Who Do You Think You Are? 2011
Seb Coe
This week we hear again from our expert researcher, Roy Stockdill, who has been delving into London 2012 Olympic Committee chairman Seb Coe's past.
Seb's paternal great-grandfather Robert Coe is an especially interesting character in Seb's family tree. His 1881 census return is very peculiar and throws up many questions.
Robert Coe and Jane Artlett, daughter of a Dover fishmonger, married in Kensington in the July-September quarter of 1880. They had their first child, a boy also called Robert, who was born in Chelsea in early 1881.
The 1851, 1861 and 1871 censuses consistently show Robert Coe senior as having been born at Tanfield Lea, a Durham mining village, in 1850 or 1851. But where were Robert and Jane in 1881? An extensive search of the census proved unfruitful.
It was time to employ findmypast.co.uk's advanced census search facility, which is especially useful when trying to find elusive ancestors. I entered the first name Robert, the birth year 1851 +/- 2 years, birthplace as Tanfield and the first name of another person in the household as Jane, Robert's wife. I left the last name field blank:
The search produced five possible matches, of which only one fitted. This was Robert Harrison, a carpenter and joiner, born in 1850 in Tanfield, Durham. His wife Jane was born in Dover, and a son Robert, aged 0, was born in 1881 in Chelsea. They were in the 1881 census at 4 Francis Street, Chelsea. Every fact fitted the Coe family – apart, of course, from the last name. Click on the image to enlarge it:
My instinct that this was the right family was confirmed beyond doubt when I found the baptism of Robert junior at St Simon's Church, Chelsea, on 3 April 1881. He was baptised as Robert Coe, son of Robert and Jane, the father was a joiner, and the address given was 4 Francis Street, Chelsea – the same as that of the Harrison family in the census. Astonishingly, Robert junior's baptism took place on the same day as the census, 3 April!
Why would Robert, his wife and son appear in the census as Harrison and in the child's baptismal record as Coe on the same day? There is no doubt that the image of the census page is crystal clear – could it be an enumerator's error? It scarcely seems credible that even a tired enumerator, fed up after a day tramping the streets, would mistake Coe for Harrison?
In my experience, when someone changed their name in a census return it was often because they wanted to avoid someone looking for them – the police perhaps, or some other authority – and they feared the census would give the game away. Why then did Robert give the real family name when baptising his son on the same day?
A search of the 1911 census revealed the Coe family – Robert, aged 61, his wife Jane, 51, son Percy, then 17 (who is Seb's paternal grandfather), and two daughters, Ann and Jane – living at Summers Town, Wandsworth, in South London. Robert and Jane had been married for 31 years and had seven children altogether, all of them still living. The couple had four older sons, who by 1911 had married or left home – click on the image to enlarge it:
We can see that the birthplaces, ages and occupations of Robert and Jane 'Harrison' in 1881 match those of Robert and Jane Coe in 1911.
To try to solve the mystery of the 1881 census return once and for all, I checked several pages either side of the 1881 census entry for the Harrison/Coe family, wondering whether there might have been another family who had somehow got confused with Robert and Jane in the enumerator's notebook, but nothing presented itself. I found no other reference to Robert Coe as Harrison, so the mystery of the last names must remain unsolved for now...
Roy used the advanced census search on findmypast.co.uk to find Seb's paternal great-grandfather, the elusive Robert Coe. Roy was able to search the 1881 census by first name, year of birth, place of birth and another person in the same household, without needing to enter a last name. This is a really useful search tool to use when you've been unable to find your ancestors in the census.
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