Hi,

I am trying to find my great-uncle, gentleman called John Cooke. Only trace so far is on the 1911 Wales census ( aged 2). The only additional info from a family member is that they recall his wife was a lady called Honore ( died June 2002)and they adopted a girl called Betty.

His parents were Samuel Cooke ( 1866-1923) and Charlotte Hampton who lived in West Dean.

John and Honore possibly spent some time living in Stratford Upon Avon.

Thank you.

This would appear to be John in the 1939 Register:
246 Chester Road, Birmingham, Meriden R.D., Warwickshire, England
First name(s) Last name(s) DOB Sex Occupation Marital status Schedule Schedule Sub Number
John R A Trowman 19 Feb 1910 Male Grocery & Provision Assistant Married 10 1
Winifred L Trowman 12 Jul 1910 Female Metal Viewer Married 10 2
John Cooke 11 May 1908 Male Railway Goods Shu?Ter Married 10 1
Honor M Cooke 09 Mar 1910 Female Unpaid Domestic Dut Married 10 2
Alice H Randall 17 Apr 1874 Female Incapacitated Widowed 10 3

His marriage to Honor:
Marriages Mar 1935
Cooke John Randall Evesham 6c 299
Randall Honor M Cooke Evesham 6c 299

His death:
First name(s) JOHN
Last name COOKE
Gender Male
Birth day 11
Birth month 5
Birth year 1908
Age -
Death quarter 3
Death year 1980
District Coventry
County Warwickshire
Volume 33
Page 0250
Country England
Record set England & Wales Deaths 1837-2007

and death of Honor:
First name(s) HONOR MURIEL
Last name COOKE
Gender Female
Birth day 9
Birth month 3
Birth year 1910
Age -
Death quarter 2
Death year 2002
District Leicester
District number 6001F
Register number F12D
Entry number 137
Date of registration mm/yy 0602
County Leicestershire

Honor's address in Leicester (Source Electoral Roll)
First name(s) Honor M
Last name Cooke
Year 2002-03
Street St. Saviours Road
Town Leicester
County Leicestershire
Country England
Postcode LE5 4HN
Address 535, St. Saviours Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 4HN

Mike

Brilliant, thanks very much Mike, slowly filling in the gaps on our family tree!

Very cool, this is also a gap in my family tree, though John is a very distant ancestor. His grandmother Ophelia Kear, is one of my third great grandaunts!

First name(s) John
Country Wales
Last name Cooke
Volume 11A
Birth quarter 2
Page 22A
Birth year 1908

1911 Whitecroft Near Lydney
Samuel Cooke Head Married Male 45 1866 Coal miner hewer West Dean Glos
Charlotte Cooke Wife Married Female 43 1868 - West Dean Glos
Thomas Alfred Cooke Son Single Male 21 1890 Coal miner hewer West Dean Glos
Samuel Cooke Son Single Male 19 1892 Coal miner hewer West Dean Glos
Louisa Cooke Daughter Single Female 16 1895 Mothers help West Dean Glos
George Cooke Son - Male 13 1898 School West Dean Glos
Charlotte Cooke Daughter - Female 11 1900 School West Dean Glos
Dorothy Cooke Daughter - Female 5 1906 School West Dean Glos
John Cooke Son - Male 2 1909 - West Dean Glos

1921 West Dean, Monmouth
Cooke
Samuel
1865
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Cooke
Charlotte
1868
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Cooke
Dorothy
1905
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Cooke
George
1898
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Cooke
John
1908
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Cooke
Lily
1900
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Cooke
Gerald
1920
West Dean, Monmouth, Monmouthshire & Gloucestershire, Wales

Year: 1920
Month: Nov
Day: 26
Parents_Surname: COOKE
Child_Forenames: Frederick Norman Gerald
Fathers_Forenames: George
Mothers_Forenames: Lilian Attay
Mothers_Surname:
Residence: Woodside
Occupation: Collier
Officiating_Minister: C H T Wright
Event: Baptism
Memoranda:
Notes:
Register_Reference: P57 IN 1/6
Page_Number: 93
Parish_Chapel: Bream

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

I've done more research on John's family side of the tree.

