I’ve hit a brick wall and don’t know what to do next

[Snuzzle]

I’m researching my great grandma and I’ve found two marriage certificates for her but can’t find out anything about her first husband or what happened to him.
I have his age and fathers name on their marriage certificate but can’t seem to track him on any earlier census to find out where he came from. They married in 1905 and on the 1911 census she’s visiting her sister and listed as married but again I can’t find him anywhere. Then in 1913 she married her second husband but yet again can’t find any record of what happened to her first husband.
Feel like I’ve exhausted the census records and don’t know where else to look, does anyone have any suggestions please?

[Snuzzle]

@ShowOfHands I’m loving reading about him, sounds like quite a character. Not sure whether I’d like him to be ours or not but I’m not sure he moved much from the Bradford area.

[Snuzzle]

@Gastonia from the research I’ve done I can easily believe he didn’t know.
Her 3 sisters were the only family she had in the area at that point - both parents were long dead and her step father had returned to his native Scotland. Her mothers siblings were scattered all over the country and her fathers family had no contact with them after he died as far as I can tell.

It’s more likely they lived and therefore he worked in a mine in Brotton, possibly lumpsey pit. Guisborough was only the registration district.

It does look likely to me that he left her and she simply moved on and married again. Albert isn’t related to us but it would be nice to find out where he came from and what happened.

[ShowOfHands]

Just in case the Albert Webster who had a life of crime in Yorkshire is your Albert, his alias is Arthur Lister, he went to prison in 1907, had a tattoo with Bessie on it, one with an anchor on it and was a wool comber apparently. Liked breaking into warehouses and petty theft. And common assault. He was from Bradford originally. Born 1883.

It's not him of course but I love the detail in the records.

[Saker]

I've found Albert Edward Webster who married Margaret Murphy in 1918 in the 1939 census and his birth year is 1897 so unfortunately not him!

[Gastonia]

Yes, the archives may have some more info.

Looking at ironstone mines in 1905, there are only three actually in Guisborough - Belmont, Chaloner and Stanghow. Maybe there's some info on them at the archives. (Obviously, he may have been a miner at a different place.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironstone_mining_in_Cleveland_and_North_Yorkshire

If Albert left her, she might have ended up on parish relief (not necessarily in the workhouse), so that might be recorded as well.

I can't believe the second husband didn't know, as he may have come from elsewhere, but she was still local, and there'd surely be other relatives. I really want to know what happened now! I hope you get those certificates

[Snuzzle]

@Gastonia he is interesting and I’m going to follow him up tonight.

She put Webster on her second marriage certificate but listed her father as John Webster and herself as a spinster. Her second husband was from a different area of the county and her sisters were all married so he wouldn’t have known Webster wasn’t her maiden name.

@CountessOfSponheim poking around our local archives was how we found out about this marriage in the first place. We dismissed it as not our Ellen at first because we didn’t know about it but when we couldn’t find a marriage certificate for the marriage to our great grandfather we went back to this record and realised her sister was a witness. We then found the second marriage by searching for Webster instead of Grange.

We found parish records for the two children and records for her sisters that showed them sharing an address but still couldn’t track him any further.

[CountessOfSponheim]

This is the sort of puzzle where actually going and poking around in real records in a county record office might be helpful (or not; all I got for my own dead end in the record office was a tantalising hint, although to be fair I could follow that up with a visit to a different record office some time). There's still a lot of stuff that just isn't online.

[WinterSpringSummerorFall]

Did you look in the 1921 Census? There are quite a few Albert Webster and Albert Edward Websters in there born at the right time.

[Gastonia]

Yes, maybe the certificates will give some clues. It's sad that they both died so young. John is quite common, but Norman isn't, so I wonder where that came from.

Wester the habitual criminal is an interesting lead!

Re the marriage at Brotton, did she keep the Webster name? If so, the husband must have known. Or did she use her maiden name?

[Snuzzle]

@Gastonia the second wedding took place at Brotton parish church.
I don’t think her second husband knew about her previous marriage - her children definitely didn’t though her 3 sisters all did.

I think the address listed on the record for Nellie was her sisters house so not a huge help, I’ll have to dig it out and check though.

I have to agree it’s most likely he’d left and she didn’t know where he was or if he was still alive but it’s very frustrating not being able to find him.

[Snuzzle]

@Saker lol I wouldn’t be surprised at this point.

Norman isn’t a family name on Ellen’s side so no idea where that comes from but John was her fathers name.
I haven’t seen birth or death certificates for either child only the parish records which both list Albert as their father. Will have to try ordering the certificates and see if they say any different.

[ShowOfHands]

There's an Albert Wester with a matching birth date who is listed as a habitual criminal in Yorkshire. Serves time and uses an alias according to the records.

Not saying it is him BTW but I had never seen a habitual criminals list when researching before!

