Hello listers Thanks to lots of assistance from you the Brown side of my ancestry is now clearly established. I have one problem - where was John Brown in 1851? I can't find him anywhere. He would have been about 30. He was a seaman, and possibly at sea, but an old family tale related that he was at one time in prison, and that is the reason why two of his sons were packed off to Sheffield to be apprenticed. I would have discounted this but for the fact that a recently discovered 3rd cousin who I have never met, also knows this story. Is there a grain of truth in this?. He changes his place of birth to Hull instead of Bridlington Quay in all later censuses. The two boy were certainly apprenticed in the early 1850s, and the link with Sheffield goes back 2 generations previously to an earlier wandering Brown who finished up there and married a Sheffield woman. But I am baffled by John's disappearance and reappearance. HAs anyone got any suggestions? Chris Roderick