It looks like the rest of his siblings remained in Gloucestershire.

I cannot find information about his brother Samuel b. 1892 after the 1911 census.

I cannot find information about his brother Thomas Alfred b. 1890 after the 1921 census. He married Mary A. Beale in 1915 and in 1921 they had no children.

At some point in time, John's father Samuel and several of Samuel's siblings changed their surname spelling from Cook to Cooke. I understand that Cooke may have been the original spelling of that last name going back in time, but I'm wondering if there could have been a family incident that caused it as it made it quite a challenge to search for the various families.

Happy to share additional information if anyone is interested. My ancestor Ophelia Kear is John Cooke's grandmother and her husband was John Cook (ca1839-1902).

It would appear that Samuel Cooke born c1891 died in 1912:

Deaths Sep 1912
Cooke Samuel 21 Monmouth 11a 14

Burial
Year: 1912
Month: Sep
Day: 8
Surname: COOKE
Forenames: Samuel
Residence: Whitecroft
Age_at_death: 21
Officiating_Minister: D.J.Banham (Vicar)
Event: Burial
Cause_of_death:
Memoranda:
Notes:
Register_Reference: P245 IN 1/30
Page_No: 139
Parish_Chapel: Parkend

You can find his baptism in the Parish Registers on this site and this tells us he was born 5 April 1891.

Mike

Thanks very much Mike! Somehow I missed that one in my research, might have only looked in Gloucestershire but not Monmouthshire.

I did also finally find Thomas and Mary Cooke residing in Worcestershire in the 1939 register. His correct birth year is 1889. She was born in 1888 but her birth date is wrong in the register. Out of the many Thomas Cooke's born in 1889, I can't determine a death date, doesn't look like it was in Worcestershire.

Hi,
I appreciate I'm new to this search so apologies if I'm revisiting old ground, but I find the FreeBMD site excellent for quickly looking-up death dates. I wonder if this is your Thomas Alfred, it seems a good fit to me, wotyereckon ?;

Surname Given Name DoB District Volume Page Transcriber
Deaths Jun 1972
Cook Thomas Alfred 24 Ap 1889 Cheltenham 7b 852 baters-mum

I appreciate the surname may not be spelt as you expected, but bear in mind that even if the family had deliberately changed the way they spelt it, this name is one that can easily be mis-spelt, or mis-transcribed, when the various records were created.
Also, when you say the spelling changed at a particular time, what's your point of reference for this change ?. I've seen cases where a family's surnames seem to have changed slighly with time, but the PRs show it's cos the family have moved church, or gained a new Minister, and he spells their names differently than his predecessor did.

This seems a good fit for wife Mary A, also from FreeBMD.

Surname Given Name Age District Volume Page Transcriber
Deaths Mar 1963
COOK MARY A. 75 CHELTENHAM 7B 522 jemello

So born abt 1888, as you know. Seems a good fit, worth following-up with care as it's a common nameset in that District. The FreeBMD site does not give any relevant records for a "Mary A CookE" in this District.

I don't currently have any subs, but hopefully more info is available on Ancestry, FMP, etc ?.
I'm also a big fan of the old newspaper sites, may find obituaries or funeral notices etc.

Hope this helps, J.

https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

Thanks so much Jeff! Yes, this is the Thomas Alfred Cook(e) that I was looking for, as the birth dates match :) It also makes sense that the Mary you found is his wife.

I must admit that in the 1900's I had been looking only under Cooke rather than Cook, and in Free BMD you must use the wildcard * in order to get a search with both spellings.

I then checked back to the birth spellings of all of Samuel Cook(e)'s children. All of them show in Free BMD with a spelling of Cook, except two. Yet in both 1901 and 1911 censuses the name is spelled Cooke.

So it's strange that Thomas and Mary must have reverted their spelling to Cook sometime after 1939 as they are listed as Cooke in the 1939 register. I would also never have thought to look in Cheltenham as most of this family is either located in Forest of Dean or Gloucester. Yet Thomas was in Worcester by 1939 and with the proximity to Cheltenham it is not surprising.

