While researching an ancestor in the England 1891 Census, I
encountered an anomaly that gave me a chuckle. In the image below, you will see
my ancestor, Ann Rands, a 41-year-old widow, who appears to be both a wife and
a mother. But she is not what caused me to chuckle.
The five lines above the Ann Rands entry illustrate how an
unsuspecting indexer unwittingly recorded a same-sex marriage. You will notice
the entry for Emily Harris, a 39-year-old widow, who is listed as a
head-of-household. The enumerator went to the trouble to indicate that Emily
was a household of one person by including a single slash mark on the line
above Emily, and a double slash mark on the line below her. Immediately below
Emily is an entry for Elizabeth Hill, followed by her three young children,
Elizabeth, Agnes, and Ethel. Elizabeth is listed as a wife. If you glance down
at the index, you can see that Elizabeth and her children are listed with a
surname of Harris, rather than Hill. In other words, the indexer assumed that
Elizabeth was the wife of Emily Harris, and the three children were children of
Emily.
In fact, as you can see in the Occupation column, Elizabeth
Hill is the wife of a seaman in the Royal Navy who was absent at the time of
the enumeration. Normally, she would be enumerated as the head of the household
in the absence of her husband, but in this case she is listed as a wife. Emily
Harris and Elizabeth Hill might not have been connected in any way at all. So
the indexer, without examining the details carefully enough, created both a
researcher’s nightmare (Elizabeth Hill would not show up in a search) and a
same-sex marriage (between Emily and Elizabeth).
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| Digitized image from England 1891 census page, Ancestry.com |
When I studied this more carefully, it became clear that my
Ann Rands was actually Elizabeth Hill’s mother. What appears to be wife mother in the relationship column
actually means wife’s mother. Furthermore,
I located likely evidence that an Elizabeth Rands married a John Hill in the 3rd
quarter of 1882 in the Portsea district of Hampshire County. I also found
corresponding birth registrations for Elizabeth, Agnes, and Ethel. The details
will be clarified when the registration certificates arrive from the General
Registrar’s Office. This is an index entry from FreeBMD:
In addition, the 1901 England Census had is a listing
for John and Elizabeth Hill living in Portsea, with children who match up with
Elizabeth’s children in the 1891 census.
My chuckle turned to a pleasant surprise as I discovered a
whole new family to add to my family tree.
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