RootsChat.Com

Many thanks trikidiki, I guess that I have been a bit fixated on the 1841 census ages and was not aware of the 'rounding down', as you describe. But when I think about it again, with this in mind, it puts Emily Leat's birth to be in 1832, which would make her to be 19 in the 1851 census as shown, and closer to the age of 22 as shown on her April 1853 marriage to George Leate, as well as being 24 at her August 1858 marriage to George Williams. Final confirmation is her November 1907 death certificate which shows her age to be 75. Many thanks for helping to clarify this.

Vic P.

Many thanks for your correction. I do have that record but I am bit confused as to why a ‘Seaman’s Ticket’ was given for an RN seaman, or why it was issued at Ascension Island. I have noted that HMS Actaeon left Plymouth for the African coast in December 1844, so that would tie in. It would also account for my not being able to find a death certificate for John Leat; I presume that he was buried at sea. He may be shown in the RN records as being a Master at Arms to join HMS Southampton in 1840 but, when his daughter Emily Leat married George Leate, the widowed son of RM Drum Major William Leate in 1853, he was like wise listed as a Drum Major in the Royal Marines. The marriage certificate shows Emily’s s age to be 22, but from census records, I think it was nearer 16/17. (That Emily Leat – no ‘e’, married a George Leate – with an ‘e’, has caused some confusion in my family research!)

The 1851 census shows Emily Leat to be supposed a 19 year old servant to a Plymouth family whereas the 1841 census shows her to be age 5 living in East Stonehouse with her twin sister Caroline mentioned earlier in this blog. So marriage may have been a means of escape. But, strangely, she gives birth to a daughter, Emily Caroline in September 1856, but no father is shown on the birth certificate! Then an August 1858 marriage certificate registered in Bermondsey, records the marriage of an Emily Leate (now with an ‘e’) at age 24 and a widow, to a George Williams a sailor (who could read and write; Emily ‘made her mark’.). Emily’s father’s name is shown as being ‘John Week, a soldier’, while George Williams’ fathers name is given as ‘John Williams a draper’. The 1861 census then shows her to be living in Dawlish as the wife of George Williams with daughter Emily C and son Edwin, born in 1860, all lodgers with John and Betty Thurkettle. George Williams’ place of birth is given as Charlton, Kent. Thereafter, the family can be traced through census and birth certificates to addresses in Cardiff, then Birmingham and finally West Bromwich, where George dies in the Union Workhouse in 1895 age 59, and similarly Emily in 1907 age 75. In several entries, George Williams gives his place of birth as being Plymouth but, like in the 1861 census, he gives an alternative ‘Cork, Ireland in 1891’. It gives the impression that he did not want to be found, similarly due to the many moves of the family. So just the heritage George Williams, my maternal great grandfather, I’ve never been able to verify. There was a John Williams, drapers business in Union Street Plymouth in the 1841 census, but the family moved to London soon after. In addition, I’ve never been able to confirm the death of George Leate; he is not shown the list of casualties of the Battle of Alma, as alleged elsewhere again in this blog. So I’m left with the impression that Emily may have just run off with George Williams, married perhaps bigamously, and were forever on the move. I guess that I’ll never know for certain; one of the frustrations of genealogy.

I'm conducting some research into the father of my cousin Sue, who is the daughter of Gordon, believed to be the half brother to Peter Collingwood (they have the same mother). What is your interest?