When checking those FreeBMD birth records, I also notice that Thomas was the only child born in Cheltenham! All of the census records say Whitecroft or West Dean - makes you wonder how he got to be born in Cheltenham!

Cheers.

You're very welcome !
I see you're a night owl like me, or perhaps you're one of the many forum users from t'other side of the world, not that it matters of course, all are very welcome.

Re using the wildcard for FreeBMD, I must admit to have never done so, despite being a regular site user for the last 15 or so years haha. I prefer to use as little filtering as possible, as sometimes that hides relevant hits, and I do serval searches, each using a spelling variant - the beauty of the FreeBMD site is it displays the results in a format thats easy and quick to browse thro by eye.

Regarding why he was born in Cheltenham, I'd suggest it was perhaps down to his father's profession - I'd be interested to know what that was ?. I wonder if the British Army was involved, the town was very popular with retired Army and/or Empire types. Or similarly if was around the time of WW1 or the 1939 register when Gloster & Cheltenham had several aerospace/munitions factories ?
https://www.cheltenhammuseum.org.uk/collection/cheltenham-history-4-the-victorian-town-...
Of course, that's assuming they were living there - when in fact they may have just been visiting, I don't know ?. Not applicable here, but it seems to have been a common theme in the old days for a young mother to return home to her parents to have her first-born child, before the days of NHS etc of course.

Earlier today I researched another Forest family, according to most Census' from the 1860s thro to 1911 and their deaths in the 60s, the family had always lived in Cinderford, East dean. Yet for just one census, the 1901, they were all settled and working in north Birmingham !

Similarly, my Grandfather's family originated and lived most their lives in Longhope, since the 1850s thro to the 1980s in various generations, so I was very surprised to find that during the 1901 census his family were all living in Liverpool of all places !. I've no real idea why this happened, it was only for a few years. At the time my Grandad's father was training to run a pub there, a business my Grampy himself got into in Longhope after a few decades as a wood turner, taking after his own father who had presumably decided the beer trade and/or big city wasn't for him, as by 1911 they'd all returned to Longhope where my G-Grandad and then my Grandad joined the local sawmills and wood turnery - all very odd indeed !

I'm in Canada, Jeff, where it's still in mid-evening.

Thomas' father Samuel was a coal miner or coal miner hewer in every census. I know nothing about where he would go to work, whether or not there were mines in Cheltenham as I don't know that detail from not living in England.

I do know from my research that people relocated in the days before automobiles either because of work or because of marriage. The Cook(e)s were descended from my Kear relatives, who mainly lived in Forest of Dean, but some moved to Yorkshire in the 1880's, which is where my grandmother (born Annie Kear) was from.

That all makes sense. And yes Kear is a proper old Forest surname !
Apologies as I've been adding-to my previous post while you've been typing your last one, so you might like to refresh it and read it again, it MAY give you some pointers - altho clearly the professions I suggested don't apply.
Regarding the movement of workers around the UK, and even the world, this forum has seen several discussions as to how and why this happened, as you've found it was almost the norm for coal miners to move great distances for work, especially in the first decades of the c20th as work became scare. We've seen many cases of them goig from the Yorkshire coalfields to Glos, and vice versa. My father's ancestors were mostly coal miners (btw the term "hewer" was used for the act of hewing, or cutting a "slice" of coal out of the coal face, it was often used as a badge of rank as it were, by the best miners who worked right at the coal face, as agains the "lesser" mortals who worked elsewhere in the mines).

I'll be honest, I've never heard of there being any coal mines in the Cheltenham area. As you probably know The Forest of Dean is about 20 miles southwest of Cheltenham as the crow files, and the FoD coalfield is effectively an easternmost extension of the much larger coalfields of south Wales. My home town Cinderford (or East Dean as was known around the 1890s) is on the eastern edge of the FoD coalfield. This map, and it's associated website, gives a good idea of the main UK coalfields, and there isnt any at or near Cheltenham. Odd !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:British.coa...

