Yesterday evening, and purely on a whim, I decided to peruse the posts on the Maplethorpe Message Board at Ancestry.com.

I was threading through the posts "re:Maplethorpes of Lincolnshire" when I came across a post with an extract from the 1881 British Census. This extract is for the household of one John Robert MAPLETHORPE 1851-Deceased born at Billingham, Lincolnshire.

I too have this census information in my family history notes but I have always questioned whether or not the place of birth should be Billinghay and not Billingham. I wondered if this was a mistake in transcription and had been meaning to check this out on a map of Lincolnshire.

The post goes on to say:

"I have not researched him very much, but below is the 1881 census and he is on that along with his daughters one of which is my ggrandmother. It says Billingham, but on other correspondence I have it says Billinghay, I think it must be a misprint."

The poster also suggests Billingham may be a mistake; I think so too, since other search results for MAPLETHORPE in Lincolnshire more often cites Billinghay as the place.

Of course the most exciting aspect of the post is the fact that the poster affirms one of John Robert MAPLETHORPE 1851-Deceased's two daughters is her gg grandmother.

Now if my facts are correct, John Robert MAPLETHORPE 1851-Deceased only had two daughters: my great grandmother Mary Maria MAPLETHORPE 1878-1964 and Sarah Elizabeth MAPLETHORPE 1876-1962. Of course I was now curious to find out to which daughter the lady is related.

Since the posts are dated October 2004 I thought there should be a good chance the email account would still be active.

So I rattled off an email and...
received a reply!

At last it looks as though I have made some progress on this line.

FHJ Ref: 038
Census: England and Wales Census 1881
Place: Gainsborough Road, Kexby, Lincoln, England
Household: John W Maplethorpe

To view this table full width please click here.

Updates:
2016-11-01 Some years ago Ancestry.com made major changes to the message boards and many of the original links were broken. I have re-instated the links.

2016-11-01 For clarity, I added a table of my transcription of the census record.