A picture paints a thousand words as people say, and that is something that is hard to disagree with. Old photos such as those to be found on TheGenealogist’s Image Archive can add to our understanding of what our ancestors’ home town or area had been like before the intervening years changed the way it appears. A picture of a town street or rural scene can also allow us to visualise a location found in some sort of record such as in one of the decennial censuses. And we can use these images to see what a location that we’ve found on a map had looked like in the past.

When researching an ancestor’s place of residence we will often turn to maps of the area. It can be useful to compare an old map with a modern one to see how the area has perhaps changed over the years. To do this TheGenealogist has a great tool that not only enables us to switch between georeferenced historical and modern maps but also allows us to look for old images. The pictures of local landmarks and important buildings – for example churches that our past family may have attended on Sundays, or went to for baptism, marriage or funeral services – are marked by pins on the map when the relevant record layer is chosen. Not only is it possible to use these resources on a PC, Mac or tablet, but also as you walk in your ancestors’ footsteps by opening TheGenealogist.co.uk on your mobile.

Let us use for this case study a Somerset family whose surname was Vincent. The main subject of this research is a man called Alfred Vincent who was born in 1848 in Wells, Somerset and so the first census that he will appear in is the one taken in 1851. Indeed after a quick search of this census we are able to find him in the house of his parents, John and Anna Vincent on the High Street at Wells. Alfred’s father is recorded by the enumerator as a journeyman tailor while his mother is a dressmaker and Alfred is just a three-year-old scholar.

Following him forward ten years to the next census in 1861, we see that the young Alfred has by that time become a brushmaker. If we then look for him recorded in the 1871 census we are able to find him still living in Wells, but by now he is 23 and married to Ann Bince from Shepton Mallet.

Marriage records on TheGenealogist reveal they married in Shepton Mallet in 1868 and the census tells us that they have a daughter named Annie who was born in her mother’s home town the year before. Albert has, by this time, become a printer and compositor and they all live at number 4 Town Hall Buildings in Wells. It appears that Albert has settled down and so we might expect to find him in this occupation going forward in the records.

Who is the fishmonger in the picture?

With a look at TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer, and having selected the Image Archives as the record set, we discover it is in the nearby town of Frome, Somerset that we come across a very evocative photograph of a commercial street in that town from past times. The road is called Cheap Street and it is a great example of how a picture from the Image Archive can be used to unlock a part of a family history. Viewing the street scene taken in Frome, circa 1900, we can see the names of various businesses displayed down the road. There is a hanging sign for the Albion Inn, another for Bailey’s Carpet Warehouse and a signboard for J.C. King, a hairdresser, advertising that he does hair cutting, shaving, shampooing and so on.

It is, however, the moustached man in the foreground that is of interest to us. We see a fishmonger standing in front of his shop with two boys and another younger man in the street. The signboard on the side of his establishment tells us that the shop belongs to Vincent the fishmonger and poulterer. Having noted the surname we may ask ourselves whether this Frome business was a branch of the family that we have previously come across in the Wells records – or was it a case of a further change of occupation for Alfred and a move to another town?

Switching our attention to now look in the 1891 census records, as properties are plotted on contemporary maps on the Map Explorer, we can find the pin that relates to number 15 Cheap Street, for our fishmonger in the picture. Promisingly, the name of the head of the household in this census is Alfred Vincent. By glancing at his age, which is recorded as 42, and his place of birth, down as Wells, we see that they match our former printer and compositor!

What doesn’t match, however, is his spouse. In this census his wife is not the Shepton Mallet born Ann, as we may have expected, but Agnes born in Paddington, London. However, his daughter Annie that we have identified before is included in this household. Annie is aged 21 and the record details that she was born in Shepton Mallet and so it strongly points to her being the daughter that we had already come across in the 1871 census record for Wells. On balance the evidence would suggest that this is one and the same family and that Agnes Vincent is most probably Alfred’s second wife. A check of the next census in 1901 and we can see that Alfred Vincent is recorded as being 52 and Agnes is 50. Searching in the death records on TheGenealogist will swiftly provide us with the fact that Ann Vincent was registered in the January to March quarter of 1885. This explains why she was not recorded in any census after that year.

