Genealogy Chat

my gt gt gt grandmother was elizabeth dorling, who had a sister called sophia. elizabeth had daughter harriet cudding who married charles henry smith , the smiths lived in ipswich. sophia married william spink. Hariet cudding had daughter augusta sophia smith (my gt gt grandmother) i have the birth cert and she was born in may 1852 but birth not registered till july 1852. found sophia spink on 1861 census ( def the right sophia spink) who has neice staying with her.. Emily smith...born in 1852!!!!! have found a birth for emily in ipswich June 1852 but there is no volume number just an asterix. what could be going on here??? twins??? but would they be registered in different quarters?? can anyone please help as this is driving me round the twist now...thanx

If they were twins they would definitely be registered in the same quarter, with either the same page number or consecutive page numbers. Therefore, not twins! If Emily was a niece to Sophia then she would be Harriet's generation, not Augusta's? With such a common surname, it's possible that there was another Smith marriage somewhere in the family - maybe Emily was a niece of William Spink, rather than of Sophia? Richard

Thanks Richard, of course you are right, it may well be the case that it is a neice on williams side. the name emily got to me a bit as there are a lot of emilys on sophias side. The other thing is as well, I found sophia spink on the 1841 census and her age was noted as 40 so I was looking for records starting from around 1800. then i found her on the 1861 and 1871 as birthdate 1791! I know they are one and the same, they are even living basically in the same place. this lot are hard work lol

Emily is such a common name for the time that you can't read anything into that on its own. nell

hi nell yes you are probably right, just been getting carried away as usual. I have now definitley found Sophias christening record she was born in 1790 to John dorling and Harriet SPINK. She then married william SPINK in 1814. Is it possible that she could have married a cousin..was this legal in those days?

Marriage to a cousin was legal and quite common in Victorian times. It is still legal but (I think) less common than it used to be. Anne

Hi looking on 1837 Emilys reg number looks like 4a 559 or 509 & Augustas looks like 4a 489 or 459. Regards Colette xx

Hi Collette Thank you vey much for looking for me..that is really helpful to me, I can order Emilys cert now and try and find out exactly what was going on and who she belonged to! thanx much appreciated Ann

Not sure if this is applies, but a fine (in Birmingham at least) was charged if you din't reg the birth within a certain time period, I think 30 days. My Nan had 2 birthdays, the day her mother told her she was born and the date they told the GRO (or whatever it was then) It took my Grt grd parents 3 months to get themoney to reg her