Arriving at the FRC before they opened I was first in and began with marriages. Previous experience had taught me that within a couple of hours the marriages section would be heaving. I cannot stress enough how popular and dangerous this area can be for the weak hearted.

First on my agenda was a proper copy of Martino and Amy’s marriage as I only had the extract. I found it straightaway in the December quarter of 1891 and noted down all the reference information I required on my new form. Next I thought I would search from 1898 to 1930. I found nothing until the last quarter of 1921 which was for Amy Marelli, daughter of Martino. The next was for William Marelli in the third quarter of 1924, the next for a Kathleen also in the third quarter but in 1925 and just when I thought it could not get any more exciting I found one for a Philomena in the first quarter of 1926. A gentleman facing me at this point looked across and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Some people have all the luck.’ Marriages were becoming hectic as usual but so it seemed was everywhere else and I started to panic about getting all the births I required. So I grabbed some green forms for marriage certificates and decided to get those filled in while having a quick cigarette outside. What a pain it was filling in those forms and wasting valuable searching time! I decided there and then to take a pile of each type home with me and fill them in with all my personal details before I came back to the FRC again.

In births I first had another look for the mysterious eldest daughter of Martino, but as usual it was not there. I decided instead of just looking at the birth dates that I had for Martino’s children I would do a blanket search starting from 1882, using my form to ensure I did not miss any others. I found Martino’s second daughter called Amelia in the third quarter of 1894, William in the second quarter of 1896 – excellent! I now have his birth and marriage. Next is Amy, daughter not wife, in the first quarter of 1898; was I dreaming because I also had her marriage certificate? Then unbelievably I found Kathleen in the fourth quarter of 1899, Winifred in the first quarter of 1902, Henry in the second quarter of 1903 (was Martino virile or what?), Philomena in the second quarter of 1906 and then a Hilda Marelli in the second quarter of 1912. Hilda? I think Hilda is the sister of Bert! I looked up from my research and saw the same gentleman from marriages facing me and smiled at him. He leaned towards me and said, ‘I’m following you in the hope that your luck will rub off on me.’

My latest finds meant that I had four marriages to go with four of the children; I was ecstatic. I had already previously spent £104 on certificates and when you add on the train and taxi fare to and from the FRC (I got fed up with catching two tubes and the walk each time), it was becoming expensive, so how could I justify spending another £84.50 on certificates? Easily, I wanted them! I went outside to fill in the rest of my forms when my mobile rang (you are not allowed to have mobiles switched on inside the FRC but I always switch it on when I pop outside). It was Brian to say we had been invited out for dinner that night so I could not be late. He also asked if I had found many certificates, ‘not the one I wanted’ I said, avoiding his question. I told him I was on my way home anyway because I was tired and could not find Ellen, the one certificate I really wanted. Brian actually sounded sorry for me and I felt guilty but also relieved that he had inadvertently stopped me researching further and spending more. Especially with the luck I was having, it could have been an extremely expensive day! This was only the beginning of my fetish with certificates.

The certificates arrived

Marriages

The first marriage certificate was for Martino and Amy and although I already had the extract I was so pleased I decided to order this certificate. It is dated 25 December 1891 and told me that Martino, aged 37 years, was a widower. It also stated that Martino was a fishmonger and his father was called Angelo Marelli, occupation farmer. Amy was a spinster with no occupation and 24 years of age. Her father was William Plummer, occupation railway signalman. Witnesses at the marriage were W. Plummer and E. Marelli. Martino was living in Lambeth at this time and Amy in Tooting. They married at St George’s Catholic Church, Southwark.

The second certificate was for Amy Marelli, Martino and Amy’s daughter, dated 9 October 1921. Amy was a spinster, occupation house-keeper of Wandsworth, father Martino, occupation restaurant proprietor. Amy married Joseph Evans, bachelor, occupation clerk, living in Stoke Newington; his father was Francis Evans, occupation French polisher. Witnesses at the wedding were W. Chas. Evans, R. Evans, K. Marelli, W. Marelli and E. Marelli, I presume Katherine, William and Ellen Marelli to be children of Martino. They were married at St Barnabas, Clapham (see figures 3.1 and 3.2).

