How to find a missing ancestor

It’s happened to us all. We’re researching an ancestor or a collateral line only to find that our research target simply disappears from the records.

The clues dry up and we’re left with a gap, a chalk outline around where the missing person should be – and we’re the detective charged with solving the cold case!

Missing ancestors are a frustratingly common problem. But don’t panic, there is a multitude of reasons why an ancestor might apparently disappear, and many of them can be solved with a little lateral thinking.

Put on your detective’s macintosh and fedora and join me in solving The Case of the Missing Ancestor!

Spelling variants

The most common reason we fail to find an ancestor in records is that the person’s name is recorded in a form we’re not used to. This can be because spellings of surnames were more fluid in the past, or it may be that the person recording the name wrote it incorrectly. Often this problem can be solved by searching using spelling variants.

My own surname, for example, has been recorded as Asherwood, Esherwood, Huskerwood, Sherwood and Usherwood, amongst many others. Common mistakes relate to the initial vowel, doubling the ‘s’, mistaking the ‘h’ for a ‘k’, mistaking the ‘r’ for an ‘n’, or losing one of the ‘o’s.

While the possible variants may seem endless, there are common variants that frequently occur – try them.

Wildcards and search engine tools

Search engines have built-in features to help us find mis-spelled names. In computing parlance these are called wildcards. There are two main wildcards that most search engines support:

A question mark matches to any single letter, for example:

• ?sherwood – takes care of all potential issues with the initial vowel
• W?lk?ns?n – will return Wilkinson, Wilkenson, Wilkinsen, Welkinson, etc.
• Sm?th – returns Smith, Smyth, etc.

An asterisk matches to any multi-letter group 

• e.g. Isher*, Wilkins*, *berg, *man

Other search engine features that can help are:

• Phonetic search
• Similar sounding
• Soundex search
• Variant surnames

Try them all and see which ones can help you find records that aren’t otherwise returned.

Forename only

Some sites will allow searching without a surname. This can be useful when you believe a person or family are present in a defined locality, such as a particular village or street, but they’re not being returned by the search. 

For example, when the 1921 Census was first issued I looked up my Isherwood ancestors knowing they lived in a particular part of Warrington, Lancashire. The search failed. I searched again using the forename of my grandfather, omitting the surname, but including all the other location restrictions. There they were – the entire family mis-transcribed with the surname ‘Kerwood’.

Not all genealogy sites support searching without a surname, but it can be useful where permitted.

Address only

If you know the address, or at least the street, of your research target, by using the address of their most recent positive sighting for example, then searching on the address alone can help find mis-transcribed families. Not all genealogy sites support this, but it’s worth a try where available.

Your ancestor is in the original record but not in the index

Sometimes, no matter how creative you are with your searches, your research target will never be returned because they’re missing from the index. This can be due to an indexing error or because the index for the record set is incomplete. This is less likely to happen with common records like censuses, but is quite common with parish registers. There are three potential solutions:

Search for other family members

By searching for another family member, you may find the record that includes your unindexed research target.

Try another site

If your ancestor isn’t in the index at one of the large genealogy sites, try searching similar record sets at other genealogy sites. This can be challenging as data subscriptions are expensive, but remember that FamilySearch is completely free and contains many datasets included in paid subscriptions elsewhere.

Browse the original record

Just because a record set exists on a large genealogy site doesn’t necessarily mean it’s been fully indexed. Look out for record sets that are described as ‘Images’ or ‘Browse’. These usually contain images of documents where the index is either not started or incomplete. Narrow down which set of images to look for based on the place and time of interest, then browse through the images until you find the relevant page.

This happened to me when searching for the baptism of Mary Harnett at Monkton, Kent, in around 1795. The baptisms for the church of St Mary, Monkton had been imaged but not indexed at Findmypast. I looked in ‘All Records’ – the catalogue of records held at Findmypast – found the set of images, browsed through and found the baptism.

Your ancestor was recorded but the surviving record has a gap

Check the coverage of the record set

A common misapprehension is to assume the whole record set has survived to the present day, or that the full surviving record has been digitised.

Most censuses and many common record sets, like parish registers, have some gaps, large or small. Usually, the website will include a description of the coverage of the record set. For parish registers, The Phillimore Atlas & Index of Parish Registers by Cecil R. Humphery-Smith (Phillimore, 3rd Edition, 2003), provides detailed lists of parish register survivals from the established churches of England, Wales and Scotland.

Can you find the full record elsewhere?

Parish registers will usually have a Bishop’s Transcript – transcripts of the original registers made at the end of each year and sent to the diocese as a safety copy. Where original registers are incomplete or lost, a Bishop’s Transcript can bridge the gap. Again, Humphery-Smith is the place to check this.

