Find Living Relatives

When my wife was 2 years old, her mother left the family house never to be seen again. For the past 15 years we've been trying to find out what happened to her and we've made a breakthrough in August. Unfortunately the discovery was that her mother died in 1999 in Brixton, South London. Part of the problem was that her birth name was Dorothy Joan Johnson but it seems after her departure she was known as Joan Johnson.

A lot of the other information has come from people who wouldn't have seen her for over 40 years and get easily distracted when trying to explain things ;-) However, we did find out the following

Dorothy Joan was born in 1939, one of at least 3 children to Charles Edward Johnson and Marjorie May Ellis. The other children are "an older sister who may live in Nottingham" and "David who I think went to live in Canada".

If any of this vagueness means anything to you, please get in touch.

Steve

Steve, the best way to find any immediate relatives is to use the Search all member trees function, top right under Search.

Would this be her entry on the 1939 Register? The closed entry could be her older sibling. Johnson is in brackets as that's the name she (obviously) used when the register was compiled

Johnson Household (4 People)
10 Richmond Avenue , Islington, London, England

FIRST NAME(S) LAST NAME(S) DOB SEX OCCUPATION MARITAL STATUS SCHEDULE SCHEDULE SUB NUMBER
Dorothy J Woodward (Johnson) 10 Sep 1939 Female Under School Age Single 173 4
Charles E Johnson 02 Dec 1913 Male General Labourer (Electrical) Married 173 1
Marjorie M Johnson 16 Apr 1907 Female Unpaid Domestic Married 173 2
Sorry, this record is officially closed. Check if you can open a closed record.

Had Marjorie been married previously or had they been cohabiting before their marriage?
Assuming this is their marriage, she was using Johnson as a surname.

Marriages Sep 1937 (>99%)
JOHNSON Charles E Johnson Islington 1b 899
Johnson Marjorie M Johnson Islington 1b 899

Do you have the grandparents MC? What is their declared status - single, divorced (although that would be rare) or widowed?

Dorothy's birth is the only one with mmn Ellis born in Islington after their marriage.
Did they move away from Islington, or come from elsewhere? Could the older child be a half sibling with one parent different, or the same apply to David?

There are a large number of Islington Johnson/Johnson births predating the marriage, so perhaps the one in 1937 is just a coincidence?

could this be marjorie first married to a relation of charles

Marriages Sep 1931 (>99%)
Ellis Marjorie M Johnson Lambeth 1d 885 Scan available - click to view
Johnson John H Ellis Lambeth 1d 885

Dorothy’s Death record shows birth date matching 1939 register above

Can’t see a birth for Marjorie May Ellis to tally with 1939

No matter how many times she married, her maiden name was Ellis

There’s a female Johnson/Ellis birth in Lambeth in 1932

Having checked her death, the mother’s DOB was 16/4/1906. Probably ‘lost’ a year because her husband was younger.

There is a matching birth in Halstead district MMN Pannell

Her death was registered as just Dorothy so she must have been known by that name after she left the family.

Kath. x

Death was registered twice as Dorothy and Joan

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses so far. I will try and answer your questions but first I wanted to point out something. I'm 100% certain that my wife's mother's mother was Marjorie May Ellis. She was born sometime around the end of 1905 or early in 1906 as the birth was registered in Jan 1906. She was born in Halstead, Essex. Then I discovered that Marjorie May Johnson was born at about the same time, also in Essex. This is a completely different (probably) unrelated person who married and became Marjorie May Edwards. But she was Marjorie May Johnson before Marjorie May Ellis became Marjorie May Johnson and they keep appearing in the same online databases.

I haven't found any evidence myself that Marjorie was married before. I can't figure out from the bits of coped & pasted text which resources you're looking at but I can't find, for example +++DetEcTive+++'s 1937 marriage.

The Pannell family and the information about the living in Islington is also information I've found and I believe to be correct.

I know very little about Charles Edward Johnson. I can't find anything out about him, rather I just know this is the name of the person Marjorie May Ellis married.

So I believe the entries in the 1913 register to be relevant and correct. Charles E Johnson (2/12/1913) and Marjorie May Johnson (16/4/1907) had a child called "This record is officially closed" and "Johnson (Baby)"

Another interesting thing I'd like to know if you knowledgeable people have an explanation for:

This is how we found the register when we started looking a few years ago. At the time Johnson(Baby) was just a possible match because someone had later annotated it with "Woodward Dorothy" and we didn't know that Dorothy Joan was dead. So given that the other child is called "This record is officially closed" as the 100 year rule hasn't passed, someone else went to the effort of submitting proof of death so that the Baby Johnson record was opened. So does this mean someone else was looking for Dorothy Joan or is it just some automated process?

This 1937 marriage was found on Freebmd.

Marriages Sep 1937 (>99%)
JOHNSON Charles E Johnson Islington 1b 899
Johnson Marjorie M Johnson Islington 1b 899

With your experience you’ll know that once you’ve found one potential spouse, you can click on the page number to see who else is recorded on the same page. Post 1911, the entry for one spouse shows the surname of the other. That makes it, in 99% of the time, easy to match up who married who.

The 1939 Register posted was found on FMP. They have an ongoing programme of matching deaths 1992, when it ceased being a working document, to 2006. When they can find the original 1939 entry then they’ll remove the redaction.

Ancestry has recently released their own transcription of the data base. They took the same action but from a different starting point.

My father’s entry, 1923-2006, has been automatically opened. He had no one else who’d be interested in submitting his DC. My mother’s, 1919-2003, is still closed.
Errors do creep in. We’ve had one instance where a 1930’s born GR member had found her own open entry. She was horrified & had to contact both providers to get it closed.

When you say ‘notated’ do you mean on the register itself? That would have been because it was a working document at the time of the marriage/name change.
It could also have occurred if a death certificate was recorded as Woodward aka Johnson because she’d been living as Mrs Woodward without the benefit of a marriage certificate.
There’s usually a date recorded against the notation. In the majority of cases, the date gives you a clue to find the relevant marriage. The date on the register will not equate to the actual marriage date but a few months later. Obviously there are exceptions.

Official explanation re 1939 Register from the National Archives.
https://tinyurl.com/hnh82qg

For factual info, you need to purchase copy certs

The marriage cert for Charles and Marjorie is the obvious starting point.

And the birth I mentioned in Halstead can be tied to 1911 census.

I can’t C&P as I am using my iPad at present

Marjorie ‘s mother Emma is in Halstead in 1939, with her other daughter, Florence, and family

I have the marriage certificates!

John H Johnson in the father of this child that appears to be called Julia

When Marjorie married Charles her condition is listed as "widower".

So I need to find more about John. It would be interesting to know if Johnson is just a *really* common surname of if John and Charles are related.

Thanks again for everyone's detective work so far.

Steve

If you have both of Marjorie's marriage certificates you will know the names and occupations of John H's father and Charles E's father. If you wish to share those details we can perhaps find a relationship, if any, between John and Charles.