this women who is my grandmother has been a nightmare first of all spent a couple of years looking for her as polly my mother always said her name was polly!! all dead before I was born so no one to ask info off really. anyway when I got my parents marriage certificate of course got dads fathers name hence a marriage cert for him find out her name is mary!! on the 1901 census her and her husband harry ryle Williams and their first son Arthur Charles are with Mary's parents coleford broadwell lane end, BUT!! she is down as NELDA!!!

the other thing is although caroline is their mother as you say baptised in batches!!
and on the census's I'm not competley sure I have the correct marriage for her and Thomas because looking at the records there is a caroline baggus but she I think married some one else any help with this would be very much appreciated.
kind regards

SNAP !

Hi again Chris, we seem to have very similar routines wrt answering this forum !
Cheers J

PS I cannot find a marriage for Thomas & Caroline on either this sites PRs or GlosBMD, to try and confirm her maiden name, did you see one perchance ?
Thanks.

would abergaveny be to far do you think ?1st child 1861 very possible as 4 or 5 were baptised 1871

I have found a birth for john james powell 1861 Monmouth and that's the name of one of them from the first batch so what do you think can I say for sure caroline chiver I think so THANK YOU

Thanks Chris, both date and place looks good to me too, sorry for my not spotting this one when I tried FreeBMD earlier. There's def no Thomas & Caroline marriage in GlosBMD.

From this site's PRs, is this our Caroline's burial, Doran ?
Do you know when/where Thomas was buried, I cannot tell from the many possibles in the PRs.

Record_ID: 4462
Entry_Number: 705
Year: 1914
Month: Mar
Day: 12
Surname: POWELL
Forenames: Caroline
Residence: Broadwell Lane End
Age_at_death: 75
Officiating_Minister: C Barnes vicar
Event: Burial
Cause_of_death:
Memoranda:
Notes:
Register_Reference: P82 IN 1/15
Page_No: 89
Parish_Chapel: Christchurch
Soundex: P400

So born abt 1840, so fits 1859 marriage nicely ....
However I cannot find a Caroline Chivers birth in Abergavenny c1840 on FreeBMD, altho plenty of other Chivers there, so ??.

DORAN, do you have any clues as to her age or home area eg marriage ?

I only have limited Census access, but can of course see the 1881. Is this our family ?.

"England and Wales Census, 1881"
Name: Caroline Powell
Age (Original): 40
Gender: Female
Birth Year: 1841
Birthplace: Bristol, Gloucestershire, England
Relationship to Head of Household: Wife
Marital Status: Married
Occupation:
Address: ?
Event Place: West Dean (Gloucs), Monmouthshire, England
Disability:
Record Type: Household
GS Film number: 1342259
Affiliate Publication Number: RG11
Piece/Folio: 5225 / 44
Page Number: 22
Household Gender Age Birthplace
Head Thomas Powell M 42 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England
Wife Caroline Powell F 40 Bristol, Gloucestershire, England
Son James Powell M 20 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England
Son John Powell M 14 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England
Son William Powell M 12 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England
Daughter Julia Powell F 9 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England
Daughter Mary Powell F 6 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England
Daughter Kate Powell F 1 West Dean, Gloucestershire, England ????

This looks like the same family that you've traced, Mary b1875, then Caroline claims to be from Bristol area born abt 1841 (so fits above burial record).
From FreeBMD I can find this birth which COULD POSSIBLY be her, quite a few Caroline Chivers in that area in those times;

Surname Given Name District Volume Page
-------------------------------------------------------
Births Mar 1843
-------------------------------------------------------
Chivers Caroline Clutton 11 108

The district Clutton is in the county of Somerset; information about it can be found here http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/clutton.html

Clutton includes Radstock, which is in the Somerset coalfield, this forum's seen plenty of examples of Forest miners working there and viceversa, easy access via the old Severn Railway bridge etc. Hence perhaps Thomas was working there when he met Caroline ?. (again assuming this approach is the correct one ??)
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/SOM/Radstock/index.html

Re your query earlier abt Forest miners working in Abergavenny, as Chris said this is common. My coalmining ancestors appear to originate from Lydbrook thro most of the 1800s, but for one Census they were living & mining in Aberdare, a little further away than Abergavenny. Many other Forest miners moved much farther for work, such as Durham or even America.

Finally, searching the other Census' as best I can, using the LDS / FamilySearch site as before, shows that Somerset has the highest % of Caroline CHIVERS b1800s by far for all England, abt 1/3.
https://familysearch.org/search/record/results#count=20&query=%2Bgivenname%3Acaroli...

FANTASTIC!!!!!!! BRILLIANT I can't thank you enough

Evening Chris,
I thought we settled on Abergavenny 1859 as per your earlier post ?.

Researching all FreeBMD again, which we know gives good coverage for our areas, gave what seemed like the perfect match, so close...

Surname First name(s) District Vol Page
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marriages Sep 1849 (>99%)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brown Harriet Monmouth 26 101
Chivers William Monmouth 26 101
Jones Caroline Monmouth 26 101
Powell Thomas Monmouth 26 101

Closely followed by

Surname First name(s) District Vol Page
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marriages Sep 1859 (>99%)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chivers Caroline Abergavenny 11a 136
Davies Sarah Abergavenny 11a 136
Gwynne William Abergavenny 11a 136
Powell Thomas Abergavenny 11a 136

Or am I missing something (probably) ?

I think you may have misread my post where I dismiss the suggestion by Graham that we were on the wrong track. I believe that the 1859 marriage in Abergavenny between Thomas Powell and Caroline Chivers is the most likely but one can only be absolutely certain by obtaining the certificate.

Mike