In genealogy I was back to looking at the 1921 censuses, seeing as I had Findmypast membership which had a monopoly on this, focusing on my Maxteds and their extended family members. And why did William Maxted's Irish wife Mary Dolan, on the 1921 census, say she was born in Cork, rather than Westmeath? Those parts of Ireland were so far apart. Notes online about this giving of different birthplaces suggest that this information gets more accurate as one gets older. Had Mary sought to hide her origins? Skeletons in the cupboard? Could there have been a single mother born babe at a convent, she being either the mother of the babe? This remained a mystery. But, yes, babes out of wedlock were there in her family, with her granddaughters Norah and seemingly my nanny Eileen. So this looking at various 1921 census for Maxted descendants was my own personal detective challenge of the moment. My Maxteds had originated in the apparently haunted Kent village of Pluckley, at some point relocating into London, and then ending up in the Hampshire town of Eastleigh. That was where William Maxted and his Irish wife Mary Dolan were living in 1921, where William worked as a boiler maker for the railway. The families married daughter who lived on the same road, Market Street, Mary Green, had begun by 1921 naming all her daughters after flowers. Another married daughter, Florence, my own ancestress, was far away in Parkestone, Essex, at 2 Bridge Cottages, for which I found a picture and recalled in this even having been there as a child when my nanny friend Nina (?) lived there, a time I'd been made to sing for everyone, where pigeons were kept at the end of the garden and all manner of home made wines were being created from fruits, barks and flowers. For all such censuses I thereafter tracked down I sourced if possible accompanying pictures of where these families had lived or pictures connected to their occupations. Some of the Maxted family had remained in London, such as William Maxteds brother and sister, Matilda and Henry, still in Nine Elms where they'd all been born. Henry worked there as a crane attendant for the railway. Other family members had moved to Brighton, Luton, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, one of Williams brothers Frederick Maxted being an armourer of rifles, pistols and machine guns at the Admiralty supply depot in Plymouth. Back in London, at Islington, two of William's cousins, the Arnell sisters Molly and Minnie, who never married, worked worked for the animal food business of Joseph Thorley Limited at Kings Cross, specifically for the cattle foods department. And two brothers John and William Maxted, who were nephews of our own William Maxted, being sons of his deceased brother John, worked in Fulham, London, for the biscuit manufacturer Marfalane as dispatcher and packer. Of those who had moved to Luton, one cousin, Henry Pratt, the grandson of William's deceased sister Sarah, worked as a painter of the cars of the famed Vauxhall Motors long situated there.
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1921 Census Day, new records released, as revealed at midnight. In a few locations in England one can view this freely, but I am in France. Therefore I would have to pay. At first I was not going to look, as it wasn't that I expected to find any vital information there. Rather I messaged my London based daughter, Eleanor, to let me know if she visits Kew Gardens, as this was one of the locations of free access (in and around the Kew Archives). But as a keen genealogist I couldn't then resist to at least have a little look, firstly just at my Welsh family (simply by transcript), then I saw that for just a little extra money one can download the originals and in my excitement ended up doing this for everyone. So the Welsh Harrisons of Varteg were the first I looked at. I already knew their ages, places of birth and occupations. What I did learn was which colliery they worked at. It was on the Varteg Hill that my great grandfather, John Harrison, worked as a colliery examiner for John Vipond & Co. My pop, his son George, was at that time a 12 year old boy. Ok, secondly I looked at my Maxted's of Eastleigh, to the family of my great great grandfather, William Maxted, who was a boilermaker on the railways. His Irish wife, Maria, who had always been a mystery, having previously said she was from Westmeath, now claimed in this 1921 census to have been born in Cork. So, yes, armed with his new information I looked once more to finding something of her origins, but still found nothing. What I did find from this census, which I had not known before, was that one of the daughters, Norah, herself had at this time an illegitimate baby in the family home, a little girl named Norah Maria Kathleen, the names of both her mother and grandmother. As for William and Maria Maxted's daughter, Florence, she had married a ships cook, Percy Spencer, and was living with him at 2 Bridge Cottages, Dovercourt, with my little 'nanny' Eileen, aged three years. Florence's younger brother, Henry, was also living with them and working as a local postman. My Shetland Inkster's I couldn't look ar as no Scottish records had been as yet released. I now looked at my Seagrove's of Greenwich. I already knew that my great great grandfather, Thomas Seagrove, was a salvage hand (retired) for the Port of London. And I looked at the Bane's . My great great grandfather, Richard Bane, was newly a widower, aged 81, living with his daughter Alma's family in Walthamstow, Alma's husband, George Reynolds, being a school teacher. All of this I knew. What was new information was Alma's birth in Barbados having been fine tuned to the location of St Anne's, where there had been a British garrison. So this was where my Bane's had lived while they were in Barbados. My 'granny' Isabelle Bane can be seen aged three living with her family at 13 Lee Road in Dovercourt. I'd not so easily found them at first, due to her father, D'Auvergne Bane, using his middle name only of Robert. I already knew that he'd worked as a checker at Parkeston Quay. In the census it specified that he worked for the Great Eastern Railway. That was it for my family in the 1921 census, nothing excessively riveting. But little by little colours are added to the family story.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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