Additional information on 1921 census ‘British born’

[Terloz]

The 1921 census did not require a statement of nationality unless NOT born in the UK. I am white and suspect I have a black ancestor, possibly as far back as 1800. No records state race. A family member has completed the 1921 census in blue ink. A note in black ink and a different hand, has been added in the column meant to be blank unless needed to state other nationality. This says ‘British born’. Other corrections (crossing out of children’s marital status) have been made in the same black ink and hand. Does this hint that their appearance suggested they were a non-UK national,
possibly mixed race? Were they asked ‘where are you REALLY from?’ on the doorstep or am I reading too much in to this?

Is this just against one family member, or all of them? Has the enumerator amended other households in a similar way? Did the enumerator even meet the family, or did he just pick up the forms?

You could do a DNA test, and see if that throws up anything. My g grandad (born 1836) was proud to claim Indian heritage, but I haven't yet found these ancestors by tracing my family tree the traditional way. However, I was amazed the DNA test showed a small % of Indian ethnicity, although I don't know how accurate the Ancestry analysis is.

What other research have you done so far? If you haven't done so already, I'd suggest that from their age shown on the census, you try and locate their birth record on the freeBMD website, and order their birth certificate. That will give you both parents' names and you can hopefully then find their marriage. The more information you have, the easier it will be to find the family on earlier censuses, and maybe there should be a mention of birthplaces for both parents. The further you go back in the censuses and other records with their grandparents, the clue you are looking for could be there. The earliest one to show birthplace is 1851.

I haven't looked at any 1921 censuses yet, but are you absolutely sure the word is "Born"?

The 1911 census has a column asking for:

"Nationality of every Person born in a Foreign Country.
State whether:—
(1) "British subject by parentage."
(2) "Naturalised British subject," giving year of naturalisation.
Or
(3) If of foreign nationality, state whether "French," "German," Russian," etc.

Yet some of my family have dutifully and unnecessarily filled in this column with "British (Paren)".

Also, can you work forwards and backwards in that volume? Has that particular doorstep enumerator added superfluous entries in the "Nationality" column for the whole of their patch?

so many good suggestions. I’ll try to respond to the questions without outing myself.

other evidence:

1. uncles with around 16% West Africa (one country) DNA each.
2. photo of their parent (my grandparent previously unknown to me). The person looks mixed race to me but others have suggested it’s just photography from that time. It’s this person’s mother (my great grandmother) I’m trying to ascertain race for
3. history of racial slurs (uncles) and comments re: being ‘dark’ (me). The less clear evidence:
4. church register from early 1860’s listing address as key city related to slavery and both living in what was an area of that city closely associated with slave traders. I know the woman (my great great grandmother) is white and the man she is marrying maybe either black or mixed race.
5. my great great grandmother has a daughter (my great grandmother). That lady has two marriages. The first is to a black man - I know this from a census entry. There’s a newspaper article describing one of her children’s court appearances and that child (the ‘crimes’ are committed at 7 and 12) is described as ‘coloured’ (apologies for any offence with language, I’m using what was written at the time). The second is to my great grandfather who is likely white. She has more children, including my grandad with this man. It looks unlikely her second husband was anything other than white but I don’t know that for sure. By this point they are living in an area that was and is almost exclusively white.

@LozengeShaped the enumerator has written this comment next to one family member only. What a fantastic suggestion to look at what he wrote, if anything, on the neighbours forms. Also, you asked did the enumerator just pick up forms? I don’t know. I’d like to know if it was just a straight pick up or whether part of the job was to check them. The different colours of ink and handwriting suggest
he did annotate it (but so might another family member?) but it’s not conclusive.

@Merapi I can’t get back far enough to reach conclusions based on address. The city my white great great grandmother went to and married in has one of the oldest black populations in the country and is a port. None of the records include ethnicity. I’ve looked at occupations of the male and his father who I believe to be the first black or mixed race person in the family. My great great grandfather is listed as Steward (my great great grandmother was a servant) and his father as Ships carpenter. He signs by mark. Oddly,
my great grandmother describes her father on her marriage certificate as surgeon which I know then wasn’t what it is now but even so…

@TressiliansStone the column you describe is exactly the one I mean.
it definitely says ‘British born’. The comment is only next to the second family member listed who is my great grandmother, no one else.

