Dear Elaine,  Thank you SO MUCH for trying to help with Thomas Donovan. He is truly a mystery, along with his sister and brother, Catherine and John. >From census, I know where they were born, but the only one I can find a birth certificate for is my grandmother, the younger sister, Ann Donovan b. 1862. I am in touch with a descendant of Thomas and she has had no luck either.   I had the same thought as you...could it be an earlier marriage?  However, the children are together on the 1861 census in Scotland, Catleton, Roxburgshire with James and Margaret.  Thomas is 8, John 4, Catherine 2. Then in 1862, they are in High Ireby, Cumbria, where my grandmother was born.   In the 1850's, they were obviously between Sheffield, Yorkshire and Hartlepool, Durham.  In 1871, they were all in Wigton (where the parents eventually died). Thomas was 18, John 15, Catherine 12 and Hannah (Ann, my grandmother) 8.   They moved around a lot as a family, probably for work, so maybe never got around to registering the births.  I cannot think of any other reason.   also, I cannot find James and Margaret on an 1851 census or 1841 census, so maybe they were still in Ireland.  I cannot find a marriage for them either, except one for a 1938 marriage in the South of England where they both give their surname as DONOVAN, but that could be a mistake on Margaret's part if she could not read or write.   Thank you again for your help. Rene/USA ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:01:58 -0400 From: "Elaine Pickard" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [YORKSHIRE] Thomas Donovan b. Sheffield, 1853 To: <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";     reply-type=original Hi Rene, I was just looking at your query and noticed two things..... You state that Thomas was born in Sheffield in 1853........I have checked two different sources that I have and he wasn't registered there......but that doesn't mean he couldn't have been born there... Margaret is 53 years old on the 1871 census. I wonder if its possible she had been married before and that Thomas is from her first marriage???? There is a Castleton in Derbyshire not far from Sheffield. That's what had caught my eye I was hoping to see the child on the '71 census to see if it was from Scotland.... Not there so I couldn't check it out.... Elaine in Ottawa. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rene Smith" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: August 31, 2009 2:59 PM Subject: [YORKSHIRE] Thomas Donovan b. Sheffield, 1853 Is anyone on the list researching Thomas Donovan b. 1853 to James and Margaret (nee Hagen) Donovan (both b. Ireland) Thomas' siblings were John b. 1856 in Hartlepool, DUrham Catherine b. 1859 also Hartlepool. In 1861, they were on the Scottish census living in Castleton. Then, they moved to Hartlepool and then to Wigton, Cumbria, where my grandmother, Ann, (Hannah) Donovan was b. in High Ireby in 1862. James and Margaret both died and are buried in Wigton, Cumbria. My grandmother was known as Annie Mary Elizabeth Donovan and married Thomas Grisdale of Penrith in 1885. If anyone is researching any of the Donovan's listed, would love to hear from them. Sincerely Rene Smith/USA Some useful websites - FREECEN - http://www.freecen.org.uk/ FREEBMD - http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ Want to know where a place in Yorkshire is - Try Genuki http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------ To contact the ENG-YORKSHIRE list administrator, send an email to [email protected] To post a message to the ENG-YORKSHIRE mailing list, send an email to [email protected] __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text. End of ENG-YORKSHIRE Digest, Vol 4, Issue 251 *********************************************