1891 census update

Everything's ticking along nicely - I've now checked and corrected all the entries from the first enumeration district, which makes up 27 pages of the total 62.

Enumerator George CLEAVER has some interesting spellings - "Violet" is consistently recorded as "Voilet", Florence and Florance are used interchangeably, and the charwomen are invariably down as "chair woman". There's some other interesting things to look into, like George SMITH, Eliza CUTLER and Betsy FOUNTAINE who are all in their 20s, from Woodford "North Hants", and within a few pages of each other - I wonder if they are siblings? I've also located another brickmaker, Frederick WAKEMAN from Middlesex, although he's listed as a visitor so it's not clear whether he might have been working at the Littleworth brickyard or not.

May update

The military pages have been reworked - I have split these into multiple pages (WW1, WW2 and all other servicemen), added some entries, and expanded some entries. If you know of anyone I've missed, please email me and let me know their details.

In particular, if you have any more information on these men from the War Memorial, please let me know:
Alfred BLEW (WW2)
John BULL (WW2)
Tony HAYNES (WW2)
John HORN (WW2)
Harold RANDALL (WW1)
Samuel SMITH (WW1)

Harold RANDALL and Samuel SMITH

Harold RANDALL and Samuel SMITH both appear on the War Memorial, but I don't have any further information on either man. Does anyone out there know anything more about their service details?

TAYLOR in World War 1

Abandoned the hundreds of SMITH entries, but it turns out George TAYLOR is a needle in a haystack as well!

[updated: Thankfully the lovely folks at Military-Genealogy.com had a George Taylor with a birthplace of Wing, so I didn't have to go through all the G Taylors over at CWGC.]

SMITH in World War 1

I'm working on updates to the military pages, trying to expand the WW1 entries with further details on each man. Names like Oscar RIMINGTON are easy to identify in the Commonwealth Graves Commission website, others like Samuel SMITH are somewhat more challenging! While I'm ploughing through the several hundred alternatives in case Wing is mentioned in the next of kin (which is the only way I can definitively identify that's our guy), does anyone happen to be connected to the Smiths of Wing?

Smith

Over the last couple of days I've been working with Margaret trying to identify her SMITHs. We can't even tell for sure whether her William Smith did come from Wing, let alone which one of the multiple candidates he might be.

It's hard enough trying to research common names, I know this from looking at my own Hughes and White families. It's even harder if your lot never stayed still for more than five minutes - and while there have been plenty of Smiths in Wing over the last 400 years there seems to be barely a single one that spent their whole life in the village with their major life events dutifully recorded in the parish registers. So my sympathies to the Smith researchers out there.

The first enumeration district of the 1891 census transcription is now done - of course, the second enumeration district is bigger.....