But you could be British if you were born in 'the empire' as it was.

There's also a quirk I cam accross on a TV programme about Tiger Bay, it was someone's ancestor who becuase she married a Chinese man lost her British nationality and became CHinese.

There's also a quirk I cam accross on a TV programme about Tiger Bay, it was someone's ancestor who becuase she married a Chinese man lost her British nationality and became CHinese.

Yes this was the case until 1914. Before then, women took their husband's nationality on marriage, whatever that was. There was a big issue in 1914 when the government started internment camps for Germans, and they were locking up British born women who had never been to Germany, didn't speak German, and had married a German man who had immigrated to Britain as a toddler and didn't speak German either. Nationality wasn't really an issue in the early 20th century as not many people travelled outside the UK and you didn't legally need a passport to enter/leave the UK until 1915.

British born could mean a range of things and you are doing the right thing by looking at it as a clue not hard evidence. British subject by parentage could mean, for example, that a British subject couple living Ghana or Nigeria or Australia registered their new baby with the Embassy overseas as British, even though they weren't born in Britain. DNA can provide clues. Good luck - it sounds fascinating!

The only family member with this comment? Very interesting!

Yes to everything said above about the complexities of British nationality, and about using this as a clue.

Good luck, this sounds like a fascinating quest!

https://www.1901census.com/1921-census/

1921 CENSUS QUESTIONS

• Full name.
• Relationship to Head of Household (e.g. ‘Head’, ‘Wife’, ‘Mother’ etc, ‘Visitor’, ‘Boarder’, ‘Servant’ etc).
• Age (in years and months).
• Whether male or female.
• ‘Marriage or Orphanhood’. If aged 15 plus years: enter ‘Single’, ‘Married’, ‘Widowed’ or ‘D’ (for divorced). If aged under 15 years: whether parents ‘Both Alive’, ‘Both Dead’, or ‘Father Dead’, ‘Mother Dead’.
• Dependants: number and ages of children and step children aged less than 16 years, regardless of where they lived. (Question applicable to married men, widowers and widows.)
• Birthplace and nationality. Enter county and town/parish. If born outside the UK, the country and state/province/district. If born at sea, enter ‘At Sea’. If born outside the UK, enter ‘Visitor’ or ‘Resident’. Nationality (if born in a ‘foreign country’*): enter ‘British born’, ‘Naturalised British Subject’, or state nationality (e.g. French).
• Main occupation. Enter:
• If receiving an education (at an institution): ‘Whole-time’ or ‘Part-time’.
• Personal occupation. Precise details e.g. materials used etc.
• Employment details (employees). Employer’s name and business. If unemployed, last employer’s name and business, adding ‘out of work’.
• ‘Employer’ (if employing people in a business), ‘Own Account’ (i.e. self-employed, no employees) or ‘Private’ (domestic servants and others in private personal service).
• Place of work. ‘At home’ if working mainly at home. (Question not applicable to the retired or unemployed.)
• Language question. English, Welsh or both (Wales or Monmouthshire area), English, Manx, or both (Isle of Man area), Gaelic or Gaelic and English (Scotland census only).
• National Insurance benefits eligibility. (Scotland census).

The census enumerator, who collected the form on 20 June, was responsible for entering the address of the dwelling and the number of rooms. (In Scotland, only windowed rooms were numbered.) *i.e. outside the British Empire.

If your uncles have 16% west African DNA that would suggest that one of their great-grandparents (your great-great grandparent) was west African, assuming that that DNA all comes from one individual.

I'm not sure which site they did DNA with, but with Ancestry DNA it may be possible to work out which ancestor this was by looking at which DNA matches also share west African DNA and trying to work out how they are related to you.

Although in some (all?) British Empire countries at that date I don't think you even needed to register the baby with a British Embassy.

In fact there wouldn't have been a British Embassy at that date, because Embassies are to foreign countries, not to parts of the British Empire. I'm aware some (all?) Commonwealth countries had British Consulates, not Embassies, right into my lifetime.

IIRC, you simply had British nationality by dint of being born in the British Empire.

@Terloz Have you found any of them on the 1901 census?

