Elizabeth TAYLOR is in My Tree!

At first sight, you might have thought that I was claiming to have the film star in my tree, especially as she’s connected to a Robert TAYLOR, too, but that would be entirely in keeping with Eliza’s wish to make herself seem more interesting and socially acceptable than the accurate truth would make her. My investigation into Eliza(beth) TAYLOR started quite early in my research experience and certainly taught me to be wary of accepting records, even official ones, at face value. Along with my research into my (apparently horrendous) paternal grandfather (who never troubled the records of Berkshire), those researches informed one of the tips in a document I felt driven to create after seeing the same queries repeated in different genealogy forums:

Remember that the INFORMATION on a certificate (or in a census) is ONLY AS RELIABLE AS THE PERSON supplying or recording it: 

1. Did they understand the question? 
2. Did they really know the answer? 
3. Was there any incentive (e.g. social pressure?) to give false information? 
4. How much did people care about accuracy? (Was there actually an “accurate” answer???) 
5. Did the questioner understand correctly the answer that they received? 
6. Had they worded the question properly in the first place?

In the case of Eliza, it was (c) that appears to have been her motivation.

Quite correctly, I had been working my way backwards through the official records. My maternal grandmother, Violet Annie Kathleen LANCASTER, was born in April 1892, in Paddington district.  Her parents were William Charles LANCASTER and his wife, Eliza née TAYLOR. In 1901, I found that Eliza, 43, and her children were living in Swindon, for some reason, while William, 37, was living in London, working as a passenger guard for Great Western Railway (GWR). Working my way backwards to 1891, the family was all together in Porchester Sq, London, with William aged 27 and Eliza 33. From these records, Eliza was born in about 1858, and she had always given Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire, as her “PoB”.  

I managed to find the record of their marriage [1884 Q1 Cookham Vol 2c Pg 593] on 20 Mar 1884, in Cookham RO, Berkshire, by licence. At this point, the record shows that William was aged 20 (so needed parental permission, though they weren’t witnesses), a signalman with GWR, and “Elizabeth” was 26, a domestic servant and the daughter of Robert TAYLOR, a farmer. William’s father was a baker, in Bray, having moved his family there from Dunstable, Bedfordshire (via Barkingside, in Essex).

This is where it got difficult. I just could not find an Eliza TAYLOR, from Ashton Keynes, daughter of Robert TAYLOR, a farmer, and who was born in about 1858. I was inexperienced at this stage as a genealogy researcher and imagined that information in official records would be accurate(!).  Someone recommended to me that I adopt a less rigid approach and, eventually, I did. That switch of attitude paid off immediately. I found her birth registration [1851 Q1 Cricklade Vol 8 Pg 343] and ordered a certificate (this was before the cheaper PDF/JPEG options became available):

3 Feb 1851 Ashton Keynes, “Eliza” daughter of Robert TAYLOR, lab, & Elizabeth TAYLOR née BOULTON

So…  she was registered as “Eliza” – not Elizabeth; she was born in 1851 not 1858; her father was a labourer, not a (land-owning) farmer.

Now, I could find her in 1851 (unexpectedly, based on my previous understanding!), 1861, 1871, and 1881. In those censuses, she was, respectively, 2 months old, a 9-year-old scholar, a 21-year-old servant (always in Ashton Keynes), and a 27(!)-year-old cook, in Swindon. Somehow, she’d aged only 6 years between 1871 and 1881; furthermore, going back to the marriage certificate, she’d managed to shed another year between spring of 1881 and the spring of 1884. The incentive is pretty clear: her husband, at 20, was a minor and very considerably younger than she was, at 33: a six-year age gap was much more socially acceptable than a 13-year age gap, especially when the older party was the bride. And while she was “improving” the age-gap by losing seven years, she also improved her father’s employment description by upgrading him from “labourer” to “farmer”.

The 1911 census, when Eliza was “53”, showed that the couple had had four children, of whom I had recorded only three, having missed the sadly brief life of Dunbar, between the censuses:

1. William Robert LANCASTER born in 1885, in Taplow.
2. Dunbar Harry LANCASTER born 1886 Q3 Eton district, and died 1886 Q4.
3. Charles Edwin Albert LANCASTER b 24 Oct 1889 Kensington district.
4. my grandmother – as above.

By 1921, Eliza had reverted to her actual age, showing herself to have been born in 1851. She died on 24 Nov 1940, in Swindon, the widow of “a linesman of GWR”.

I think that my great-grandmother must have been the source of the information about my great grandfather, as shown on my maternal grandparents’ marriage certificate (of June 1916). The bride’s father was described as: “William Charles LANCASTER (deceased), station master”.  This is inaccurate in two significant aspects:

1. William Charles LANCASTER’s death certificate shows that he died in the Middlesex Hospital, on 11 Oct 1917, some 16 months after the date of his daughter’s marriage.
2. He had never made it to “station master”; his death certificate records him as “a linesman of GWR”. The GWR had actually sacked him sometime between 1901 and 1904, at which point he’d joined the Central London Railway and was still working for them in 1911. I haven’t traced him between 1911 and his death.

The aftermath of William’s death appears to have been dealt with by his married sister, Annie Bray WOODLEY, who lived some years in Maidenhead, though the administration of his estate did go to Eliza.

And two little postscripts:
I’ve been denigrating my great-grandmother for her habit of upgrading herself in the records but in both of the censuses accessible at that time (1881 and 1901), William gave “Maidenhead” as his PoB and his birth registration proved extraordinarily difficult to find, too. Then other censuses became more accessible and a different picture emerged: 1911 (Ilford, Essex); 1891 (Barkingside, Ilford ESX), 1871 (Essex). I suspect that Maidenhead seemed “posher” (more socially acceptable) than Barkingside – or, perhaps (thinking of “f” in my list of information-inaccuracy tips, above), the enumerators had asked “Where are you from?”, instead of “Where were you born?”

And a “P.P.S.”: Contrary to my mother’s daydream, I have found no evidence to support the theory that the LANCASTERs had any connection to the royal house of that name!

SOURCES:

• BMD certificates, for direct ancestors (available from the GRO or from the local register offices)
• TNA censuses (references prefaced by “RG”, widely available on genealogy sites)
• Railway staff records (Ancestry – from TNA, references prefaced by “RAIL”) 
• Family