Why can’t I find George Osman in the census?
Q My grandfather, George Osman, was born in Wimborne, Dorset, c1873. I have searched for George and his father, Frederick, in census returns, but since I don’t know George’s mother’s name, I have come up blank. He married my grandmother, Emma Alice Race, in Woodditton, Suffolk, in 1907. They moved to Ireland, where George worked as a gardener.
A From the 1911 census and his marriage register entry, we know that George should have been born in Wimborne, Dorset, in about 1873 and that his father was a gamekeeper called Frederick. I think I have found him in 1901, when he was working as a gardener in Oxted, Surrey.
He is recorded as 31 – was he perhaps a little older than the later records suggest? There is a Frederick Osman working as a gamekeeper in the Wimborne area in the early 1870s, and there are several baptisms (but no George that I can find) recorded with parents Frederick and Mary Jane Osman at Wimborne Minster. Frederick was listed as a gamekeeper when they married in 1863.
Census records would suggest that at least two of Frederick’s sons (William, born 1869, and Charles, born 1874) became gardeners, so check for later records to satisfy yourself that neither of them changed their name and later became George. connection to this family, but Osman is a common surname in the area so I would recommend taking a ‘family reconstitution’ approach. Have a look at Andrew Todd’s book on the subject Family History Nuts and Bolts – the third edition was published in 2015. Essentially, gather every record (not just those online) of the name you can find in the area at that time and put together the wider family groups that were living there – you may find a clue to George’s identity.