----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Pears" <bp@bpears.org.uk> To: "Shirley Thompson" <shirley.thompson07@googlemail.com> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 8:24 PM Subject: Re: death certs > On 19/04/2010 19:34, Shirley Thompson wrote: >> I have recently bought death certs mainly to find addresses of families >> after 1838 and found that they only had the name of the village and no >> specific address. >> Is this the norm Shirley in Houghton > > Shirley > > You posted your query to > > northumbria-admin@rootsweb.com > > but it should have been addressed to > > northumbria@rootsweb.com > > Will you please resend your message to the correct address. > > Brian > -- > Brian Pears (Joint List Admin NORTHUMBRIA Genealogy Mailing List) >

Hi Shirley Very much the norm I am afraid You seem to get more addresses in the built up towns & cities but the more rural ones are often just a village or hamlet There may have been no addresses at the time, everyone knew everyone else so there was no need for them You may also find the census enumerates a whole rural location as just "Village" or similar with a few prominent addresses recorded (Vicarage, Farms and the like) You may have better luck with burials, although much depended on the Vicar or his Clerk Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) >> On 19/04/2010 19:34, Shirley Thompson wrote: >>> I have recently bought death certs mainly to find addresses of families >>> after 1838 and found that they only had the name of the village and no >>> specific address. >>> Is this the norm Shirley in Houghton >> >> Shirley

On 20/04/2010 10:24, Shirley Thompson wrote: >> >> I have recently bought death certs mainly to find addresses of families >> >> after 1838 and found that they only had the name of the village and no >> >> specific address. >> >> Is this the norm Shirley in Houghton Shirley It was the "norm" in hamlets and small villages simply because such settlements rarely had street or house names, so addresses as we know them simply did not exist. They weren't really needed because everybody there knew where everybody lived. Towns and cities had street names and houses numbers or names from an early date and this practice spread to smaller and smaller places, but even in the first decade of the 20th century some hamlets were still without house or street names. My paternal grandfather lived at a place called Chesterwood (north-west of Haydon Bridge) from 1903 to 1911 and this location appears on the birth certificates of two of his siblings - just as "Chesterwood". I went there in 1976, some 20 years after granddad died, and discovered that Chesterwood was a hamlet of about 15 houses - but which one had he lived in? Luckily - and indeed amazingly - I found an old chap, Tom Pigg, on a nearby farm (ploughing a field at the age of 81) who had gone to Haydon Bridge School with granddad and remembered him well. He pointed out granddad's old house which is now named South Cottage. An old photograph which subsequently turned up showed a family group (grandad's mum and three of his sibs) at the door of that same cottage and verified Tom's identification. In 1976 http://www.bpears.org.uk/temp/southcottagein1976.jpg In 1909 and 2009 http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=729855&l=7fff7fd3c4&id=1061329345 Had I not found Tom Pigg or the photograph then I don't think there's any way I could have identified the appropriate house at Chesterwood because no official family documentation identified it in any way. Brian -- Brian Pears (Gateshead, UK) http://www.bpears.org.uk/ Joint List Admin NORTHUMBRIA Genealogy Mailing List GENUKI Northumberland Maintainer