bluebird research

The eight currently available decennial census returns for England & Wales, stretching from 1841 to 1911, form the single most informative set of family-based records for genealogists with family resident in the country during the long nineteenth century. The 1841 census features many individuals born in the second half of the eighteenth century, while the 1911 census includes some individuals who will have died in the very recent past and even perhaps some centenarians who survive today. The 1921 census will be the next major milestone in English & Welsh family history publishing online when released by The National Archives at a currently unknown date some time over the next five to 10 years.

Some researchers come to the census expecting to find ancestors born abroad – they know already that antecedents of theirs came from southern Italy or Germany, say, or were part of the great Ashkenazic exodus from Tsarist Russia. Others, however, expecting to find an unbroken run of family born in England or Wales, often within the same county through the generations, are surprised by completely unexpected findings. I am not here referring to perspective-changing discoveries, such as great grandfather having been a Frenchman, or grandmother a Levantine. I mean individual or multiple events which point to an unanticipated period abroad in the life of a family.

My own roots lie in East Kent and I am alert to the occurrence in unexpected contexts of what I think of as being distinctive local East Kent surnames. Many of these are in fact found elsewhere, either as a result of Kentish emigration within England or Wales, or of the Kent family having common roots with another branch in a completely different part of the country; or simply coincidentally, with the Kentish family being unrelated to bearers of the same surname elsewhere in England.

Recently I came across some of the names which interest me in the parish registers of the English church in Moscow. One of these is Stroud. This family didn’t prove to be from Kent, however.

In the 1911 census there is an 11-year old Mira Stroud living at 25 Mona Street, Beeston in Nottinghamshire, with her place of birth given quite clearly as “Russia”. She is with older and younger siblings all born in Beeston, and a widowed mother who is a grocer and a native of Nottingham. Confronted with this record, one could be excused for being baffled and for doubting the evidence of the census.

But the census is correct. One can also find Mira on the 1901 census, at the same address, aged 1 year, with her mother and her father (Wm Jos, a “general dealer” born in Swindon, Wiltshire). This time her two oldest siblings, Kate Matilda and Wm Jos Granger Stroud, are recorded as having been born in Moscow but her immediately older sibling, Nancy, aged 2, born in Beeston. This shows that the family must have had at least two sojourns in Russia.

The baptism register of the British Chapel in Moscow records that Mira Stroud was born on 8th/20th November 1899 and baptised on 15th/28th January 1900 (the dates being those in the Julian and Gregorian calendars respectively, the former being used by both church and state in pre-Revolutionary Russia). Mira was the daughter of William Joseph and Mary Ann Elizabeth Stroud. Helpfully, the baptism register also records that the parents were married at the British Consulate. The father was the “Manager of Brickworks, Koudinovo” in the Moscow guberniya. Koudinovo is properly transliterated as Kudinovo (Кудиново in Russian).

Searching back through the register one can then find Mira’s older brother William Joseph Granger Stroud born 22nd May / 3rd Jun 1896 and baptised 4th/16th August 1896. This time the father William Joseph Stroud is described as being a “Manager, Lace Manufactory, Moscow”. This immediately offers some clarification – Nottinghamshire was famous for its lacemaking and one can tentatively infer that a Russian lace manufacturer sought in Notts a person with the necessary experience and expertise to develop its business in Moscow.

The register entry for Kate Matilda Stroud is even more interesting. She was born 10th/22nd February and was baptised 28th April / 9th April 1893. Although unfortunately the occupation of the father is not given, the maiden surname of the mother is shown as Waplington and the record states that the parents were married at “the British Vice Consulate, Moscow, Nov 10th 1889”. This would explain where the family was at the time of the 1891 census.

What was also interesting was the discovery of a second Stroud family in Russia at about the same time. Arthur Edward and Elizabeth Stroud had daughters Nellie Olga born in 1890 and Katie Melanie in 1892 in Moscow. The father is described as “Lacemaker, Moscow” on both occasions. This family is back in England by 1901, when they are resident in Derby and the father is stated to have been born in Swindon. Later an Arthur Edward Stroud, lace manufacturer of Long Eaton, Derbyshire, went on to make patent applications connected with his “twist-lace machine” in 1920.

It seems that William Joseph and Arthur Edward Stroud were brothers from Wanborough, a small village to the east of Swindon. Their origins seem humble – not in lace manufacture, and not in brickmaking, after all. According to the 1871 and 1881 censuses, their father Joseph Stroud was a boot- or shoe-maker. How did the brothers come to work in Russia? Did they respond to advertisements in England, did they have an acquaintance who went out to Russia first and then offered them work? As often is the case, vital records can provide facts, but they cannot always produce explanations.