Genealogy Hack: How to find out wife’s last name

I know that this tip works for all of the UK.  I have not tried it with any US people since I don’t have very many in my list. 

We have all had those instances where we see on the census records the family, but we don’t know the wife’s maiden name.  And without it, we can hit some serious stumbling blocks as to tracing those lines back further.   Well, I have discovered a way to find this information out quickly and for free!  Yes, you read that right.  FOR FREE!

I will use an example of one that I had just done.  This way you can see how it works.  Then run (don’t walk) to your family tree and try it for yourself…

I had located Harry Balderson on the 1901 England census with wife Jessie and daughter Annie.  Now I had no clue what Jessie’s maiden name was.  So I needed to look it up.  I opened up my browser to http://www.findmypast.co.uk.  You will need an account to search, but you don’t have to subscribe to it for what I am going to show you.

On the top bar, hover your mouse over “Search records” until the drop down menu opens.  Then select “Birth, Marriage, Death & Parish Records”. 

Now click on the down arrow nest to “All Collections” and choose “Marriage and Divorces”.  Then in the “Who” section in the “First Name” field, type the wife’s first name  In my case it would be Jessie.  (Trust me on this one.  Think of it as reverse lookup).  Then down in the “Spouse Field” in the “First Name” type in the husband’s first name.  In my case it would be Harry.  Then again in the “Spouse Field” type the husband’s last name in the “Last Name” spot.  In my case it was Balderson.  I left the “Where” section at the default of Britain and didn’t fill in anything else.

Finally click on “Search Marriages & Divorces in Birth, Marriage, Death & Parish Records”.  Their search will now show all Jessie’s that are listed in the same marriage certificates as any Harry Balderson.  Now if they are both common names, then you may have to scroll through a few pages of listings or you could narrow down the search by typing in the year of birth as it appeared in the census.  If you do that then I would suggest changing the “Give or take” section to -/+ 5 years.

Here is what the final page for the search for Jessie who was married to Harry Balderson looks like.

 

And since I know that this is where they were living, I now know the maiden name of Harry Balderson’s wife is Jessie Pickering.

I have done this multiple times and have been able to verify this is correct.  I have even tried it on one’s where I do have a confirmed last name just to verify that this method worked properly. 

Have fun & Happy hunting!

G is for Genealogy

One of my passions is genealogy.  I absolutely love working on the family tree.  I have met some very interesting people while working on my tree.

I found some cousins on my mom’s side that I never knew before.  Some are in Canada (where my mom is from) and some are in Great Britain (where my grandparents are from).

We have had some mysteries in our family tree.  One of which is nearly solved.  I had already written about Louisa Needs and her loves to rival Erica Kane back on Nov 19, Nov 30, and Dec 6.  I have found out a few more things since then. 

First off, there were rumors that Louisa had kicked her daughter Mary Elizabeth out because she was unwed and pregnant.  The story goes that Liz had moved to Windsor after being kicked out.  Her brother Alex returned from WW2 upset to find out that she was kicked out.  He then moves to Windsor to help her out.  So she names her son after him.

This is so false that it is unbelievable.  First off, we now have a copy of Liz’s marriage certificate.  Liz was married well before Alex left to serve in WW2.  She was married with more then enough time to have gotten pregnant AFTER she got married.  Her first son’s name is Archibald, named after his dad.  Her third child is named Alex, after her brother.

So now we have to figure out why Louisa lied.  Well, now that we know the mystery that she was hiding, that became an easy one.  Louisa didn’t want her children to know about the other fathers.  She was trying to raise all the children as if they were all William Robert Pearson’s.  We know that this is true because one of her kids had passed that knowledge down.  However, that person had heard rumors that there were other fathers involved. 

Now when we look at Liz’s marriage certificate, the one thing that stands out against all of her siblings is the fact that she actually uses her birth fathers name on there and uses his last name as her own.  So it stands to reason that the reason Louisa broke off contact with Liz is because Liz wanted to honor her father by using his name. 

The other mystery I have is John Flynn.  He is difficult to pin down.  We know that his marriage to my great grandmother was at least his second marriage.  He was born in Ireland, but was married and lived in Scotland.  We are not sure where in Ireland he was born.  The census and marriage records only list Ireland.   We know his approximate year of birth, but can’t pin down anything else.   We aren’t going to give up our search though.