Albert Watts (1880-)

The General Register Office has recently made available some additional information on the deaths and birth indexes. Previously, the microfilmed versions did not contain an age at the time of death prior to 1868 or a mother’s maiden name on births prior to September quarter 1911. The GRO now have a searchable database that fills these gaps.

For me this means re-working the births and deaths that fall within these dates. The deaths weren’t too onerous, I had just over a thousand of them, and even though the age at death was advertised as being in years and some of them were clearly in months, it wasn’t a big job. I only found one record that I had wrong, so I felt very pleased with myself about that. The births are a much bigger task, 5,393 of them, so I’m currently working through them as a ‘back burner’ project. When I get time in-between other research, I spend an hour or so whittling them down. I’m down to about 3,500 at the moment.

In addition, the birth indexes now show the full range of forenames where previously initials had sometimes been inserted. This extra information from the GRO is throwing up some interesting research insights. Albert Watts (1880-) is my second cousin three times removed on my mother’s side. His parents were Nathan Watts (1830-1898) and Elizabeth Randall (1840-1916) and I had his birth index record - Albert Watts, volume 3b, page 551, Mar quarter 1880, Newmarket district; mother's maiden name Randall. The 1881 and 1891 census showed him at home with his parents at Bottisham Lode in Cambridgeshire where he was born. I haven’t located Albert in the 1901 census, but I’ve found him in 1911:

1911 RG 78, RG 14 PN 9118, registration district (RD) Cambridge, sub district (SD) St Andrew the Less, enumeration district (ED) 18, schedule number (SN) 26
Albert Watts	Head	31	Mar	Grocery	Lode, CAM
Amy Watts	Wife	30	Mar	Assisting in business	Haverfordwest, PEM
Edna Watts	Daur	8			Ware, HRT
Married 9 years, 1 child, 1 living, 0 dead

This has given me his wife and daughter’s names and approximate birth years and locations. I also have an approximate marriage year. However, to date I had been unable to locate any marriage of Albert Watts to an Amy around 1902 or birth of an Edna Watts around 1903. The best fit that I had so far found for Edna was a Constance Frances E Watts born in 1903 at Ware. I was hoping that the E was for Edna and that the GRO website would prove this one way or another.

Assuming the birth locations to be correct I searched the GRO website for any female WATTS in the Ware district in 1903 plus or minus 1 year and found:

WATTS, Constance Frances Edna mmn BOWLER GRO Reference: 1903 M Quarter in WARE Volume 03A Page 680

Eureka! This also gave me Amy’s surname and a better chance of finding the marriage. A search of the FreeBMD website for the marriage of Albert Watts to someone with a surname of Bowler between 1901 and 1902 found the following record:

Marriages Sep 1901 Greenwich 01D 2029

BOWLER       Florence Maria A

HILL               Sarah Elizabeth

RICE               Richard Edward

WATTS           Albert

So, next I had to hope that the A in Florence Maria A Bowler was Amy. A search of the GRO website for a female BOWLER in the Haverfordwest district in 1880 plus or minus a year turned up:

BOWLER, Florence Maria Amy mmn DARKER GRO Reference: 1880 S Quarter in HAVERFORDWEST  Volume 11A Page 879

Case solved. Thank you GRO.