Check the website of the county archive or local studies library relevant to your place of interest. They’ll have an online catalogue showing all the record sets they hold. Here you’ll find a wealth of undigitized records that may resolve your problem entirely.

Search sideways, for siblings and other contemporaries

If your research target remains elusive, look instead for a close contemporary. Search for the sibling either side of your research target. If you fail to find siblings, can you find cousins living in the same area, or known neighbours?

Use a substitute record

Where you’re certain the record set doesn’t contain your research target, try using a substitute. For 20th-century research look at electoral registers, national and local. For late 19th-century research, look at local electoral registers, where the qualification for the vote was broader than for national elections. These will give all qualifying adults in the household.

Prior to 1872, and the introduction of the secret ballot at elections, qualifying voters were listed in Poll Books, which you may also find at local archives. At this time the franchise was restricted to property-owning householders – excluding all women and younger adults – but the Poll Books can provide a useful substitute for other records if your research target was wealthy enough to qualify.

Try Post Office and trade directories, too. While these are most likely to uncover the householder alone, they’re particularly useful for tracing ancestors who were professionals, wealthy or in trade.

The most important online collection of historical directories for England and Wales is at the University of Leicester special collections site: specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4.

Check to see if one or more directories covering your target location have been digitised.

Going back to the 18th century and earlier, you might look for militia muster rolls at the local archive. These will list all able-bodied men who could be called up to the militia to give military service in time of need.

Your ancestor has changed religious denomination

When working with parish registers of the established church, it can be an error to imagine that our ancestors never strayed to other denominations.

But which ones?

A quick way to establish which denominations were active in an ancestor’s area is to search for nonconformist chapels in the locality. You can do this with:

• Directories
• Old maps (The National Library of Scotland has an incredible collection of maps for the whole UK: maps.nls.uk)
• Finding aids:
  • GENUKI (www.genuki.org.uk)
  • FamilySearch Research Wiki (www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Main_Page)

Once you know which denominations were active in your area of interest, GENUKI and the FamilySearch Research Wiki will often point you to where the records can be consulted. Look also at the catalogues of the large genealogy sites for nonconformist records in your area of interest.

I’ve encountered many 19th-century conversions from CofE to Methodist amongst my rural Cheshire ancestors, as well as a surprise Catholic to CofE conversion in my line of Irish immigrants to Liverpool. 

Your ancestor has changed their name

Marriage

One reason for not finding an ancestor is because they changed their name.

Marriage is the most common reason for this, but the marriage record itself might prove elusive. This might be because of a missing parish record prior to civil registration, or because the marriage took place in an unexpected location.

It might also be that the marriage itself was ‘clandestine’ – a term used to describe marriages performed outside of churches, such as the famous ‘Fleet Marriages’ carried out at the Fleet Prison in London, or those at the Smithy in Gretna Green.

Alternatively, your ancestor may never have married at all, but adopted the name of their new partner because one or both of them wasn’t free to marry legally.

Legal name change

Some ancestors may have changed their names through the available legal channels: Royal Licence, Private Act of Parliament or Deed Poll.

Royal Licences and Private Acts of Parliament were only for the very wealthy. Royal Licences can be researched at The National Archives (series SP44, HO38 & HO142), while Private Acts of Parliament can be researched at www.legislation.gov.uk/changes/chron-tables.

Deed Poll is widely used, but it’s estimated that fewer than one percent were ever formally enrolled and therefore findable. Enrolled Deeds Poll can be found at TNA (series C54, C275 & J18).

Many name changes, including unenrolled Deeds Poll, were advertised in newspapers, and this might prove the easiest research path for many. See:

• The Gazette
• The Times Digital Archive
• The British Newspaper Archive (also available via Findmypast)

Aliases

It has always been permissible in law to assume any name a person wishes to take – none of the legal mechanisms are actually required. And in the days before driving licences, passports and National Insurance numbers, it was quite easy to do.

Our ancestors might have chosen to take a different name to avoid the law, join the military under age, rejoin the military after deserting, or to hide from their own family and community.

These cases can be extremely difficult to resolve and many will remain forever insoluble. If you suspect your ancestor may have been a ‘rogue’, however, one route is to check the Police Gazette at the British Newspaper Archive, as well as court records, which often state known aliases of criminals.

Divorce

Prior to 1858, divorce was available only via annulment or by Private Act of Parliament, both of which were the preserve of the wealthy. The 1857 Divorce Act, which came into force in 1858, made divorce available to all.

The records from 1858 to 1928 are available at TNA, with the majority of records between 1928 and 1938 also available (see www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/divorce).

