Census handwriting
Posted: 03 Apr 2014 20:53
I have always understood that it is only on the 1911 census that you can see the handwriting of your ancestor (nominally the head of the household). However I believe that I may have found a page from the 1881 census which does have the handwriting of the (only) person listed on it.
For some time I have been working with a friend on his family history, and today I was looking at this particular page and noticed that the handwriting was in two different hands. The entry for the person listed on the page was in one hand, and the second hand had amended the entry and also signed the bottom of the page. I wondered whether the first hand might be the person the details referred to (particularly as he had started to write his date of birth in the age column, 11 May, he was born on that date in 1857; something the enumerator would be unlikely to know). So I compared the name he had written on the census page to his own signature in the parish register for his marriage which took place two years later, and they were virtually identical.
Unfortunately I do not have the reference for the census page, but if you search the 1881 census for Thomas Dutton, aged 24, born Sunkey Bridges Lancashire (this should be Sankey Bridges), on a vessel (called the "John and William"), moored in Lancashire you should find it. (I think it was moored in Kirkdale, but I could be wrong.) The marriage from the parish register is shown below.
Now, as I have mentioned above, this census page is for a vessel rather than a household. Were vessels treated differently, i.e. are all census pages for vessels in the handwriting of the Master/Mate, or is this example unique?
For some time I have been working with a friend on his family history, and today I was looking at this particular page and noticed that the handwriting was in two different hands. The entry for the person listed on the page was in one hand, and the second hand had amended the entry and also signed the bottom of the page. I wondered whether the first hand might be the person the details referred to (particularly as he had started to write his date of birth in the age column, 11 May, he was born on that date in 1857; something the enumerator would be unlikely to know). So I compared the name he had written on the census page to his own signature in the parish register for his marriage which took place two years later, and they were virtually identical.
Unfortunately I do not have the reference for the census page, but if you search the 1881 census for Thomas Dutton, aged 24, born Sunkey Bridges Lancashire (this should be Sankey Bridges), on a vessel (called the "John and William"), moored in Lancashire you should find it. (I think it was moored in Kirkdale, but I could be wrong.) The marriage from the parish register is shown below.
Now, as I have mentioned above, this census page is for a vessel rather than a household. Were vessels treated differently, i.e. are all census pages for vessels in the handwriting of the Master/Mate, or is this example unique?