Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.
From Mike Coomber:
‘For several years I have been trying to find the birth certificate for my grandmother, without success. I always thought that her birthday was 15 July 1891 but I cannot find a corresponding entry in the indexes. Unfortunately her name was quite a common one – Alice Brown – and all I can find is entries in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. In the 1901 census she was living with her ‘grandmother’ in Derby.
Is there anywhere else that I should be looking or anything else I should be doing?’
Stephen says:
‘Hi Mike,
This is indeed a tricky one.
I started by looking for Alice Brown with a grandmother in Derby in the 1891 census, and assume that the entry is the one at census reference RG13 piece 3223 folio 114 page 1, i.e., that Alice is living in the household of the widow Hannah Bruerton and her unmarried children Emily, John H and Florence M. Alice is nine years old and born in Manchester, whereas the rest of the family is from Derbyshire. As Alice’s own parents are not resident overnight on census night, this begins to set off warning bells. Is she indeed a grandchild of Hannah, could one or both of her parents have died, was she illegitimate, why would she have been born in distant Manchester etc?
Using earlier censuses, plus birth, marriage and death records, it is possible to reconstruct at least part of the immediate family. I am sure you have already done this yourself. John Bruerton was married twice, first to Lucy and secondly, in 1874, to Hannah Hicklin. In the 1861 and 1871 censuses, John is with Lucy, of course, while from 1881 through to 1901 he is with his second wife Hannah.
Hannah would have been about 40 years old at the time of marriage, and is likely to have had children from a previous relationship, just as John Bruerton did (with Lucy). In fact, the 1881 census return shows, in addition to persons named Bruerton, an 8-year-old Hannah Hicklin, born in Findern, Derbyshire – presumably Hannah Snr’s daughter from a previous relationship. This Hannah may have been the mother of your grandmother Alice Brown. Please see census references as follows:
- 1891, Brixworth – RG12, piece 1207, folio 107, page 8
- 1901, Ashton – RG13, piece 3799, folio 5, page 1
As you will see, she is a kitchen maid and then a domestic cook, in the homes of clergymen Rev William Bury and Rev Francis Burrows, respectively. Of course, in both years she is single and has the name Hicklin, not Brown. Ashton under Lyne is in Manchester, however, and this makes me wonder whether she was indeed the mother of Manchester-born Alice Brown. Perhaps Brown was the surname of the unmarried birth father?
I did find references to an Ann Hicklin possibly marrying a John William Brown in Derby 1881 and a Frances Annie Hicklin possibly marrying an Ernest Brown in Walsall in 1891 (I say ‘possibly’ as there are two marriages on each page of a marriage register of that date, so the groom may have been relevant to the other marriage on the same page). I felt able to eliminate the latter, but the first might merit further consideration.
If the above Hannah proves to be incorrect and merely a coincidence, then you will need to continue looking for other candidate children of John Bruerton or Hannah Hicklin (or even of different partners of them), born before 1865 at the very latest
My recommendations to you would be to start by ordering a copy of the 1874 marriage certificate of John Bruerton and Hannah Hicklin to see if the latter was a spinster or a widow. If she was a spinster, then look for her possible illegitimate children, including Hannah Jnr. If she was a widow, then look for her first marriage (which would of course be to as yet unknown Mr Hicklin) and for their legitimate children.
You are still some way from clarifying exactly what transpired in this potentially complicated family, but I hope the foregoing gives you some new leads and ideas to pursue.’
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