Genealogy Chat

This looks like the marriage of William Hocknell. Can't click on the page to see who wife Annie was.

Marriages Dec 1888
HOCKNELL William Henry Oldham 8d 9*4

This birth is the right name and age but to be the correct one the registration wasn't done where he was born according to the 1901. This is very uncertain.
Births Jun 1864
HOCKNELL William Henry Glanford B 7a 607


Sue
x

Hi all,

Looks like Annie Booth

Marriages 1866-1920 : Records 1 - 4 of 4



Name Spouse Name District Page Quarter Year View Image Add Comment View Comment Marriage Match
BOOTH Annie Oldham.8d 984 4 1888

DICKINSON John Gould Oldham.8d 984 4 1888

GRANGE Mary Ann Oldham.8d 984 4 1888

HOCKNELL William Henry Oldham.8d 984 4 1888





BW

Jane

I checked that Harry and he was registered as Harry not Henry. However in the absence of any Margarets of the right age I still think that is her family.

Sue
x

I'm pretty convinced by Sue's reasoning (except for the 55m from Chorlton to Birkenhead more like 55 km since it's 35m Liverpool - Manchester). Since Margt's dad was William, I'd guess George Todd was the father of George W.H. Todd. There is a George Todd d 31/7/1917 at CWGC, from Liverpool (Paddington), but he was only 19 when he died, cf Margt's 23. He won a MM, and a war death would have been so much more acceptable than a walk-out, I'm sure if he'd been the dad, there would have been a family legend.
However, if he'd have been around Margt's age, then he'ld be liable for conscription (unless he was serving / had served). Is there some registery of potential conscripts available (like there is in the US), and is there free/cheap online access?

Just thinking aloud, as I can't quite get my head around this.

Could Margaret herself have been illegitimate? Going from George's birth cert, I agree with Jane that Margaret's maiden name should be Todd.

She may have known that William Hocknell was her biological father and then put him down on her marriage cert to Mr Neild.

Has anyone found a birth reference for Margaret?

Selena

That's been the problem Selena. There is no birth reference for Margaret.

However if we go along with the theory that Margaret and Daisy are one and the same individual we end up with a child of the right age with a father called William Hocknell as she claimed, and who was born in Ireland (unlike her siblings) so no birth reference is understandable.

It would be interesting to know what her mother at least was doing in Ireland when Daisy was born but it isn't that far from Birkenhead/Liverpool etc.

It is also not the first time that the names Daisy and Margaret have been used for the same child. This was a fairly common thing in Victorian times.

Sue

Thanks Sue, it makes it a bit clearer.

Stacey, are there any clues in the witnesses names on the 1920 marriage cert? Can you post the names.

Selena

hi the witnessess names are

J Nield which is jimmy nield apparently james's brother and Ada Grattan who was Ada nield before she married charles arthur grattan.

I have just received an email from Kathyrn B who is currently off site, but who has been reading this thread.

Like me, she is uncertain about a Daisy Hocknell record we found earlier

She has found this marriage:-


Name: Daisy Hocknell
Year of Registration: 1927
Quarter of Registration: Apr-May-Jun
Spouse's Surname: Mourant
District: Birkenhead (1861-1998)
County: Cheshire, Merseyside
Volume: 8a
Page: 1146

K


is is a possiblity?


sylvia

Ah that ruins my idea! LOL

These ancestors just didn't know how difficult they were making it for us.

So we still have a missing Margaret (surname now a bit uncertain).

Sue
x

In my family there is an Oliver who was the illegitimate son of my 2x great grandmother. His father is unknown (except he sometimes used a surname as a middle name.......he wasn't baptised with that).

The first mention of this Oliver is one census when he is called by his mother's surname. Later my 2x great grandmother married my 2x great grandfather and from then on Oliver used his stepfather's name. When Oliver married he said his father was my 2x great grandfather.

I now wonder if Margaret is the stepchild of a William Hocknell. That would mean finding a marriage for a William Hocknell after 1901 because we didn't find them together then.


Nice little puzzle this one!

Sue
x

I seem to have misinterprted who Kath was tlaking about.

I just got this email from her:-

I meant a spanner as in that's the Daisy Hocknell the other person has decided is Margaret, and I think it's a completely different person (as I think you thought).

The marriage indicates that Daisy Hocknell had a life of her own and wasn't Margaret, I'd say.

I got obsessed with that one last night and found some more stuff I'll send you, lucky you. ;)


Sue ...... I think this refers back to the thought I had as to whether the Disay I had found in a census was actually margaret being called Daisy.

- - - -

Kath then sent another email with the following information that she had found:-


So this is as far as I got ... which basically amounts to going around in circles!


