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Find My Past Blog - Ask the Expert - Indian mystery

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  • Find My Past Blog - Ask the Expert - Indian mystery

    Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

    From Margaret Taylor in Bournemouth:

    ‘I am trying to trace details for Anne Singer, nee Ogilvie.

    Anne Ogilvie, spinster, was married by license to George Singer, a bachelor, on 13 July 1840 at Fort William, Calcutta, West Bengal, India. No parentage or age was given. Their daughter, Emily Singer, was born at Fort William India on 20 July 1841.

    George Singer returned to England between 1841 and 1851, where he was born in 1805. He appears in the 1851 census, living in Bath with his sister. He is described as a widower and pensioner of the Hon. E. India Co. Their daughter Emily Singer is missing from the 1851 census but appears in the 1861 census.

    I am desperate to find any of the following:

    Date and place of birth.
    Parentage.
    Date, place and age at death.’

    Stephen says:

    ‘Don’t lose heart yet! I cannot provide an instant answer to your question, although I can let you in on some good news. Findmypast.co.uk is partnering with the British Library to digitise and publish online a significant part of its collection of British in India records of interest to family historians.

    The records selected for digitisation include many hundreds of thousands that relate to birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial in the Indian Subcontinent and other parts of the then Empire subordinated to the India Office, as opposed to the Colonial Office. This is an important distinction - for example, Aden in Arabia, St Helena in the South Atlantic and Fort Marlborough in Sumatra all came under the jurisdiction of the India Office, while unfortunately Ceylon, tantalisingly close to India itself, was within the ambit of the Colonial Office.

    As well as actual registers of vital events, findmypast.co.uk will be publishing other records which also give rich biographical information about the British in India, whether those in the army, in the colonial administration, or planters, merchants and other civilians.

    ‘British’ in India is significant. The Empire was not an English but a British project and, for example, Scots were significantly over-represented in Imperial India. I mention this as the name Anne Ogilvie looks very Scottish. The task you face will still not be straightforward once we have published the records to which I have just referred. As you say, the marriage register is silent as to the age at marriage and the parentage of Anne Ogilvie. Her husband would have been about 35 at marriage; Anne may have been coeval, or she may have been 16 or indeed 45.



    Perhaps the best hope is that you find the death or burial of Anne Singer between July 1841 and 1851 among the Indian death records that we will be publishing (I am assuming you have checked English death indexes for this period) and that these give at least an age at death from which you can calculate her approximate year of birth and start looking meaningfully for her birth in India, or in Scotland, or in England. Depending on how prominent her husband was, there may be an informative memorial inscription once you know place of death, or even an obituary, for his wife. East India Company records for the husband may also shed some light on his wife - in particular, pension records sometimes give information about spouse and issue and we hope to be publishing this record type in due course.’

    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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