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Perhaps some details were recorded incorrectly, but you need to be certain before assuming that something in a census is wrong - after all, they knew better than we do! Maybe the marriage was an army one, not a civilian one. The birth of the uncle may, by the same logic, be in the army births too: both are in this site's 'overseas' section'..

'Deserted' is interesting. But how do you know George married again? Maybe he had one or more later partners, but never married them. Mind you, a name like 'Hiett', could be misspelled in many different ways, so I'm not surprised this man is causing you some problems!

My pleasure.

Oh, I see - well, as I said, plough through all the Joseph Hammonds, and the right one should appear, assuming he left the army soon afterwards.

The First World War caused chaos to the standing army, so there is no reason to presume that Joseph must have been in a Yorkshire regiment. If you extend your search right across the army, you're bound to find him. You could, alternatively, ask a military expert like Alan Reid j or Simon Fowler to help you identify his uniform.

Maybe they are misindexed under Tellford, Telforth or Tetford. If the father was in the army when he married, he may be in the army marriages (in the 'overseas section' on this site). You could seek births of other possible siblings of Albert's in the Carlisle area, or, after September 1911, because the mother's maiden name is listed in the birth indexes, you could seek other siblings anywhere, so as to gain more clues. You can seek possible entries for the parents in 1901 and try to follow them up, eliminating the wrong ones - a few ideas here which I hope will be helpful.

Take several steps back and a big deep breath. Look at the earliest thing that you know for absolute certain - which may be your own date of birth - and then focus completely on taking the next step back, ie, (just to give an example) your birth certificate, to verify your parents' names, the seek their marriage,to learn their ages, then seek their births, and if stuck seek their death records and any other helpful records, such as wills, newspaper announcements and so on, that might add to what you know about them.

The death record may show that the informant was a child of his. The birth indexes after 1911 are arranged in such a way that you can look up children surnamed Wright with a mother of the right maiden name, so you could make a useful search on that basis.

'Batch numbers' are phenomena of the Mormons' International Genealogical Index. Those starting with the letters C A M or P are taken from original records, whilst others may be from a block submission made by a Mormon. You can order the relevant film(s) at your local Mormon Family History Centre. This could be a goldmine of information, OR a complete waste of time, depending on the genealogical abilities of the submitter. Frankly, this could be a futile tangent, and in most cases, you're better off tracing your family using original records.

My pleasure!

Well, first, well done for avoiding the terrible mistake of tracing the wrong ancestors. You could try the Sussex Collection held by the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies in Canterbury, which is very good for this sort of problem, and also the nonconformist registers (RG4) indexed on the website "The Genealogist", as vast numbers of people in the includes a lot of nonconformist

.... PREVIOUS ANSWER, CONTINUED --- what I was attempting to write there was that a vast number of people in the Lewes area were nonconformists at the time. You could, in any case, seek likely marriages, deaths/burials and even a will for William the shoemaker (I presume you meant that his father was William Verrall, not William Pelham). If completely stuck, you could try simply putting together a pedigree of all the Verralls of the Lewes area, and eventually this exercise should show you how your Edwin really fitted in. NEW QUESTION.... I appreciate the problem here, but I'd need a bit more detail (places, dates, etc) to be able to offer any sensible ideas. Please tell me a bit more.

This lady may have died recently, as only the deaths up to 2006 are indexed online. The later ones can be searched on microfiche, as in the old days, at a very small number of archives, including the London Metropolitan Archives. It is a chink in the glittering armour of computerisation! If she is still alive, she may be in the telephone directories, but if she is in a home, then she may be very hard indeed to trace: you could try contacting whoever was the informant on John's death record, or contacting people living at the address given for him (or neighbours) - or see if he left a will, identifying relatives, who may be contactable.

That is a very sensible question: the answer is, you should always use maiden names. For example: John Roberts = Hilda Smith It is sensible when referring to women to use both, ie, "Hilda Roberts, nee Smith".

The National Archives have the Merchant Navy records, catalogued in their online catalogue. There are some parts that have been covered by other websites, such as the Merchant Seamen crew lists index 1860-1913, which is on www.findmypast.com. You are right about the 1930 American census - they should be there. Ancestry.com (as opposed to .co.uk) have these very well indexed.

Prison records are divided between local archives (the Devon Record Office in Exeter may have some) and The National Archives. Local (or, if he was very bad, national) newspapers can also be immensely useful in reporting crimes, trials and sentences. The national newspaper library at Colindale has them all. .

Thank you: many family history problems can be solved pretty much instantly using the on-line records on this site, but harder ones simply need more work: like police detectives, you need to build up profiles on the people you want to 'catch'.

You don't get mother's names on marriage records, unlike in Scotland. This is a case where you may have to build up 'profiles' of a number of possible Saunders families in the North/South Shields area, in order to work out, by learning more and more about them, which are wrong, and which is right. The censuses and General Registration records between them will allow you to do this, in time.

Thank you

Oh good, I see you have got the marriage record. Next, look for his family in the 1911 census, bearing in mind that father (and perhaps son) might be away at sea, but you should find the rest of the family, or you may find several families that could possibly be right: by working back to earlier censuses, you should find young John at home with his mother. You could try all searches under Sanders as well as Saunders, if stuck. An odd thing here is that Saundsers is commoner in southern England, whereas its northern counterpart is Saunderson (which was as common in North Shields as Anderson). I wonder if they may have changed their name from one to the other. Probably not - just a thought.