I think it's also important to remember the role of the enumerator. Their job is to make sure that the census returns are completed by the householder properly, and in full. They are not there to challenge someone who states they are a farmer when they really work in a shipyard, or to demand a birth certificate if they suspect someone's knocked a few years off their age. So it's entirely plausible that whoever was filling in the form did their best with the instructions given, and got it wrong.

Anyone who's done family history has seen census returns where people have fibbed or just got it wrong. I wouldn't get hung up on the exact wording and what it means.

@Merapi 1901, my great grandmother was living with her first husband who is listed as born in a west African country but not the same one country as the DNA links to nor very close at all really. He does around 1903 - I can’t find a death certificate but the newspaper article about their daughter convicted of theft and described as ‘coloured’, says he died shortly after her birth so it would be around then. By 1911 she is remarried and living with her second husband and has given birth to my grandad.

Apologies - I need to refine the accuracy of my writing. That last line refers to my great grandmother having remarried in 1911.

@NotDavidTennant the dna is Ancestry but .com not Uk. I haven’t done it myself but the relatives said it was more complicated than they thought, they should have used Uk not com so they can’t see any further relatives? I must get mine done. And yes, I’d read that the dna suggests a great great grandparent which would marry up with what I have found out

You have a very interesting puzzle on your hands. The main thing I'd suggest is to make a note of every single thing you find out, and where from. Official trails from BMD, census, wills and church records are most reliable, other people's trees on Ancestry etc are less so. If they make errors, that error finds its way into your own research and is perpetuated. Anecdotes from older relatives can be useful, but recollections can vary as they say, and of course they might just be recounting what little they remember of things they were told when they were small.

I wish I could remember more of what my parents told me, especially my late mum. My grandmother's ancestry was a mix of German and Irish (and she was the youngest of 12 kids!), and I've lost the trail back in around the late 1840's.

Good luck with your research.

No that makes no difference - it's all the same company and wherever in the world you live and order your test, you'll see all the matches, worldwide.

In general though, fewer people in the UK are interested in DNA testing. There is demand from those who know they have ancestry from outside the UK - because of something as basic as skin colour suggesting Asian/Afro-Caribbean heritage, or because of a family story or whatever else. But if you are white British, you knew all your grandparents and they were white British and suspect a few generations before that were as well, people are just not interested.

I am from a huge family on the paternal line. My grandfather was one of 11, great grandfather was one of 13. Each generation back had at least 8 kids. I should have heaps of matches on that line but I don't, because they all lived in the same wee area of Scotland for ever and ever and never moved. My top two matches on that line are from two very distant relatives - one moved to South Africa, the other to Australia.

Doing the test isn't complicated. But working out the matches and where they all fit in can be really complicated, especially if you don't know how to do the basics of working out births, marriages and deaths and building a family tree.

@Merapi Yes, you are right re: the notes. I started a little haphazardly but now I have a page per person including gaps for documents I can’t find at the moment. Fortunately it was clear from the get go that the trees drawn up other people contain errors and are best ignored so I haven’t been distracted by that.

his says ‘British born’. Other corrections (crossing out of children’s marital status)

These marks have been added when the data is being collected - its not corrections but the census was a working document for data - you're now looking at it as a historical document but thats not how it started out it life.

Just a quick comment on the DNA, I'm on My Herritage, I had a recent match with an 80% possibility of being my first cousin's daughter, looking at the family tree she's a more distant cousin we share great great grandparents.

I have to say my DNA was not particularly interesting.

My great great grandfather was 'British born' although legally he was classed as Norwegian, his dad's nationality. This was because until the early 20th century any British woman marrying a foreign national lost her citizenship even if she never left Britain, making my ggfather a British born Norwegian. Madness! He never applied for naturalization and remained Norwegian all his life even though he never set foot in Norway.

I’ve been reading this:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/historical-background-information-on-nationality/historical-background-information-on-nationality-accessible

just as I think I’ve understood one line, the next line confuses me! There’s some significance change in law aroun 1914. I’ve now found out that my great grandmother wasn’t actually married to her second husband in 1911 when she was living with him and had children with him - they only married in 1914. I wonder if they were responding to some change in law?

You couldn’t find a death certificate and your evidence of the first husbands death is a journalists say so?

what if the story was embellished? Who’s to say he didn’t die until 1914 during first WW and then the 2nd marriage could take place