Twiglets
Diarist Gill Shaw charts the rollercoaster ride of researching her family history
Gill Shaw
Ancestors surprise us sometimes, don’t they? Just when you put them in a box labelled such and such a place or occupation, they go and do something wildly different that makes you smile.
Over to my 2x great-aunt Ann Ellen then – born in 1857, elder sister of my great-grandfather Mark John Leah, and last seen on the censuses at where else but Ashton Old Road, Openshaw.
In 1881 Ann Ellen is living with her husband Hugh Ashton, a 26-year-old iron turner, at 757 Ashton Old Road. The couple married only four years earlier, and already have three children – Bertha, three, Herbert two, and Hugh, nine months – and a servant to help with them, Eliza Ann Orrell, just 12.
A close-up of the charabanc - ‘Victoria Hotel, circular rides 1/-’ it says on the side. I can’t help wondering whether Ann Ellen or any of the other Ashtons might have hopped on board for the photo…
Come 1891 they’ve moved all the way to number 701, and have a new daughter Pollie, aged six. Other than that, there’s nothing new to report, so I was all set to top and tail this family and move on (dare I say?) to someone more exciting. But then, among the search results, I spot Ann Ellen’s 1911 Census. And hold the front page. She’s not in Openshaw, she’s at the seaside… Steady, though; best check the previous census before I go trotting off with my bucket and spade.