In reply to a blog comment, the other day, I suggested that genealogy which is a list of names and dates is just a tad uninteresting. I like censuses because they give just a bit of information. Gravestones can, as well and I know my great great uncle, William Lanceley, via census and gravestone only. Let’s start with the gravestone which I snapped (with the camera) back in 2003. I knew I was related to people called Lanceley back then, but at the time I had not identified William. So as ever, I broke that rule of genealogy which says ‘start from the known and work towards the unknown’. This was an unknown and I was able, very easily, to work towards the known.
In terms of technology, 2003 was almost the dark ages. We didn’t have mobile access to the internet back then and so research to identify William had to wait until I was home from a family history hunt in Cheshire. So, my raw data was a grave photo.

This was in Timperley churchyard and straight away stories appear. Freddy, infant son of William and Emma died in 1891. One can imagine the sadness. And William himself was no great age when he died. Emma had nearly twenty years as a widow.
Something else that was not available in 2003 was the 1911 census.

Had I seen that we might have searched out 89 Oakfield Street in Altrincham where William and Emma lived.
One of the aspects I like about the 1911 census is that it asked the fertility questions – how many children have you had and how many are still alive? It means we know that after 28 years of marriage William and Emma had had just two children, one of whom was Freddy. The other was Alice who was born in 1883.
We also know from the censuses that William was a blacksmith. This wouldn’t have been a romanticised rural blacksmith. Quite probably William worked in a factory for he was listed (in 1901) as a worker.
Alice married Joseph Ashley, a waterman working on the River Weaver Navigation in 1909. They had had no children by the time of the 1911 census.
Timperley church is not, in my judgement, the prettiest structure. I took this photo on the same 2003 visit.