Regarding the miners and their various migrations, this old forum thread does a good job of explaining the why and whyfores of it all, I hope it's of interest. Personally it amazed me when I first discovered how far these workers moved around, and then across the world too.
https://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=6428

I see one of that thread's posters says their ancestors left the Forest when the Yorkshire coalfield opened - I'm not sure precisely when they're talking abut as coal has been mined in Yorkshire since Roman times (when they were also mining in the Forest) and teh Yorkshire filed was definitely being worked in a big way at the same time as the Forest output peaked in the 1800s, and so drawing the vast majority of residents into the Forest which before then had been barely inhabited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Yorkshire_Coalfield

I hope this background is of interest to you - I'm a retired mechanical and aerospace engineer, so I'm biased towards industrial hostory. Also personally I believe family history research is more about discovering how our ancestors lived their lives, and not just about chasing names and dates back as far as possible, as some researchers like to do.

atb Jeff

Yes about 98% of my grandmother's male ancestors were coal miners. The clan didn't start to obtain white collar jobs till around the 1930's. Those from Gloucestershire were mainly in West Dean.

I double-checked Thomas' birth place with GRO and it in fact was Monmouth and not Cheltenham, and that makes much more sense! I must have misread something in FreeBMD because it too says Monmouth for his entry.

Haha - I was just about to ask about Cheltenham - I see from Slowhands' post early in the thread, and the census etc results I've found tonight, your Thomas was def a Whitecroft lad.

Ah well, I've learnt a little more about Cheltenham tonite, which is fine.

----

By the way, something I found very confusing when I started researching the local history, was how many of the local BMD events were said to have occurred in Monmouth / Monmouthshire, rather than the Gloucestershire which I expected. The reason being that long before the Forest became industrialised and so filled with immigrant workers, bar a few folk maintaining the woods or working a few small mines etc, the western half of the Forest was governed by the ancient town of Monmouth which is just on the western edge of the Forest district. And Monmouth is in Wales, not England (altho the county of Monmouthshire seems to have been adopted as part of England by some Victorian mapmakers etc, perhaps as it was so wealthy in minerals which the English were keen to take away....).
Hence looking at some records we might think our ancestors were born in Wales, or Monmouth, when in truth this is just a nod toward the District that the event was registered, and not necessarily the place they were lived. Thats why the Parish Records are so very useful when accuratley placing our ancestors, especially if researching the wetsern side of the Dean around modern-day Coleford etc.

Similarly, the eastern side of the Forest was governed by the town of Westbury on Severn aka WoS, which was a busy port on the mighty Severn for centuries before the Forest was developed, in times when most transport followed the rivers such as the Wye and Severn. Hence you'll see FreeBMD records suggesting folk were born "in" WoS, when in fact it may have been any village or town inside the Forest area. And sadly some websites including Ancestry still make the mistake of confusing WoS with another Westbury many miles away in Wiltshire !!

Furthermore and as you've found, it's also a stone's thro from the bordering counties of Herefordshire, and even small remote separated parts of Worcestershire until they were sensibly adopted by Glos etc.

Regarding the FreeBMD site, if the event was in Gloucestershire, and we don't have a Parish Record, then a little more info can be found from the GLosBMD website, which is also free to use. In your Thos' case, the birth record is

Birth Details

Child Surname Child Forename Mother's Former Name Year District Office Register Entry
COOK Thomas Alfred HAMPTON 1889 Forest of Dean Monmouth, Coleford 46 234

So as well as also finding the maiden name, which FreeBMD cannot do before 1911, we now know the actual place where the Birth was registered, so a clue to where it actually took place, is the Coleford office in the Monmouth District.
This site also gives Registry Office marriages - unlike the church PRs sites.

From this site, which I hope is available abroad ?.
http://ww3.gloucestershire.gov.uk/bmd/MainMenu.aspx

Hoping this helps

All good fun !

Shortly after I kickstarted my online genealogical research during the pandemic, I realized through my searching that if I wanted to find ancestors from West Dean I would have to search in both Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire, since Monmouthshire shifted back and forth between being part of England or Wales for many years. Some of the ancestors ended up in Wales, others stayed in Gloucestershire while others moved to Yorkshire. Only a very small few of them ended up elsewhere in England, usually through marriage or after retirement.