National Family History Blog Challenge – Week 1

Week 1 – Census

August is National Family History Month in Australia, and blogger, Alexander Daw of  Family Tree Frog suggested a blog challenge of posting weekly during August on a series of family history related subjects. Along with other genie bloggers, I was keen to accept the challenge.

As this week is census week in  Australia, the subject chosen for week 1 was the census.

Many years ago, when I was a newbie genie, I found myself very stuck with research in Wales,  and lost track of  my great great great grandparents JOHN TAYLOR and MARY DAVIES of Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales.  At that stage in my early genie career, I had never searched the censuses, so didn’t think to look for them there.  In those days, information wasn’t online, so it wasn’t quite as easy, as we had to do a little more searching to find the records we were looking for.

A little later, I did that search and found MARY TAYLOR living at St. Martin parish, in Haverfordwest, WALES.  She was very easy to find, as she exactly where I expected her to be. At the time of the census, Mary was a widow, so there was my answer to where her husband was. This was the 1841 census, so I now knew he had passed away before the census date of June 6 1841.

The only other person in her household was DAVID LLOYD, age 40. This really had me interested. I didn’t know who David Lloyd was, but Mary’s daughter in law was Martha Lloyd. Could there be a connection?  Lloyd is a very very common name in Wales, so perhaps there is no connection. As yet I haven’t answered this question. But this is the next project for me to get my teeth into.  I suspect that David Lloyd was a boarder, probably known to Mary, due to being related to Martha.

Anyone involved in genealogy or family history would know that there is always another question to be answered or issue to be researched. That is exactly why the ‘to-do’ list keeps getting longer and longer.

But just an aside to this census. As you will see below, the entry is quite difficult to read. It is near the top of the right side of the page. Ancestry have David Lloyd transcribed as David ALOZA. It took me ages to work out that this was incorrect.

 

 

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