Kim, and Yorkshire Barracloughians .... Thank you for the welcome ! You've raised some interesting questions about Elizabeth McCombie (nee Barrowclough), but I'll try to keep my reply as brief as I can. First - she & Alexander arrived from India in January 1871, so they appear on the 1871 census on which her birth place is given as Yorkshire, but since the alleged birthplaces of several family members definitely born in India are wrongly recorded in census returns, I'm taking that with a pinch of salt. She died 4 days before the 1881 census night, so unfortunately that's no help. Oddly, her father's name doesn't appear on her marriage record (Bombay, 1832) which, along with considerable additional evidence leads me to suspect that her mother was Indian and that her parents weren't married. What I think likely is that her father was born in Yorkshire, but not Elizabeth herself. It's quite likely that attitudes to Anglo-Indians being what they were at the time, Elizabeth would have preferred to claim Yorkshire as her birthplace since it would make her appear thoroughly British. If she really _had_ been born in Yorkshire, what the heck was she doing in India without her parents? She was 15 when she married Alexander ......they could have died there of course, but ..... Records for births of British subjects overseas are kept in all kinds of places depending on where they occurred. (See Geoffrey Yeo, 'The British Overseas' - a Guildhall Research Guide to relevant resources.) Ecclesiastical Returns of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials in India are kept with the Oriental and India Office Collections in the British Library where I've been systematically slogging away at 6 generations of my family for the past 3 years. I've posted all this because I can't find a name for Elizabeth Barrowclough's father and I suspect that since she was born in about 1817 - probably in India - someone somewhere is going to be missing a Barrowclough, and that he took ship to India somewhere between 1800 and 1817. Please let me know if you think you know who he was ! Sorry ... that wasn't very brief, was it?! Jill (Cambridge, UK) >Welcome to the Barraclough group, I am probably not going to be of that much help to you regarding >your India, research, but hopefully when you get back to Britain, I can then be of a lot more help. > >Jill, if Elizabeth and her husband went back to London in the 1870's than it should state on the >next census return where she was born. e.g.: Britain or India. Have you found them in any of the >census returns for London as yet ? > >I would imagine that they should appear in the 1881 Census Surname Index that has been published by >the Church of Latter Day Saints. Maybe someone in the group, who has a copy of the 1881 census >surname index on CD could do a lookup and see if Alexander and Elizabeth Mc Combie together with >their children are listed on the CD. > >Also, I have heard that any births that took place in other countries of British Subjects were >record and sent back to London. I think they are called the Consulate indexes ? (if someone in the >group is more knowledgeable about this than I am, please jump in with your knowledge about this >subject) I would presume that if her father was serving in the Army in the East Indies and she was >born in India, then there should be an entry in the indexes for her Birth. > >Sorry I could not have been of more help at this time, but please keep in touch and if you find out >any more information on Elizabeth's parentage then please let us know. > >Best Wishes >Kim Pasquill