I have always been proud of the fact that, early in my research, I was able to pin down all eight of my Victorian-born great-grandparents in the 1881 census. Now the Map Explorer research tool provided by TheGenealogist has led me even closer to them in a way I would not have been able to imagine when I started back in the 70s.

Of these great-grandparents, only two were married at the time of that census. The three other men were with a parent or parents while two of the women were in service and only one was ‘at home’. They were also widely spread. The married couple (only three years so) had moved recently from the Shetland Isles to South Shields on the north-east coast of England. Another future couple was living close to each other in Barrow-in-Furness. The man’s family had recently moved there from Preston (also in Lancashire) and the woman from Netherton – part of Dudley in the West Midlands. Another great-grandfather was living in Millom on the Cumberland coast (close to Barrow). He had moved recently too – from the metal mines of Devon. Members of his future wife’s family were also in Millom, similarly newly arrived from the metal mines of Cornwall, although she was still in service on the Devon coast. The final man was with his roving family beside the river which marked the border between Durham and Yorkshire while his Welsh-born future wife was in service in Lancashire.

The census of 1881 marked a year during a second phase of the Industrial Revolution when many families were on the move, so this large-scale movement may not be atypical and could provide a story familiar to many readers.

The ancestors in detail
My father’s paternal grandparent George Gregson married Ann Maria Hughes in Barrow-in-Furness in 1894.

In 1881 George Gregson (11) and Ann Maria Hughes (10) were living with their families in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire a few streets away from each other. The Gregsons had moved from the mills in Preston to the steelworks of Barrow in the 1870s, while the Hughes family had moved from the ironworks in Netherton in the West Midlands to the same steelworks – also in the 1870s. As noted above, this was part of what might almost be described as a second Industrial Revolution.

My father’s maternal grandparent Daniel Nathaniel Greatorex married Elizabeth Buckley at Llanelly in Breconshire in 1884.

In 1884 Daniel (21) and his future wife (also 21) were miles apart. Daniel was with his family in a form of apprenticeship with his gamekeeping father. The family lived right beside the River Tees at Low Dinsdale on the Durham/Yorkshire border. They had a boarder who is described as a ‘fisherman’, which confirms a link to the maintained fishlocks on the river. Meanwhile Elizabeth was in service with a church minister at Formby in Lancashire. In both cases Map Explorer gives only an approximate location but it is possible using that facility and an overlay to find the exact location of the Old Mill. Elizabeth’s ‘workplace’ is more difficult to locate although reference to other maps of the area should be able to locate the position of Salford Road in Formby, which now seems to have disappeared.

Maternal sideMy mother’s paternal grandparent Thomas Stephens married Jane Bunney at Millom in Cumberland in 1884.

Thomas (27) had lost his father in a mining accident in Devon in the 1860s. His mother had remarried and she and many others from their Devon village had migrated from the copper mines of the south-west to the new iron ore mine in Millom, Cumberland. Here Thomas worked as a miner. His future father-in-law John Bunney had made the same journey from St Austell in Cornwall but in 1881 his daughter (and Thomas’s future wife) was still in service in Plymouth. At one point John had travelled alone to the gold fields of California – chiefly (according to his obituary) to spread the Methodist faith. Map Explorer shows that Thomas’s 1881 home in Millom is still there today while the home of Jane’s auctioneering employer in Plymouth is now a garage.

My mother’s maternal grandparents Thomas Pottinger and Jannet (sic) Pottinger (née Inkster) had already married in Lerwick, Shetland in 1878.

The 1881 census finds the Pottingers in South Shields, County Durham with a Shetland-born daughter and a Shields-born son. They were living with Jannet’s sister Margaret and her sailor husband while Thomas (29) completed a course which would make him a master mariner. He had already served in the merchant navy around the coasts of Britain and was to captain coastal colliers for another 18 years. Jannet (30) was a housewife and mother and prior to this had worked as a knitter; she came from the Inkster family home on Burra Isle, Shetland. Map Explorer reveals that their 1881 lodgings were right in the heart of shopping area of South Shields and have now been replaced by a car park.

Readers who have logged onto my online talks or have attended live ones – at the Family History Shows in York, Bristol or London – will know that I am technologically challenged yet have been able to use Map Explorer to good effect.

This must give hope to those similarly challenged! There are so many facets to this search engine which enable the researcher to find ancestors, to swiftly appraise neighbours and neighbourhoods and above all to link past to present. Little can match the ability to stand outside the front door of a house inhabited by ancestors well over a hundred years ago and with Map Explorer already linked to the censuses from 1871 to 1911 there must be hope that such an experience is possible for many fellow family historians. {