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Thanks, indeed so. Not only that - he and Frances did have 3 children later, but never married. If it's the same person (and the 1901 census is the only evidence we've found for this), he returned to his home town, Brighton, had an unlawful marriage in 1901 (the sister of his first wife who had died in 1898), and another, this time legal marriage in 1904, three more children, but died in 1908. In 1901 he had just returned from 9 years in Australia where he had run a successful hotel business. If it was the same person, then for about 4 years he must have had a complicated life commuting between Dartford (later Faversham) and Brighton where he had become the licensee of the Black Horse in Church Street.

An otherwise very legible 1901 census page has just one thing that I can't decipher. Anyone have an idea? It's the word or abbreviation above age 35 for William Button. There are two possible Williams who this could be, but the age is actually wrong for both of them. This identification has been driving me crazy for several years, because the more likely match also implies he was maintaining two parallel lives - this one in Dartford, the other in Brighton - and leading a very complicated life.

Emma Priscilla Henley, born Woburn, Bedfordshire 7 Feb 1833 married Thomas Brown, brickmaker, in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire in Q2 1861.  This was definitely after the census because Thomas was staying with his brother William at Rugeley Road, Abbots Bromley on census day. I can trace their marriage through 1871 and 1881 censuses, and Emma Priscilla died in Abbots Bromley in 1882. Thomas's brother William confusingly also had a wife named Emma, but this one was born in Abbots Bromley.

The problem I have is interpreting Emma Priscilla's 1861 census record RG09 / 1956 / 18, page 3, household identifier 2302302, in Abbots Bromley. The Familysearch transcription is terrible (Woburn is written as 'Hobson' for example). She is correctly listed as single. But the residence place is just "Market Place" - no house number. Her relationship to head of household is "servant" but there is no head of household listed. There are four small children, but their surname is written "Bowe" - is this a mistranscribed Brown? And they are identified as sons and daughters - but WHOSE sons and daughters? It would be very helpful to see an image of the census page, and maybe the preceding page if the household was wrongly split in two.

I still have problems working out the relationships of these Brown families in Staffordshire, because many of them seem to switch roles between brick making and farming. But knowing whose children these are would be a big help. I suspect Emma Priscilla was a governess. Her father George Henley was the Duke of Bedford's watchman at the Woburn Abbey estate, and his children all seem to have been well educated.

Augustus Dalby, a brother of my 3g-grandfather, was promoted to Master in 1801, and I have found at the National Archives the Master's logs from some of the ships he served in. However there is something odd about them that I think needs explanation. There are two separate logs, clearly written by the same hand, with entries that contain almost identical text. Attaching examples from the first day of his service on HMS Carysfort, 31st July 1801. One entry is on a single page, the other spreads across two pages of (presumably) a different log book - though both are now bound together, with logs from other ships, at the National Archive. Is the first perhaps a draft of the final formatted entry that includes separate columns for navigational data? Why would both have been retained? (note - there's no navigation data actually recorded for 31st July, but entries for many other dates do include it). I have seen the same in his 1806 log for HMS Spartan, too, so this is not something unique to HMS Carysfort.

Thanks for that. Weird. If correct, it means he made not one but two trips to Canada before returning to England, where he was recorded, with his wife, in the 1911 census, and they then travelled to Canada together in 1912.

His age in 1909 was 24, so 25 is probably close enough. Age 19 is clearly an error, as the ticket number matches. One correction, by the way - it was St John, New Brunswick, not St John's Newfoundland (which would have made his onward travel to western Canada much more difficult!). He gave his destination as High Bluff, Manitoba.

In March 1910, Percy travelled as a steerage passenger on ss Lake Champlain, arriving in New Brunswick but stating his intention to travel onward to Springside, Saskatchewan. He gave his occupation before departure from England as 'farmer' despite there being no recent farming history in the family.

These destinations are obscure, and I think must have been pre-arranged for him, probably by his wealthy uncle Joseph Henley in New Westminster, BC.

On 28th June 1912, Percy and Sybil embarked on the Empress of Ireland, travelling first class, from Liverpool to Quebec. This time their destination was initially Saskatoon, from which they travelled onwards to Elfros, Saskatchewan - and their subsequent lives are quite well documented.