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The family tree project is going well, but there are still a few gaps to be filled in for the mid and late-19th century. I received an incredible amount of detail from a distant cousin from my grandfather’s side of the family, including details of where my great-grandfather was born, where his father died just a year later, and where my great-great-grandfather was married. However, I decided that I didn’t just want too much information handed to me on a plate, so I will do my own research on that side of the family.

Over at my grandmother’s side of the family, the Clinch dynasty, there have been a few walls to knock down. Still the most pressing is the identity of my great-grandmother, Alice West. This was not an uncommon name in 19th century London, so some clues were required. I decided to cough up for my grandmother’s birth certificate, even though I supposed I had all the info that it would contain. However, it arrived yesterday and it revealed one crucial piece of information… a middle name, Maud. This meant that I could discount any candidate who wasn’t shown as Alice, Alice M or Alice Maud… and that narrows it down significantly.

There was one other interesting piece of info… my grandmother (also Alice) was born at the family’s home, 32 Wood Street. Yet in the 1901 census, ten years earlier, the family lived at 30 Wood Street, and my great-grandfather’s older brother lived at number 32. Stranger than truth, except it’s true (or it could have been an error on the part of the census taker).

The next obvious step in revealing more details of Alice Maud West would be to obtain her marriage certificate. This should be found by cross-referencing marriages of Henry Clinch to Alice West in a time period and in London. I’ve used this method successfully for other ancestors, but on this occasion it drew a blank. Despite an exhaustive search, one that I’ve repeated several times, with variations on names, I’ve failed to find any record of their marriage. Perhaps they didn’t get married. There’s a thought…

But then I hit on something. Normally if you search a marriage register and view an index number in a given district it will display an even number of men and women, signifying that these men married these women, although you won’t be sure who married who (in 1911 they changed the marriage register to show who married who without the need of the actual certificate). However for the 2nd quarter of 1898, in the London district of St Saviour (Southwark) there are five names… three women and two men. So, a fair guess that one of the men’s names is missing. The trouble is, the Alice West listed could have married one of the other two men, that I can’t tell from the marriage register.

I then looked at the birth register and discovered that in 1879 (the right year) an Alice Maud West was born in St Saviour. Okay, this could all be highly coincidental. There is only one way to find out, and that’s to obtain the 1898 marriage certificate for Alice West of St Saviour and see what it says. It could be £7 down the drain, but it could be one of the most important pieces of the jigsaw. If she does turn out to be my great-grandmother, I already know the names of her parents and her grandmother (courtesy of the 1881 census). Mind you, I’ve been sure of details before, only to have found they were wrong later. It’s worth a £7 gamble, so here goes…

A few evenings spent digging through census records have revealed quite a lot. Getting hold of my grandparents’ birth certificates will make some of my findings certain, but I’m 99% sure that I’ve identified one branch of the clan going back to my great great great grandfather Henry Clinch (and we’ll call him Henry Clinch Senior as my great grandfather was also Henry Clinch).

Henry Clinch Senior was born in 1820 and his profession was listed as cheese monger and also ‘butter man’ (so clearly in the diary produce game), but then later (in the 1871 census) he was a poulterer. So far this is scuppering my hopes of turning up a long-lost wealthy relative from which I can inherit some unclaimed fortune. And funnily enough Florida Steve was hoping the same.

It’s possible I can go further back to my great great great great grandfather on the current evidence, but the past starts to get murky. Henry Clinch Senior has no wife listed on any census until 1871. Up until then it’s just him, the offspring and a servant. The offspring included my great great grandfather James Clinch. Then in 1871 Henry Senior’s wife is listed as Ellen (aged 38 to his 51). However, in the 1881 census, Ellen appears in James’ household, but has the surname Manning. So, the question is, was she James’ mother or did she meet and marry Henry Senior sometime between 1861 and 1871? To be sure I’d need James’ birth certificate.

I do hope Ellen was the mother of James, because she was fairly easy to trace on the 1841 census, and this reveals the possible identity of my great great great great (there has to be easier way of writing that) grandfather - David Manning, a labourer (sadly, not a duke) born in 1791. This is getting exciting, getting back to the 18th century, but unfortunately I will then exhaust the census information as a source as 1841 was the first (as far as I know).

This is just one branch of the family. At the moment I know little about my great grandmother Alice West (Henry Junior’s wife), or Mary Ann (James’ wife)… I don’t even know her surname.

More soon, I know you’re all riveted…

The night before Lotusphere Comes To You 2007 (Manchester edition) I sat next to Diane from our Marketing team at dinner, and was absolutely enthralled by her account of tracing her family tree. She’s gone back as far as the 17th century (that’s the 1600’s), and said that some of the ancestors were quite difficult to pin down.

My frolleague Cali Clarke has also done some detective work and has traced her ancestors back to the 18th century. Coincidentally, among the wonderful treasures that the previous owners of Adams Towers left for us before they hoofed it to Spain (that reminds me, I must hire a skip soon) was a CD of a genealogy program. It’s imaginatively named ‘Family Tree’. To give you an idea of how hi-tech it is, the system requirements demanded a 486 processor (hmmm, should be okay with this Pentium), Windows 95 or 98 (XP will have to suffice) and a whopping 8 mb of RAM (yep, I think I can spare that). It looks like it was designed in the Windows 95 era, but Cali confirmed the all-important feature - it supports the open standard for family tree files (GED).

Plotting my past could be a tad tricky on my dad’s side. One limiting factor is that he passed away (and is sorely missed) and is therefore not around to fill in any details. The other factor is that he was adopted, and all we really know is that he was born in Ardrossan (West Scotland) in November 1940. Therefore, it makes more sense to start on my mother’s side. I already knew the details of my maternal grandparents (they died well into my adulthood), and I also knew my grandmother’s maiden name. But that was all. My mum didn’t know much else apart from my great-grandfather’s Christian name.

Fortunately, there are some on-line resources that allow you to search birth, marriage and death records. Unfortunately they only give you so much information, and some sites demand payment for the info. However, there is one site that lets you view the registers for free. The registers only give so much info, but provide the base to then get the certificates which will uncover further details.

So, my next step is to ask my mum and uncle if they have my grandparents’ birth certificates… and if not I can get them from the General Register Office. Then I can get the details on my great-grandparents and start to dig further.