Step 1 – The 1901 Census Analysis

My next step is to find the marriage certificate for Martino Marelli and his wife. Thanks to the 1901 Census, I will also source Amy’s birth certificate, as I have learnt her maiden name, approximate year of birth and birthplace. Hopefully, you will have similar information about your own family.



Before heading off to search for a marriage or other certificate, I suggest you analyse the information you found on the 1901 Census. In my case it raised some questions. Was Amy only 13 years old when her first child was born? If so, then why was there a ten-year gap between the ages of two of their children? (Matilda born in 1883 and Albert born in 1893). Could Martino have been married twice?

If the ten-year gap indicates a possible second marriage I have to presume that the second marriage took place close to 1893. Therefore, I have decided to look at the 1891 Census for Martino and family for clarification of my suspicions.

Step 2 – 1891 Census Analysis

Log on to your chosen Census resource website, in my case Ancestry.co.uk, and select the Census year 1891.

To my dismay, keying in the name Martino Marelli produced no results. So I tried using just the surname of Marelli. This produced five persons with the surname Marelli. Unfortunately, none was related to my family.

Now I had two choices. I could search the whole parish of Battersea in the district of Lambeth, and hope that he was living there at the time, or I could try some surname spelling variations. I keyed in Marelli and chose to have a Soundex search (a search that would produce spelling variations of the surname Marelli), which gave me over 29,000 results. So I tried again using varying information about the location such as Battersea and Lambeth, using spellings such as Mirilli, Morrelli, Murelli etc. and still nothing! Did this mean trawling through 29,000 results or, worse, searching the whole of Lambeth in the hope that the Marelli family was living there in 1891. With a name like Marelli, I expected this to be far simpler, so what other information do I have that is uncommon that would help my search?

Eventually, it hit me like a sledgehammer! I decided to try anyone born in Italy now living in Lambeth.

This produced 33 results and only one that looked possible, Martins Marcelli:



Clicking on ‘View Record’ produced the following information:



Viewing the original told me I had the correct record, even though transcribed incorrectly. Not only had I found another daughter of Martino born in 1877, making it impossible for Amy to be her mother, the original document also told me that Martino was a widower. There is also information about a nephew, George McDonald.

Ancestry also provides a sample of handwriting used in the original Census returns. Select a Census year and on the right of the screen you will find downloadable blank Census forms and sample handwriting.





The information I now have about Martino is that he was previously married probably pre-1877, when his daughter Ellen was born, and between 1891 (Martino is a widower on the 1891 Census) and 1893, when Albert Marelli was born. I decided to look for both marriage certificates, because the second marriage provides direct ancestors to my husband, and, from the first marriage, the children of Martino and Ellen are half-ancestors.