Genealogy Chat

Some women could vote in local elections - for instance, property owners - so they were listed on the electoral register but not allowed to vote in parliamentary elections. I was recently looking through an electoral register for 1912 and one for 1913 and I was surprised to see how many women's names were on it. I was also surprised that it was listed in alphabetical order of surname rather than by street! It had lists of different categories of voter in each ward, and each of these lists went in order of surname. (Unfortunately the person I was doing the lookup for had only given me the address, which made it tricky!) Kate.

My father had an aunt b. 1873 who 'never married'. My parents visited her and there was never a man around. It was a great surprise to find a marriage registration for her and I ordered the certificate to confirm that it WASN'T her. ( I'm helping with a one-name study so it would still be useful) It was her, alright,- at the same address as the family were found in census before and after her 1897 marriage...... I still don't know what she did with her husband after 1901, so that nobody knew of him.

Gwyneth Same here - my 2 x GT Uncle 'never married' and was dead at 40, in 1900. I checked the Post Office Directory and in 1899, he is listed as living with his brother and his brother's wife. As he had no descendants, I put off getting his death cert. So I was utterly astonished to be contacted on here by one of his descendants! He married in 1899 (PO Directory obviously a few months behind itself), went to a Football match (Man U), caught a cold and died a week later of pneumonia, leaving a young widow who later gave birth to twins. No-one in my family knew anything about this, but spookily, my blah blah cousin, knew all about me and my family, from one of the twins, who only died in 1995! Olde Crone

I did ask the Records office whether the 'new' tenant of Anne's house in 1907 could have been my ancester in a (married??) name, but they said it was someone entirely different. Of course, she could have married and moved into her new husband's house. Then again, she might have just moved in with someone and changed her name without getting married. What a nest of vipers. Makes me determined that I should make it easy for my ancesters to find our about me in the future!!! Incidentally, can anyone tell me where I can get access to the post office directories for early 1900s? The ancester I'm looking for lived in Carew, Pembs, Wales - would I have to go to Wales to find them? ShirleyB