The 1921 census solves a family mystery
- 18th April 2025
This is the third blog in the series on how members of staff have used the recently released 1921 census to further their own research. This is Julia’s story.
We all have our family mysteries; those stories you half remember from childhood, but didn’t ask questions about at the time, and now it’s too late.
My father used to speak about his ‘cousin Les’, but we never met ‘Les’ or knew any more about him, other than we guessed that he had been born to one of my grandfather’s unmarried sisters.
We had always assumed it was his eldest sister, who emigrated to Australia. A man we met years later though, who had known the family, said no, it was the second sister, and her elder sister had ‘covered’ for her.
I tried to find a birth, but there were several possibilities and, as I didn’t have a middle name, no way of knowing which was mine without sending for the birth certificates.
When the 1921 census was released, it was my chance to see if I could find him.
Sure enough, he is there, living with my great grandmother. I now knew his full name and year he was born, so could send for his birth certificate. When it arrived, it showed we were all wrong; his mother was the youngest of the sisters.
Further research on Ancestry showed he had a ‘complicated’ life and had emigrated to Australia. Mystery solved.
Now all I need to do is find out what happened to his mother… One of the many joys of family history, is there is always more to find out!
Great!
I wish we could find the origins of my husband’s grandad so easily.!
On this occasion Julia was very lucky, but she has been plugging away at family history for very many years.
Whilst we cannot do research for customers, all our staff have been working on our family trees for years. Someone may be able to make a suggestion of where to look next. You are welcome to put an enquiry on our website: https://www.explorethepast.co.uk/contact-us/