Can It Get Any Weirder

[mckha489]

Or..it never ceases to amaze me how many families can have the same combinations of names. And it is just a fluke that she seems to appear three times.
Have you tried researching the other family groups just to confirm they couldn’t be anyone else?

[LizzieL]

Oh yeah, the DOB on both records in Manchester are wrong!

How wrong are the DOBs? I have found quite a number exactly 1 year out, as if the person knew what day their birthday fell on, and calculated the year of birth from what age they thought they were.

[LizzieL]

Could great grandma in Gateshead be suffering some sort of memory issues and think her daughters were still living with her and unmarried?

That doesn't explain the two almost duplicated Manchester households of course.
As to the children in Manchester not showing, could they be redacted because they were born less than a 100 years ago and not known to be deceased?
Are there any notes in the margin of the register added after 1939 which might give some sort of clue as to what might be happening?

[jonwarrn]

Surely it's got to be the Wards at 69 Pottersway in Gateshead!

[jonwarrn]

One of the other addresses in 1939 seems to be 25 Banff Road, Manchester - the Brown family!

[jonwarrn]

Have you thought about looking in the newspapers?

References to Wards at 69 Pottersway, earliest so far is 1929

[NorthernGeezer]

69 Pottersway Gateshead is the correct address for my great grandmother, the DOB of the 3 girls "living" there are correct.
Further research yesterday has found that Kathleen never married and Violet married an Edward Hills in 1941 although the surname WARD is crossed out and replaced with HILLS.
I'm assuming that Violet moved to Gateshead to live with Edward and once Margaret's hubby buggered off, her and Kathleen went to live with her.
However, It still makes me wonder why my grandmother Eileen is listed as she married my grandfather George in 1932 and moved to Manchester.
25 Banff Road is the correct Brown family, namely Eileen, George, and Margaret (my mother), I don't know who Cecelia Whitehead (Ward) is so some research needed there, I was hoping she may have been a sister of Kenneth Ward, Margaret's absent husband but thats not the case, and why is Kathleen on here as well as on the Gateshead one?
The 3rd record is for 7 Fishermore Road Urmston Manchester, listing George, Eileen and Patricia a daughter, no sign of my mother or a brother listed, incidentaly, Eileens DOB is wrong too, listed as 20/07/11914 when it is actually 30/12/1913.
So, the mystery continues  .......... Dont you just love genealogy 

[rosie99]

Thanks for that John. 

Looking at those 2 records I doubt that it would be unusual for duplicates to happen in that situation.  Not being alive then it is difficult to pass comment about it but I can't see that once the register was taken people would be stopped from moving around the country, it can't have been like Covid 

Unfortunately the forms are not dated so we don't know which was completed first and they obviously did not have a 'fixed' date like a census.  We can only assume what the circumstances were.  Just think how many times we find people enumerated more than once on a census, it was not unusual.

[NorthernGeezer]

Update: 2 other daughters also, Barbara Ward, DOB 1918 so she would have been 21 in 1939, no sign of her in Gateshead so more work needed to see where she was, the bit I know already is she emigrated to New Zealand in 1949, is listed as single and died over there.
The other daughter, Dorothy ward DOB 1916 is listed as died in Gateshead in 1999 so where was she in 1939 aged 23, more work required on that one too.