The third certificate was for William Marelli dated 6 September 1924, aged 28, bachelor, of Lavender Hill, occupation engraver, father Martino, occupation fishmonger (see figure 3.3). William married Winifred Edith House, a spinster of Battersea, Wandsworth, occupation shorthand typist; her father was Richard House, a builders’ merchant. Witnesses were R. J. House and R Todd. They were married at St Ann’s Parish Church.

The fourth certificate was for Kathleen Marelli dated 27 July 1925, aged 25, spinster, of Wandsworth occupation dressmaker, father Martino, occupation master fishmonger. Kathleen married Alfred Crawley aged 33, a bachelor living in Clapham Common, occupation messenger. His father was Alfred, occupation clerk. Witnesses were Harry Crawley, H. Marelli, W. Marelli, (H. and W. are Henry and William sons of Martino), P. Marelli (Philomena daughter of Martino) and A. Todd (Ada, daughter of Martino). They were married at St Barnabas in Clapham.

The fifth certificate was for Philomena Marelli dated 20 January 1926, aged 19 years, spinster of no occupation, living at Wandsworth, father Martino, a fishmonger. Philomena married Charles Hart aged 22, of Bromley, Kent, occupation a provision dealer’s shop assistant. His father was Tom, a banker’s night watchman. Witnesses at the marriage were M. Davies (Matilda) E. Brown and A. Todd. They were married at Wandsworth Registry Office.

Births

The certificates

• Amelia Marelli, dated 28 August 1894, daughter of Martino and Amy. This is Martino’s second daughter called Amelia. Martino’s occupation was given as ice merchant and they were living in Lambeth.
• William Marelli, dated 11 April 1896, son of Amy and Martino. Martino’s occupation was given as fishmonger again, and they were living in Battersea (see figure 3.3).
• Amy Marelli, dated 10 February 1898, daughter of Amy and Martino. Martino’s occupation was fishmonger, living in Battersea.
• Kathleen Marelli, dated 11 December 1900, daughter of Amy and Martino. Martino’s occupation was given as ice merchant (master) again, living in Battersea.
• Winifred Marelli, dated 18 March 1902, daughter of Amy and Martino. His occupation was fish salesman, living in Battersea.
• Henry Marelli, dated 9 June 1903, son of Amy and Martino. His occupation was given as fish salesman, living in Battersea.
• Philomena Marelli, dated 11 May 1906, daughter of Amy and Martino. His occupation was fishmonger (master), living in Battersea.
• Hilda Marelli, dated 11 June 1912, granddaughter of Martino and Amy. Her father was Albert, the eldest son of Martino, occupation motor mechanic. Hilda’s mother was Lilian Lucretia, née Chappell, living in Springfield, Wandsworth. (Albert and Lilian are Brian’s grandparents.)

What I learned:

• I needed to take home a bundle of birth, marriage and death forms from the FRC and fill in my address details and basic information to save time on the day.
• That had I ordered the full marriage certificate for Martino and Amy I would have found out sooner that Martino was a widower and had been married before and that Amy was too young to be the mother of some of the children on Martino’s Naturalisation certificate.
• That Brian’s grandfather, Albert, did not marry Lilian until several weeks after the birth of their first child Hilda and that the address on both certificates is the same, so they were living together prior to the birth of their daughter and their marriage. Also that Albert, born a Catholic, brought his family up as Church of England.
• That when you have a rare name, such as Marelli, methodical searches over many years although a daunting task does bring results.

I made another short visit to the FRC to look at the 1881 Census for Martino, convinced that my CD-Rom version had somehow singled him out deliberately (paranoia setting in!), and left him off but I could not find him on the original either. I also searched births again for Martino’s eldest daughter Ellen but failed miserably here also.

