an administrative district as well as shorthand for the poorhouse or workhouse. I know you believe that the child may have been born in the Workhouse and this may well have been the fact of the matter, but I mention the other meaning of union just in case.’
If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!
More...