[Gastonia]

Looking at the first wedding, if you were going to lie about your father's name, you would be more likely to say his name was a common one - eg John. Why make up a more unusual name like Eli?

Maybe Eli is his father's name - perhaps short for something. But maybe Webster is wrong. eg the Anglicised name of a Jewish name? Or maybe he is the person you found, whose father is still alive.

[Gastonia]

Looking at the two children who died, do you have their birth and death certificates, with the place of death? For Nellie who died in 1910, you could look up who is living at that address in 1911.

Why was the first called Norman John? Were they family names? It seems strange that then the second child is then called Nellie, after the mum, but the first child wasn’t named after Albert. Had Albert already left, perhaps even before Norman was born? Then Nellie was really someone else’s child.

Where did she get married the second time? If it was in Guisborough, and he had died, why not say she was a widow? It’s more likely he had left and she didn't know whether he was dead or alive.

[Saker]

There's an Albert E Webster who married Margaret A Murphy in 1918 in Middlesbrough. Perhaps they were both at it?

[ShowOfHands]

*who's

[ShowOfHands]

I've helped out a couple of people who've contacted me re a common ancestor who they've been baffled by and in my case, it's only having oral histories and correspondence preserved by a diligent Victoria granny that meant I could help.

I have a couple of relatives who've simply changed their name (one because she was abandoned by her husband and couldn't divorce but met somebody else and wished to live as man and wife. Another who found out he was born to an unmarried mother in the workhouse and decided to use her name from then on). Throw in some time in workhouses, running away to other countries, military enlistment and emigration and some of my relatives appear missing from official records until you know where to look and what you're looking for. They also like to use the names they were actually known by on official records. Hence my Uncle Will (102 when I was born in 1980) who nobody knew was actually called John and Aunt Nance whose really called Miriam and then there's all the misspellings and transcribing errors.

Are there any family tree matches anywhere because somebody out there might know.

I love a puzzle but it's flipping frustrating.

[Saker]

I have searched quite hard for Eli on the basis that it is a less common name, but not really found anything. Gosh from what you say it seems quite likely that her Albert Edward might not have been dead when she remarried! I haven't really been looking for him beyond 1913 assuming he was, but maybe he just carried on living nearby all along!

[Snuzzle]

I’m descended from the second marriage but there were two children who both died at birth as far as I can tell. They were born 1907 and 1910 though so not likely to be a shotgun wedding.
Ellen was the last of 4 sisters to marry and both their parents were dead so we do think perhaps she was eager to marry and get away from her step fathers house.
Definitely worth another search for Eli as I would like to track what happened to Albert if possible.

[movingschmooving]

Travel records??

[Selford]

I've realised I assumed they had children, but having re-read your OP, I'm guessing you're descended from the second marriage, so not a shotgun marriage, and prob less likely to have been already married.

[Selford]

Can you tell from the birth of the first child if it was a shotgun wedding? I'm wondering if he had moved for work and met Ellen and if he gave a false name (possibly because he was already married). I know this was illegal, but it doesn't mean it didn't ever happen. (Sorry to think the worst, I'm wracking my brains for avenues you haven't already explored.) And it's possibly he lied about his father being dead because he didn't want Ellen meeting his family (or even that the vicar made a mistake and e.g. it was the previous wedding that day where the father was deceased)

Re Canada, a general Ancestry search would normally bring up immigration/passenger lists (both inbound and outbound). Although it might be worth drilling down to them specifically and seeing if he crops up.

And is it worth trying to find his father? Eli is a more unusual name than Alfred Edward, although obv Webster is pretty common. I've just done a quick freebmd.org check for a 10-year marriage period (I don't currently have any subscriptions) and there weren't a ridiculous number. You would then have a location to find a birth record for Albert Edward (it could have been wrongly transcribed).

[Snuzzle]

It is but knowing her history I wouldn’t be surprised.
She lied about her age and said she was 21 on her first marriage certificate when she was actually 19.
Her second marriage certificate lists her as a spinster and her father as John Webster deceased so we believe she never told her second husband she’d already been married.
She also had an affair during the war with an American serviceman and had a child with him while her second husband was away.
So nothing would surprise us now regarding her.

[Saker]

Certainly coming from abroad would explain the lack of records. However, if he didn't die, then it's quite a big thing that Ellen remarried. It would be bigamous, but I suppose it's possible if she knew he was never coming back. I wondered about prison or mental asylum or something like that as well.

[Snuzzle]

@Saker thanks for looking, he really does seem impossible to find. I did find one census record for 1901 that I wondered about. He’s living in Scarborough and listed as born in Canada approx 1884. I’m thinking with there being no other records at all maybe he came from elsewhere and potentially even went back there sometime between 1910 and 1913. There’s no place in Canada named though and I wouldn’t know where to start with international records.