Help finding my great grandmother

[NC1602]

Having browsed a few threads and seeing the advice given I'm wondering if anyone has any further suggestions to help me find out what happened to my great grandmother.

As a child she is on the 1901 (a baby) and 1911 censuses living with her parents. In 1932 she married but had an affair and became pregnant with my grandmother. She and her husband divorced. She was living with the man she had the affair with at the time of my grandmothers birth.

Then my grandmother was adopted.. not sure it was official. Then after that the trail goes cold. I have searched electoral rolls and looked up neighbours and relations to see if she lived with them but nothing to prove this. She didn't go back to her parents or her only sibling (sister). I have found their entries on the 1939 register and their death entries.

I have found both her ex husband who remarried and the man who is my great grandfather on the 1939 register and electoral rolls and their deaths. However I cannot find any trace of my great grandmother. I've tried combinations of her names first, middle, maiden, married, Great grandfathers surname etc..nothing..no entry on the 1939 register that I can find and no death entry.

Could she have just totally changed her name? Was that easy to do with no legal route in the late thirties? Gone abroad? I looked at some emigration stuff but its a bit hard to know where to begin...

Any help gratefully appreciated!

Sounds like you've covered an awful lot of ground there OP, it is much harder to find information in the last 100 years because of the privacy rule.

Her entry in the 1939 register- is there another sur name written over her original name? I ask as the register was 'live' for several years as the NHS used it so if she remarried it could have been recorded on there. Often has a date in the margin too.

Good luck in finding her

Thanks but unfortunately I've not managed to find her in the 1939 register. Found all the other direct relatives and her ex husband and the man she was with though, all of which did lead me to other interesting things but still no sign of her. You're right though I think I've looked in lots of places but its all a bit 'recent' and I don't think the 1921 c will be that helpful as this disappearance happened after that. Just surprised I can't find any record of her death but if she changed her name or went abroad then that would explain that. My grandmother said she died shortly after she was born but I don't think we believe that to be true now. Maybe it will remain a mystery!

When you found the man she was living with on the 1939 register, were there any entries immediately before/after him, blanked out?

I have berry recently found my gt-gt grandmother on the records. I knew she died around 1881/1882 but couldn't find any obvious matches. Eventually ordered a death cert for someone if the right name but apparently 5 years older than all the census entries suggested, and it was her!
She and my gt-gt grandfather don't appear to have been married. I can't find banns or an entry of marriage in any registers.

You could try looking for people with her first name a few years either way of her age as you were aware?

If you know her exact date of birth, then you could try searching the 1939 register with that and her Christian name and see if any likely names with spelling errors come up. Sometimes if a name is misspelt or mistranscribed it just won't come up in the searches.
Likewise try searching the death records with as many variations of spelling as you can come up with. For example, I had a relative whose name was Cayford and it has been spelt multiple ways in the records such as Keyford, Keifer, Ceyfor. You can do wildcard searches as well - e.g. for Cayford, you could search Cd or Cayd etc. It is also true that some names are still blocked out on the 1939 register even after people have died.

Did she go abroad, have you checked the passenger records ?

As others have said, consider the blacked-out records on the 1939 Register - you can work out how many entries for the same residence "should" appear by the line numbering. Also check more than one site, I've found some entries showing on FindMyPast when they've been blacked out on Ancestry, for example.

The other places to try are looking at Electoral Rolls, especially if you know who she should have been with, look at the page and see if she's listed after but notvtranscribed; and FamilySearch (the LDS site) has helped me track some obscure records.

Thanks everyone. I'll try the Family Search site. I've mostly been using Ancestry and FMP.

Electoral roll trail goes cold unfortunately. She's not with either her parents, only sibling, or the neighbours who were with her when she gave birth. I've searched for my great grandfather in the year they disappeared from the electoral roll.. year after my grandmothers birth 1934 and can't find him again until 1939 register. There's nothing blacked out with him and he has married another woman by then too. Nothing blacked out with her parents or sister either and she's not with them on the ER either and they stay in their houses until the parents die and the sister eventually moves out of London with her husband and children but thats much later.

Have tried combos of her names but nothing starred out so I'll give that a go. I have her exact DOB which you'd think would help but so far has not. I'll have to get a better grip on searching passenger records. I found them harder to navigate through when I was looking for other relatives but I did eventually find them! However they were all under the names I was expecting which helped!

Perhaps she is living with someone else as their wife, and has taken on their last name, although not married. Can you search for first name and date of birth, no surname? Do many people come up? If so, you could restrict the search to the county they come from perhaps.

Can you find any trees on Ancestry with your gg grandparents? Another line might know what happened.

Happy to try to help if you want to message me the name(s) you're looking for and years of birth.

Just checking that you have searched marriage records in case she remarried someone completely different.

Another possibility would be to look at wills /probate though it is very likely she wouldn't have left a will especially if she died young. probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills, but I have found a person here when I couldn't find his death record.
Also gravestones - www.findagrave.com/.

Thanks again for the links to try following or tweaking to re try. I will have a go at the probate and graves definitely. Have searched the marriage records and can't find anything that helps there unfortunately. @WeatherwaxOn thank you for your offer. I will PM you if that's ok but probably in a few days/week as I'm suddenly full of cold and have small children to look after so this will end up on the back burner for a bit again!

I have the same problem with my G Grandmother - disappears in 1915 after a bigamous marriage.

Have you ordered the death certificate of the man she had the affair with, your G Grandfather? The informant could be a clue - worth a shot

It sounds like she changed her name or even remarried.
I found so much more with a DNA test, all the brick walls came down, one by one.
I appreciate that's not everyone's thing, though.
Good luck, no other suggestions, I'm afraid.

Happy to do my best to help. I love a family history mystery!