Nobody seems to have come up with this obvious possible marriage for the William Hocknell father of Margaret:

Name: William Walter Hocknell + Annie Yates
Year of Registration: 1886
Quarter of Registration: Jul-Aug-Sep
District: Congleton <<<
County: Cheshire, Staffordshire
Volume: 8a
Page: 473

Death:

Name: William W Hocknell
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1856
Year of Registration: 1910
Quarter of Registration: Jul-Aug-Sep
Age at Death: 54
District: Congleton
County: Cheshire, Staffordshire
Volume: 8a
Page: 154

The household in 1901, I'd say -- William going by Walter:

Agnes Hocknell 11
Annie Hocknell 38
Edith Hocknell 12
Eliza Hocknell 2
Emma Hocknell 5 -- could this be Margaret also going by given/second name?
Harold Hocknell 8
Walter Hocknell 43


Annie Yates in 1881:

Name: Annie Yates
Age: 18
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1863
Relation: Niece
Gender: Female
Where born: Swettenham, Cheshire, England
Civil Parish: Newbold Astbury
County/Island: Cheshire
Country: England
Street address: Glebe Farm
Occupation: Domestic Servant
Registration district: Congleton
Sub-registration district: Congleton

I think she is mistakenly called daughter of WW Hocknell's mother Eliza in 1891.

So the question is: is this Margaret? --

Name: Emma Hocknell
Year of Registration: 1895
Quarter of Registration: Oct-Nov-Dec
District: Congleton
County: Cheshire, Staffordshire
Volume: 8a
Page: 290

Not too damned likely, I suppose.

K




seems possible doesn't it???



sylvia

thanks for trying so hard to work out this mystery.

its beginning to drive me crazy, wish my grandad knew more or that hes not talking one of the two.

The other thing is my grandad is very dark skinned and so is my aunt and her daughter, to the point that people use to think they were half-cast.

Apparently margaret lived with a family called huyton before she had george, all i know is that it was at 5 station road, gorton living with them before she had george and its also the address on her marriage cert.

Not sure why she was there

hmmm

Gorton's Manchester ...... not far from Belle Vue zoo. My brother used to live there, and not that far from Station Road either!


Margaret could just have been lodging with the Huytons'


Sorry, not thinking too straight at the moment ...... I had to take some pretty strong medication for a migraine earlier, and it leaves me a little zombie'd, so I'm not going to try to do any searching this evening!

sylvia

Hi Stacey,

When did Ada Nield marry Charles Grattan? There is no obvious marriage on FreeBMD.

I just wondered whether Ada and Jimmy are George's stepsister and stepbrother, witnesses at his own wedding some years later?

I'm just catching up here. I see that the Nield family have been in the Gorton (Chorlton) area since the 1880s and that George's stepsister Ada's birth looks to have been in 1914?

Ok, I'm going to go off in yet another direction.

Hocknell is the name on the marriage registration in the Dec 1920 qtr, and also represents the H in George's birth registration. It struck me that this was a little like the place name Hucknall in Derbyshire, but I thought there would be a lot with that surname, so I've abandoned that for now (edited - actually, there may be even fewer, perhaps I'll have a look at that too).

Since literacy seems to be pretty much universal by 1901, and by then people seem to be fixed to the particular spelling of their surname on the whole, I wondered how many Hocknells there are (exact spelling). There are not all that many in Lancashire, and restricting the search to Chorlton alone identifies just 6, four of these in the same household.

Thomas is the head of the household, with wife and one small daughter Annie; the other is his unmarried brother William, born abt 1874. Both Thomas and William are Corporation carters, which doesn't seem a million miles away from cleansing inspectors. If so, then Margaret may be this William's daughter, either born after 1901, or born out of wedlock before 1901? [Ed: or indeed, as Selena says, she may have originally been Todd before she was a Hocknell - perhaps an unmarried Hocknell if William was her stepfather]

I wonder if it's worth having a further look for Hocknell events in Chorlton between 1891 and 1918?

(Waves to Sylvia, and hopes your migraine has eased)

I'm still stuggling with the Todd theory. Does everyone generally think that Margaret passed herself off as Ms Todd when George was born?

I suppose this was possible in 1918 with most births at home, no documents i.e. marriage cert required at registration?

Selena

Does anyone feel like looking for Margaret Todd on the 1901 census? I would if I had Ancestry. I don't want to waste anyone's time but I would like to rule out the Todd possibility.

Thanks,

Selena

Hi Selena,

I followed Hocknell purely on the basis that it was rarer. I agree, a possibility is that Margaret may have originally been Todd, and Hocknell her stepfather's name.