The Church of St. Mary & Margaret, Stow Maries |
My 3great-grandmother Mary A. Howard’s birth date and place is recorded somewhat inconsistently throughout the census years, as the following chart will show.
Census
Year
|
Birth
Place
|
Age
|
Estimated
Birth Year
|
---|---|---|---|
1841
|
Essex
|
24
|
1817
|
1851
|
Purleigh
|
37
|
1814
|
1861
|
Stowe
Marie
|
47
|
1814
|
1871
|
Purleigh
|
57
|
1814
|
1881
|
Purleigh
|
67
|
1814
|
1891
|
Stow
|
79
|
1812
|
1901
|
Purleigh
|
90
|
1811
|
As
you can see, her birth date ranges from 1811 to 1817, but is most
often recorded as 1814. Her birth place is either Purleigh or some
sort of spelling variation of Stow Maries, except, of course, in the
1841 census which records only whether she was born within the
county.
According
to the cover letter to the Purleigh parish register extracts I was
sent, the earliest record of a baptism of any Howard child in
Purleigh is that of Hannah Howard in 1817. So that makes it unlikely
that Mary A. was born, or at least baptized, in Purleigh. There is,
on the other hand, a record of the baptism of a Mary Howard on 29 Jan
1815 in Stow-Maries. This is a fairly close match to the census
records, since four of them agree that she was born in about 1814 (29
Jan 1815 is within a month of that) and two of them identify her
birth place as Stow Maries. If she were raised mostly in Purleigh,
that would explain why Purleigh is often reported as her place of
birth.
Looking
back to the baptismal record, Mary’s parents are identified as John
and Mary Howard. This lends support to the hypothesis, alluded to in
a former
post, that the John and Mary Howard appearing on the same page as
the Filby household in the 1841 census are her parents.
Since
the baptismal record was found at FamilySearch, I did an online
search on the entire microfilm cited. If you look at any indexed
record found at FamilySearch, on the right-hand side of the page you
will see a table labeled with the title of the database. Below that
are items such as “Indexing Project (Batch) Number” and “System
Origin.” Usually the last item is “GS Film number,” which is
the microfilm number. First I copy that number and paste it into the
“Film/Fiche Number” search box on the Catalog search page. (I
prefer to do this in a separate tab of my browser so that the record
I began at is still easily accessible.) This search will result in a
list of the titles associated with that film number. In this case,
there are seven items, all of them Bishop’s transcripts for various
parishes in Essex, one of them Stow-Maries. Unfortunately, there is
no way that I know of to search a single item, so it is vital to know
that this film number is associated with multiple items.
There
are at least two ways to arrive at the next step. You could click on
one of the search results, scroll down to the microfilm details, find
the appropriate film in the list, and then click on the magnifying
glass next to it. I prefer to return to the record where I began
(remember, I have kept it open in a separate tab) and click on the GS
Film number. Either way, you will arrive at an alphabetical results
list of all the records indexed for the film number.
Since
I learned that this film is associated with seven different
locations, I entered “Stow-Maries,” spelling it as it is spelled
in the record, into the “Search with a life event: Any Place”
search bar. (I used the “Any Place” option because I wanted to be
sure to include all the records, not only baptisms.) In the surname
bar I entered “Howard.”
Only
one other record for a Howard in Stow Maries appears. It is the 1802
burial of a Charles Howard. However, this film is not completely
indexed, so that is not to say that there are no other Howards in the
parish register of Stow Maries. But until I am able to view the
original register, this is all the information I have about the
family’s time in that village.
(The
FamilySearch site has very recently—within the last week or
so—added digital images of the relevant film, but as of the writing
of this post, I have been unable to view them. Either the site is
suffering technical difficulties that have not yet been resolved, or
the images are accessible only to members with an LDS account.)
Sources:
1841 census of England, Essex, parish of Purleigh, folio 23, page 5, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 8 Oct 2007); citing PRO HO 107/327/22.
1851 census of
England, Essex, Snoreham, folio 301, page 30, household of John
Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com :
accessed 14 Mar 2007); citing PRO HO 107/1778.
1861 census of
England, Essex, Snoreham, folio 48A, page 23-24, household of John
Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com :
accessed 14 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 9/1089.
1871 census of
England, Essex, parish of Latchingdon, folio 49, page 16, household
of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry
(www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 10/1673.
1881 census of
England, Essex, parish of Latchingdon, parliamentary borough of
Maldon, rural sanitary district of Maldon, folio 44, page 10,
household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry
(www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 11/1775.
1891 census of
England, Essex, Civil Parish of Canewdon, Rural Sanitary District of
Rochford, Parliamentary Division of South East Essex, folio 93, page
1, household of George Amos; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry
(www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 12/1393.
1901 census of
England, Essex, part of civil and eccesiastical parish of St. Peter,
parliamentary division of Maldon, town of Maldon, folio 28, page 14,
household of William Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry
(www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 13/1691.
“England Births
and Christenings, 1538-1975,” database, FamilySearch
(www.familysearch.org : accessed 23 Apr 2017), entry for Mary Howard’s 1815 christening; citing
Stow-Maries, Essex, England, reference; FHL microfilm 1,702,600. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.
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