Success of a kind.....

Rockford · Post by **Rockford** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 1:31 pm

Hi everyone,

I think I've converted my wife to the possibilities of family history!

She's always maintained a passing interest on what I'm spending the mortgage on, but her eyes tended to glaze over when I went off on one about the payments in kind due to a farm servant in 1840s Lanarkshire.

However, she's just started teacher training and one of the resources they have been given for one of their courses uses 1891 census records. My wife and one of her friends were intrigued by one family where the Head of the household was a woman, who was described as married with no husband present. She asked me why this would be and I went through the options - soldier serving oversees, staying somewhere else etc.

On Sunday, we set off to find him (electronically). Ten minutes later we had the birth certificate of their daughter, which gave his name and the parents place of marriage. We also had the death certificates of both the husband and wife, the 1881 census, plus his obituary from the Scotsman and a photograph of the house they had lived in from an estate agent's website!

It helped that both husband and wife were from fairly wealthy families and got the Scotsman write up and lived in the big hoose. Nevertheless, my wife was well impressed!

There's hope for her yet......

Brian

PS He was a soldier!!

Post by **SarahND** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 2:18 pm

=D> Nice work, Brian!
Always a good idea to get one's spouse interested-- makes the possibility of holidays to genealogically important places more likely

Sarah

Rockford · Post by **Rockford** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:11 pm

Hi Sarah,

I've actually pulled that one already - she didn't realise until she got there...

Brian