In with the numerous photographs that Brian inherited from Bert was a photo of three of Martino’s daughters believed to be Ada, Winifred and Philomena, with Martino’s son’s wife Lilian (see figure 3.4).

I now believed I had one or more certificates for all the children of Martino Marelli except for his eldest daughter Ellen from his marriage to Ellen McDonald and although the family tree was looking good, to me it was imperfect because Ellen was missing (see figure 3.5).

February 1999

One dull Sunday afternoon, nursing a hangover, I pulled up the National Index of the 1881 Census on my PC. I decided the only thing left to do in my efforts to find Martino was to drift through all the surnames beginning with M in the whole census then if no luck try the Ns and so on. I was beginning to think that maybe Martino had gone back to Italy on holiday to get a tan or something and he somehow missed out on the Census but I could not give up without a thorough search and this, tediously, was the only way.

What seemed like hours later I saw the name Mr Morilli and double clicked it with my mouse which told me to insert another disc – and there he was listed as Mr Morilli, aged 28, head of family, occupation tee merchant (ice merchant), place of birth Italy (see figure 3.6). The country of birth was right as was the age, but tee merchant? Next was listed H. Morilli (Ellen), his wife, aged 23, place of birth St Luckes (sic), (St Lukes). His daughter came next – another H. Morilli (Ellen), aged 5, born in St Luckes. Ada Morilli, daughter was next aged 8 months, followed by Martha, daughter (this was Martin his son as Matilda had not been born), aged 3 years. Martino and family were living in Tyers Street, Lambeth. There was also a Mary A. Evans visiting, aged 17 years. Evans is also a name that featured on Amy’s, daughter of Amy and Martino, marriage certificate when she married Joseph Evans with several other Evanses as witnesses. So it could be possible that Martino knew the Evans family prior to his daughter’s wedding and this visitor was a member of that family.

I was thrilled to find this information but also frustrated by the amount of time it took to find it. Some reasons for this I suppose could be either that the person responsible for transcribing the information for the CD-ROM version had misread the original document as the Census is difficult to read, or that the enumerator was deaf and mistook Ellen for Helen and Martha for Martin if perhaps Martino still had an accent! Of course Martino’s wife Ellen, who I believe was illiterate or semi-illiterate because she could not write her name, may have filled in the census form with the help of the enumerator (who was deaf), so a bad combination all round. Or maybe Martino was still struggling with his English but I would have thought he would have known how to spell his children’s names correctly. Anyway, I had found Martino and it felt just great but this information also gave me another idea! What if the birth of the missing Ellen, the daughter of Martino, was registered under the name of Morilli or something similar?

A trip back to the FRC and Births for the second quarter of 1876 saw me determined to find Ellen Marelli. It suddenly seemed so logical. Why hadn’t I thought of this before – I know better than this. I started my search with the letters ‘MO’ and to my tearful delight there she was under the spelling of Morrelli. Simple when you know how! ‘Ellen, I’ve found you’, I said aloud, to the amusement of my fellow researchers. I did not need to explain myself because as I looked up the expressions on everyone’s face told me they understood. I ran outside and phoned Brian and unable to contain myself I burst into tears. It was a truly fulfilling moment and a feeling of great relief – she had been getting to me and I did not know how much until I had found her.

I floated back inside to find the next ancestor on my agenda (see I’m planning well now), although had I gone home at that moment I would have been satisfied. It was to find the birth certificate of William Plummer born circa 1846, going by the information on the 1881 Census stating he was 35 years of age.

Having found Ellen I became the model researcher – polite, patient, smiling and perhaps a little bit smug as I was beginning to feel I was getting the hang of this. I decided to search for William Plummer in the years from 1845 to 1847 and found two possibilities. This threw me right off my plan for the day to continue my blanket searches for Marelli ancestors. One was for a William Henry Plummer born in Islington and one was for William Plummer born in Brixton. My dilemma was: do I order both certificates in the hope that one will be glaringly obvious and come back and do further research, or do I try and find further evidence like a marriage certificate? Before I knew it I was searching for William Plummer’s marriage certificate from about the time he would have been18 years of age in 1864. I found a marriage for William Plummer dated in the last quarter of 1865 but how could I be sure it was the right one because I did not know the maiden name of his wife Susan and could not check to see if she was listed in the same quarter. I continued with my search looking for other possibilities until 1875 but there was nothing glaringly obvious so, a bit perplexed, I decided to order everything I had found so far.

