Mortlock brick wall - any ideas?

[Anstey Nomad]

Next spring we have a long lost relative who found me through the internet, visiting from Australia. She’s actually OH’s rellie on his Dad’s side and the story is that his great grandma’s sister, Julia Mortlock (b1877), had an illegitimate baby that she then passed over to great grandma to be brought up with her family, before there was a formal adoption process. This baby then grew up, married and emigrated to Oz and the rest, as they say, is history.

I’d like to be able to tell this lady more about her direct antecedents, but we have a brick wall.

Maud was born in 1902 or 1903 and is aged 8 in the 1911 census where she appears with the family of John James Manning Medlock and his wife Jeanette (née Mortlock) at Station Street in Foleshill, now part of Coventry but then outside the City boundary. Just to confuse things she is wrongly indexed on Ancestry as ‘Medlock’.

Her place of birth is given as Cambridge. Before I saw this census entry I had checked all the Coventry baptisms for the relevant period and not found her, so it seems entirely credible that she would have been born in Cambridge, close to where the family originally came from and where she still had relatives living at that time.

On the 1911 Census Julia, still unmarried, is in service at Berners Hall, Roding, Ongar, Essex.

I have checked on Ancestry as far as I can for a marriage and/or a death for Julia without finding anything that looks obvious, so as far as I can see at the moment she has just dropped off the face of the earth after 1911.

Maud grew up using the surname of her ‘adopted’ family which was Medlock and when she married John O’Brien Middleton in Coventry in DQ 1922 she used the Medlock name and gave her ‘adopted’ father’s details in the relevant column on the certificate, so no help there.

Their daughter name removed was born in 1923 and in 1927 the family emigrated to Australia. Name removed is still alive but has dementia and is unable to help at all. It’s her daughter that is coming to see us in the Spring.

However, we cannot find a birth registration for Maud in either Mortlock, her mother’s name, or Medlock, her ‘adopted’ name.

All I can think of is that she was actually registered at birth under her father’s name, but no-one here has any idea who her father might have been and no-one in Oz can remember ever having seen Maud’s birth certificate.

Is there any way I can try to find out who Maud’s father was other than going through all the available parish registers for Cambridge for the appropriate years in the hope that one of them might reveal a child called Maud whose mother is named Julia? Would an illegitimate child have been baptized anyway?

Does anyone have any other ideas I could try or is this a hopeless quest?

Thanks for reading this.

AN

[HarrysMum]

Sorry..........I'm having brain fog..either having the grandchildren or menapause...lol

Did Maud die in Australia??? If so, her father's name wuld be on the death cert if anyone knew it.
But I'm assuming, as she married under under her 'adopted' father's name, that will be the same.

[HarrysMum]

Did Maud have a middle name??

There are only 9 Mauds born 1902/03 in Cambridge on FreeBMD and only one without a middle name.
I suppose you could search all of them in the 1911 and see if any are not where they should be...............barring deahts of course.

[Anstey Nomad]

Thanks Libby - I'll check out Free BMD and the 1911. Will also ask her granddaughter if she has a copyof her Death Certificate.

Cheers

AN

[kiterunner]

AN, I've removed the name of the lady as she is still living and obviously can't give her consent for her details to be posted on here. I don't think her name is necessary for this research, though?

Yes, illegitimate children were baptised but it is unlikely that the father's name would appear in the baptism entry anyway.

Edit - sorry, didn't realise you were thinking she was registered under her father's name! In that case, his name would very likely be on the baptism too, yes.

[Margaret in Burton]

I have hundreds of Mortlock's in my tree, all from Suffolk though.

Take a look here:

http://web.singnet.com.sg/~tonym/mortlock.html

Contact Tony to add yours to the site, there are loads of people who have done.

[email protected]

There is also a guy called Robert Griffiths who is doing an unofficial one name study of Mortlocks. His email addy is on that site.

I haven't been in touch with him for years and really must go and catch up on the archive.

[Margaret in Burton]

Oh, and you will find that Mortlock is horribly mistranscribed sometimes, Mortlack and Mortlake are a couple of examples.

My grandmothers maiden name was Mortlock

[Margaret in Burton]

There is always a possibility that Julia married after 1911.

Jeanette is Julia's sister.

1881 census

RG11; Piece: 1609; Folio: 9; Page: 11


1891

RG12; Piece: 1241; Folio 14; Page 22


1901 living with Jeanette and her husband and transcribed as Medlock, the image does say Mortlock

RG13; Piece: 2913; Folio: 171; Page: 34

[Margaret in Burton]

Looking back through the census, these Mortlocks appear to have originated from Swavesey, Cambridgeshire. Quite a large family back to 1841.

[Margaret in Burton]

Going back to Maud.

If you assume that Julia gave birth where her parents lived, that comes under St Ives, Cambridgeshire.
Searching just for Maud and no surname comes up with:

Maud Hard, June qtr 1903 St Ives 3b 282

Maud Smith, Sept qtr 1903 St Ives 3b 287