After 1938, the method of record keeping was changed and very few records are available for public consultation. However, the newspapers come to our rescue once again – issuances of Decrees Nisi and Decrees Absolute were often reported in local newspapers, which you may find via the British Newspaper Archive.

Anglicisation

Reasons for unexpected name change might include anglicisation of a foreign-sounding name in order to avoid prejudice. This was most common for Germanic-sounding names during WWI and WWII and the years immediately following.

Little legal or public evidence may remain to help researchers with these problems as the changes were often designed not to draw attention.

Your ancestor and their family unit have moved

If your research target and their entire family unit have disappeared then it’s worth considering alternatives before conducting a large-scale geographic search.

The workhouse

The most likely destination for abruptly missing families at the bottom end of the social scale is the workhouse system.

Families were usually separated, with men, women and children housed in separate areas, sometimes in different institutions. To make it more difficult, census returns often give only the initials of workhouse inmates.

The best place to check for relatives encountering the workhouse system is via Admission Books, usually kept at local archives. Very few of these are online but, where they are, they can be illuminating.

Migration

If you’ve tried all the methods in this article so far and your research target and their entire family unit are still missing from the records, then they may have moved away. But where? How far?

The trick is not to assume they moved to the other side of the world until you’ve eliminated the closer, more likely, possibilities. Our ancestors often made moves within small radii, so it makes sense to look near the last known location and move outward from there. See figure on page 29.

I had just such a challenge with one of my Isherwood collateral lines.

My 4x great-uncle, John Isherwood, and his entire family unit disappeared from the records in the mid-1830s. They were north Cheshire country folk; he was working on the Bridgewater canal and the rest of his family engaged in labouring jobs.

I was able to show they hadn’t moved to nearby villages in Cheshire, nor to the nearby market town of Warrington, which was rapidly industrialising at this time, sucking in workers from the surrounding countryside.

They weren’t found anywhere in their home county of Cheshire, nor in neighbouring Lancashire.

After checking the 1841 Census for the whole country, I concluded they had likely emigrated, probably from the nearby port of Liverpool. This proved to be the case. From ships’ passenger records, I discovered their arrival in New York on 17 December 1838.

They settled in nearby New Jersey, where they naturalised as US citizens.

Your ancestor, alone, has moved away

If your research target has disappeared without the rest of their family unit then it’s worth considering alternatives before conducting a large-scale geographic search.

Military

If your research target is a young man, he might have joined the military. It’s outside the scope of this article to list the many sources you could consult to check this, but Graham Bandy's Tracing Your Military Ancestors workbook is a useful guide.

Do make sure you consider all the potential branches of the military: Army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Air Force (and its pre-cursors, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps).

Merchant Navy

Again for young men, you should consider whether they may have joined the Merchant Navy. From roughly the 1840s to the outbreak of WWI, Britain had the largest merchant marine in the world, drawing in many thousands of young men.

The National Archives has excellent research guides on how to trace merchant seamen, such as www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/merchant-navy-ships-records-crew-lists-musters-and-log-books.

A criminal in the family

Another option is that your research target may have been convicted of a crime and possibly imprisoned or transported overseas (North America before 1776, Australia 1787–1868).

See the research guide at TNA: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/criminals-and-convicts.

Local newspapers are an excellent source of information on criminal ancestors, which you can find at the British Newspaper Archive/FMP.

Institutional inmate

Someone with mental or physical ill health may have become an inmate of a hospital. Pre-NHS hospital records can be very hit and miss, but some do exist in archives. The records of mental hospitals, or ‘asylums’ as they were then known, are much more complete.

Surprisingly large numbers of our ancestors found themselves as inmates of asylums in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As with workhouses, inmates’ names are often abbreviated to initials in census returns. Instead, look for Admission Books of County Asylums at local archives.

Solo migrant

If you’ve exhausted all other options, it’s time to consider where your ancestor may have moved to. Very few people were true solo migrants. If they chose to move away it was often alongside, or shortly after, other family members and contemporaries, especially those in the same trade, who had already moved successfully and sent word home encouraging others to join them.

So use these clues – can you identify clusters of people from your target location who moved to a distant destination?

What if you’re trying to trace the journey in reverse?

You know where your research target lived later in their life, but can’t establish where they came from. The same principles apply. Look for relations, neighbours and work colleagues who are incomers from elsewhere. Is there a pattern? Might your ancestor have moved into the area with one of these groups.

If all else fails, conduct a full geographic search, starting close and working outwards - as illustrated in the image below.

If your ancestor is apparently missing from the records, don’t panic! Be a family history detective. Use the step-by-step approach to eliminate one possibility at a time. Be systematic. Try new ideas. You’ll be surprised how many missing person cases you’ll be able to solve.