I still had some time left, so did I go back to my original plan? No, I was now hooked on Martino’s in-laws the Plummers, not in a warm caring way, but in a prickly, provoked way. I would solve this today. I went to look for the birth certificate for William and Susan’s daughter Amy that would also give me her mother’s maiden name. From my notes I was able to find details of the marriage certificate of Amy to Martino and knew her age to be 24 at the time of her marriage in 1891 and searched from 1866. I could not believe it – there were two possibilities again. One is for Alice Amy Plummer (the actual name on her marriage certificate is Amy Alice) born in Lambeth and one is for Amy Plummer born in Islington. What is up with this family, why couldn’t they pick original names and make this job just a little easier and less expensive? Which one should I order… the Alice Amy, who should be Amy Alice, or the Amy who should also be Amy Alice? I instantly became my usual glowering self and ordered both!

Fed up with the Plummers I thought about going back to my original plan but the place was becoming far too busy and I had lost my rhythm. I went outside and filled in my forms having a well-earned cigarette when I began to wonder about Martino’s first wife Ellen McDonald. Even though she was not strictly an ancestor of Brian’s as he was descended from Martino’s second marriage to Amy, she had still been a big part of Martino’s life and I felt she should be recognised, so back I headed to Births.

From my notes I found the year of Martino’s marriage to Ellen when she was 17 and that gave me the year 1857 to begin my search. I found several, one for 1858 in Stepney, one for 1859 in Hackney, one for 1860 in St George’s in the East, one for 1867 also in St George’s in the East and another for 1868 in Lambeth. The most obvious were the first three as they were in the right time zone. Why couldn’t there be just one, I wanted to scream. I couldn’t order all of them! I noted down all the references and stupidly decided to order the one for Hackney rather than look for further information. I needed to go home; I was tired and dirty from leafing through all those grimy well-thumbed volumes and a shower and a gin and tonic were beckoning.

An aside: I had a sister who died shortly after she was born. My mother has no record of her birth as my dad took care of things at the time, so I decided to order her birth certificate. She was born in 1958 but I also took down details of her death in December 1958.

The certificates arrived

My elation of the previous weekend was complete when I looked at the first birth certificate for Ellen Marelli (spelled Morrelli). It was definitely Ellen, born on 7 May 1876 as Albert Marelli had also recorded on the piece of paper listing all the Marelli children that I had found (see figure 2.1). The father’s name was Martin Morrelli, occupation carman. The spelling of Martino’s Christian name did not bother me, because Ellen had registered the birth, signing with her mark. The mother’s name was Ellen Morrelli, formerly Mackdonald (as previously spelt on other certificates). They were living in the City Road area of Holborn. Of great interest was that Martino’s first child was born in the ‘lying in’ hospital of London (see figures 3.7 and 3.8).

The next certificate was for the marriage of William Plummer dated 19 November 1865. It was the right one. William’s occupation was given as porter but what convinced me most that I had the right certificate is that his wife was called Susan Jordan. Their ages were noted as both of full age. William’s father, called John, was a painter (not I think in the artistic way), but it also noted that he was deceased. Susan’s father was called Richard and his occupation was given as smith. They were married at the Parish Church of St Mary in Lambeth. Witnesses were J. L. Gawler and Edward Powell. Both William and Susan had the same address of Waterloo Road, Lambeth.

The next birth certificate was for one of the William Plummers born on 8 October 1846 in Islington. My heart sank – the father’s name was William Plummer with the occupation ‘coachman’.

