If my previous post illustrating the vagaries of searching for ancestors proved none too difficult eventually, this next search seemed to take forever.

With reference to this article regarding my great grandmother Ziller JACKLIN (née Ziller ALLEN 1858-1949) and her daughter Georgiana ALLEN 1879-1965, I was curious to know more about Georgiana's family.

BW had provided me with a few clues:

1) Georgiana's husband was one Charles Henry WARD.
2) Georgiana was born at the Union Workhouse, Clarborough (East Retford, Nottinghamshire).
3) In 1896 they were married at the Church of All Saints, Aston-cum-Aughton, Rotherham.
4) Georgiana later used the name Georgina, but the name Eanor on her marriage certificate.
5) The marriage produced 8 children.
6) Hilda WARD was their eldest daughter.

Since they were married 'twixt the 1891 and 1901 England and Wales censuses, I thought it would be none too difficult to find a 1901 census record of this family. How wrong can one be.

'Ward' and 'Allen' are commonly occurring surnames, though Georgiana as a forename is not so commonly occurring. After some fairly simple searches I was not getting too far, so I changed tactic and in the hope of one of them having an unusual forename, I tried to find more of the children. A search of FreeBMD, where after September 1912, the mother's surname is also given, showed quite a few children for 'Ward' + 'Allen', but I could not be certain that they were for this couple.

The main problem was not knowing their place of residence. They had been married at the Church of All Saints, Aston-cum-Aughton, and since Georgiana's mother Ziller JACKLIN (née Ziller ALLEN 1858-1949) and several of her aunts and uncles lived at nearby Swallownest and their residence at the time of marriage was given as Swallownest, I had to assume they would be resident nearby.

Several hours of searching later I was about to give up, when I decided that they may have moved away from the area. So I decided to gradually broaden my search and changed residence to 'Basford' north Nottinghamshire, an area nearby, but classed then as Nottinghamshire.

While trawling through many, many 'Ward's, I eventually spotted 'Hilda Ward' and the main cause of my difficulties: Charles Henry's name had been abbreviated to 'Chas Hy Ward' ('fuzzy' search was not detecting this) and Georgiana is recorded as 'GE Ward'. Their residence is given as Kiveton, a village about 3 miles east of Swallownest, though in 1901 Kiveton came under the registration district of Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

So another mystery solved, eventually.

FHJ Ref: 079
Census: England and Wales Census 1901
Place: Kiveton, Yorkshire, England
Household: Charles Henry WARD

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