If we know the name of the street and the town that an ancestor had lived in then this allows us to use the Map Explore to identify where an address in a census or other record had been and to see where it was in relation to the other points in the town. In the case of the Vincent family of Cheap Street we are able to see that this thoroughfare runs down from the parish church, St John the Baptist, to the Market Place. Selecting the Image Archive as the record set layer shows us that there is a picture of the parish church that we can see. With its close proximity to the street on which they lived it is not a great leap to wonder if this church would have been where the Vincents would have held the funeral service for the 37-year-old Ann and so give us a direction for further research.

We might next turn our attention to finding a record for Alfred marrying Agnes. A search of the marriage records on TheGenealogist allows us to find that Alfred married Agnes Emily Barnes in the second quarter of 1886. It was not in Frome, but in the Wandsworth district of Surrey, confirming that she had originated from further afield. So often we assume that our ancestors stayed in their locality and didn’t move only to be proved wrong – so that is where a search of records that cover more than just the county is of help to researchers.

Using the volume and page details, gleaned from the results, a researcher could then order a copy of the marriage certificate from the General Register Office (GRO) and so discover more details about the newlyweds. From other information recorded elsewhere it would appear that the bride was a native of Battersea on the south bank of the River Thames and had been living in a street just over Battersea Bridge from London at the time of her wedding to Alfred.

Change and continuity in the street
When researching for our ancestors who had been in a trade or a profession it is often possible to find them listed in a street or trade directories. TheGenealogist has an extensive collection of these useful publications for all parts of the country, as well as some for America, Australia, New Zealand and India. In this case we are able to use this record set to find Alfred Vincent in the 1897 Kelly’s Somersetshire directory as well as discover that the business continued to trade under his name into the 1920s, albeit under the proprietorship of Mr A.E.P. Witham.

This discovery begs the question as to this new owner was. We may wonder if he had any familial ties to the Vincents. Taking a look back at the census records it appears that Alfred had been the father of a number of daughters, but no sons. It is not a great step for the researcher to wonder if one of these daughters had got married to this Mr Witham. If so then this might be Alfred’s son-in-law now at the helm of the Frome business. A search for the marriage of A.E.P. Witham in TheGenealogist’s marriage records answers that question for us, where we find that an Alfred E.P. Witham married a bride with the surname Vincent in 1919. Searching the records on TheGenealogist allows us to find a record that reveals that the bride was Carrie E. Vincent. This was Carrie Vincent who had first appeared in the 1891 census as a three-year-old daughter of Alfred and Agnes. Looking for her in other records on TheGenealogist, we can find Miss Vincent in the 1923 Trade and Residential directory where she is the occupier of the neighbouring shop to the fishmonger’s business at number 14 Cheap Street. Here she is trading as a needlework depot where she was still using her maiden name.

Her husband Alfred Witham lived only until he was 52, dying in 1927. If we fast forward to just as the Second World War began and search the 1939 Register we find the widowed Carrie Witham still living at her own shop at 14 Cheap Street. The 1939 Register records that she was a shopkeeper dealing in wools and art needlework. Her 19-year-old son, Kenneth, lives with her and is recorded at this time as an articled architect.

We have seen in this case study how census and other records that are linked to maps are an extremely powerful way of building our family’s stories when we can see the neighbourhood in which they lived. Old pictures from the Image Archive will allow us to visualise our ancestors’ locale, especially as many are pinpointed on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer. These pictures from the past give you a feel for the towns and areas where your ancestors had lived and worked. Images of churches where they may have been baptised, married or buried add to the tale as do street scenes that allow us to see how places once looked. The shopkeepers standing outside their premises can be a wonderful find for someone connected to the individual posed before their business. This allows us to connect to them and the road on which they had once carried out their trade. Even for those of us who don’t find an ancestor’s photograph, the ability to compare and contrast the streets on which our forebears would have walked, shopped and lived can allow us to see the area as they had. Fascinating historical images and old maps have a brilliant ability to whisk us back in time and allow us to connect to a landscape that may have radically changed over the passing years. {