The next certificate gave me hope but not certainty at first. It read William Plummer born on 1 January 1845 in Brixton. Father John Charitie Plummer, occupation builder. This threw me, I needed it to be painter. The mother was Hannah Plummer formerly Comfort. William states on the 1881 Census that he is from Tooting.

I looked at the next birth certificate for one of the Amy Plummers born in 1868, but the father was Horace Plummer. I quickly looked to the next birth certificate dated 17 September 1867 and there was Alice Amy Plummer, daughter of William and Susan Plummer (not Amy Alice as on her marriage certificate – the naughty girl changing her name meant I could have missed her).

William’s occupation was given as railway signalman. The certificate also gave Susan’s maiden name as Jordan as per the marriage certificate, and their address was Lambeth.

The next birth certificate was for Ellen McDonald born in Hackney in 1859 and – not altogether surprisingly – it did not list her father as James McDonald, tailor – another mistaken certificate.

I was happy with my results although they weren’t all correct and decided to check out William’s place of birth on the 1881 Census – it was Tooting. I pulled out a map for London and established that Brixton is not far from Tooting. I felt more confident that I had found William’s birth certificate.

An aside: The extra certificate: Birth of Kathleen Moloney dated 15th December 1958, daughter of Charles Moloney a Storekeeper Electric Cable Factory and Lilian Margaret Moloney formerly Reynolds. My little sister.

What I learned:

• Always check all variations of surnames when you cannot find someone where they should be – even make a list of possible spellings the night before embarking on your research.
• Sometimes our ancestors changed their Christian names later in life, much as people do today.
• Sometimes it is worth going off on a tangent, although it is easy to make mistakes.
• Even though you think you may have a correct certificate, as with the birth of William Plummer, you sometimes need further clarification such as whether a painter could be a builder or what districts are close together or perhaps have changed boundaries. (Information about boundaries is provided at the FRC and you can purchase maps defining registration districts.)

Between February 1999 and August 2000 I carried out no research at all due to ill-health but during a conversation one day with Brian’s Uncle Vic and Aunt Betty I was told that Martino is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking, only a few miles from where I live. The following Sunday afternoon, at a bit of a loose end, I persuaded Brian and Jason (Brian’s youngest son, the eldest being Ian) to drive over to Brookwood to see if we could find Martino’s grave. Brookwood is a large and amazing multicultural cemetery and we were fascinated as we drove around looking for the Catholic section as that is where Martino would be resting. We found the section fairly easily and started to walk down the rows of numerous graves when I saw Jason heading instinctively toward a large cross several rows away and momentarily got irritated as we needed to check all the graves methodically – until Jason called out to us. It was Martino’s. We were stunned that Jason had singled out one grave in the whole area and it had been the right one. Again it was an emotional experience because not only did we find Martino but his eldest son Martin who had died in March 1901 nearly 40 years prior to Martino’s death in 1940. Now here, generations later, stood Brian and his son Jason, 121 years after Martin was born and 147 years after Martino was born (see figure 3.9).

An aside: In April of this year I ordered the death certificate for my sister Kathleen. It is dated 17 December 1958, aged one day old. It did not mention my mother on the certificate but noted Charles Maloney as father. The cause of death was given as congenital implication, cyst in chest, attempted removal at operation.

Finding Martino’s grave opened my mind once more to family research and I was again at my computer trying to pick up the threads of where I had left off. Sadly, although all my computer records and certificates were safe I had managed to lose some bits and pieces of information relating to previous research such as my blanket search forms for births, marriages and deaths. I was able to piece together some of the years but in doing this I discovered that in the years I had found a birth, marriage or death I did not complete any further research for other quarters in that same year. Something else occurred to me – my search forms had a combination of surnames against years searched. This was a big mistake, because how could I tell what years I had searched for which family? I now hold a different form for every surname i.e. Marelli births, Marelli marriages, Plummer births, etc.

An aside: In the course of another telephone conversation with my mum about Nan’s birth certificate, Mum thought she could have been born a year before or later than 1908. This was feasible, I suppose, as Nan did not have a birth certificate.