Ellen Ashforth (née Ellen Tomlinson) 1855- - A brickwall

My gg grandmother Ellen ASHFORTH (née Ellen TOMLINSON) is at this moment the family history proverbial 'brickwall'. A quick scan of the 1841, 1851 and 1861 British censuses for Sheffield reveal little more than I already know. According to my mother her grandmother Ellen lived into her nineties and so probably died in the early 1940's. My mother knew her as Leah, yet in various documents she is also known as Ellenor and Helena.

Before I obtained her marriage certificate I carried out some rudimentary research documented in this article, this seemed to indicate her father's name would be William TOMLINSON. When I received her marriage certificate I was surprised, as expressed in this article, to see that her father's name was Samuel TOMLINSON.

At the time I didn't give this too much thought since my paternal grandmother's marriage certificate gives her father's name as George DIXON when quite clearly it was Samuel DIXON.

It was only when in 2009 I was contacted by KW in response to this article regarding Clara Ashforth and Jessie Renwick that I took a more in-depth look at the facts. Though conjecture never seems to be far away when researching Ellen ASHFORTH (née Ellen TOMLINSON) KW puts forward a strong case for following another line of research and having spent some time considering his reasoning, I believe, unless we make some major discovery, this line is the more likely to be correct.

The marriage certificate for William Henry ASHFORTH and Ellen TOMLINSON records:

This would suggest Ellen TOMLINSON was born abt. 1855 and at the 1861 British Census would be abt. 6 years of age. Ellen's father should be Samuel TOMLINSON, a saw maker by occupation.

During this period almost all of my Ashforth line all resided in an area west of St. Phillips Road as far as Burton Street and Cuthbert Bank Road. Thus I have always been apprehensive regarding Norton as Ellen's place of birth, even though Norton falls under the administrative region of Ecclesall Bierlow.

The following tables transcribed by me from British Census 1861 data outline this issue:

With reference to William and Ellen's marriage certificate the only census data that 'fits' are the names Ellen and Ellenor and the ages 7 and 5.

If names are anything to go by then I am inclined to favour Ellenor, my reasoning for this is that Ellen's mother-in-law was Leah ASHFORTH and my mother's name is a variant of Leonora and as I have stated before my mother always refers to Ellen as Leah.

I think the way forward is to take a chance on some more certificates, the problem is knowing which ones. I think an educated guess is in order.