ELBORN, Hertfordshire area, 19th Century March, 2008

Answers Places Old Herts

Kym Annetts (mannetts @t bigpond.net.au) of Gold Coast, Australia, writes: I have hit a brick wall on my Elborn line. Samuel Elborn married Rebecca Eaton circa 1830, place unknown. They had 4 children, all registered at Birmingham & it appears Rebecca died circa 1835. Samuel then appears in Glasgow marrying Jane Anderson & they had another 6 children. This line of Elborns stayed in Scotland from then on. Now I have found your references to Elborns of Hertfordshire [ELBOURN, St Albans, late 19th century]. Could there be a link?

Normally I do not answer questions in which the questioner's link to Hertfordshire is purely speculation - but a quick look at the distribution in the 1851 census, taking either the location or place of birth closest to Hertfordshire, revealed the following:

This is very interesting as the name is clearly very regional, and hence sufficiently relevant to Hertfordshire to be examined further. There were only 213 people listed and 201 were born and/or living in four northern counties to the north of London - Cambridgeshire (most), Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Middlesex (least). 10 were in Glasgow - presumably these were all you family, and the other two were "rogue" entries - a servant born and working in Berkshire, and an elderly visitor to Wales who had been born in Somerset. Clearly the odds strongly suggest that someone turning up in the Birmingham area in about 1830 came from Hertfordshire or an adjacent county.

This suggests that we ask whether Samuel was a common family name (see The Inheritance of Single Christian Names) - so back to the 1851 census:

• Samuel Elbern, father & son - born Middlesex? and living in Middlesex
• Samuel Elborn - born and living in Middlesex
• Samuel Elbourn, father & son, born and living in Cambridgeshire

This is an excellent omen (about 5 in 100 males for Samuel is much higher than average) so your Samuel Elborn ancestor could very well come from area centred on Hertfordshire. A check on familysearch  comes up with the following:

Samuel Elborn, born 21 May 1804, baptised 28 August 1804, son of Spencer & Elizabeth Elborn at St Mary, St Marylebone, [Middlesex], London.

I am not saying that this is your ancestor - for instance the birth date might be wrong (you haven't told me your Samuel's age/date of birth) or the Samuel may have died young (many beginners fail to check for this and end up with a family tree with a claimed ancestor who died as an infant). The problem of showing that a particular baptism is that of your ancestor is a common theme on this web site, and you should look at some of my recent answers (see the current newsletter - and the help/support pages).

I am cross-referencing this answer with ELBOURN, St Albans, late 19th century

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Elborn (etc) in Hertfordshire in the 18th Century

July 2013

Mara French (marafrench @t mindspring.com) write from California to say I have done some research on the Elbourn / Elbon etc. surname. If you are interested, please see http://www.frenchfamilyassoc.com/ELBEN/. My one and only question is if you know of any Elbourn from Hertfordshire who immigrated to America before 1778 -- before the American Revolutionary War, most likely to Maryland? Immigration would be ONLY between 1760-1778.

You have collected a useful amount of information about the surname in Hertfordshire in the 18th century, so first a few general points.

• Apart from convicts who were deported to America before the Revolution there are unlikely to be any explicit records of people emigrating in the Hertfordshire records. Perhaps somewhere there might be a document such as a will where a father makes a bequest to a child who has gone overseas - but at the time very few people made wills.
• Nearly all the baptism records in the modern indexes for 18th century come from Church of England parish registers - and there are no surviving birth or baptism records for those who did not worship in the established church. If a person left Hertfordshire for religion related reasons it is quite possible that there are no records of their ever having been born in the county.  I have come across cases where there was only one indexed baptism but three adults with the same name - so two of them had no indexed birth records. In such circumstances it is easy to make errors!
• Marriages could only be carried out in the Church of England - so the marriages of non-conformists are recorded - although some refused even to enter the parish church and would travel out of the county (often to London) to marry Of course anyone who emigrated before marrying will not be recorded in this way.. In addition there may have been a few cases of the earlier  "Common Law" marriage where one simply declared that you were married and there was no written record.
• Some non-conformist groups had their own chapels and burial grounds, but many did not - so some non-conformists were buried in the parish churchyard. So again you can find burials for people for whom there are no birth-related records.
• The web site FindMyPast has a special project computerising Hertfordshire registers which is in progress. Nearly 2 million new records were added on July 1st and there are many more to come - including many burial records which have never before been indexed. Similar records are not yet available online for adjacent counties.
• There is some good general advice at My Ancestors Emigrated from Hertfordshire.

The most important set of records you need to consult at this stage are the Hertfordshire Militia Ballot Lists (available on CD). These recorded men on a suitable age who were eligible for the militia - and who had not yet done duty as a militia man. There were some other exemptions - but the lists serve as a partial census on working men from 1758 to 1786.

I did a quick check and spotted a Nathaniel Elbourn who was listed at Leavesden, Watford between 1778 and 1787 who could well be the Nathaniel Elbon who you note was baptised at Abbots Langley in 1759 - so would have become eligible to be included on the list in about 1778.  If so he is clearly not someone who emigrated to America and fought in the Revolution.

I also noted  a Matthew Elborn, labourer, who was listed 1758 and 1759 at Baldock. Because the lists only started in 1758 we cannot assume anything about his age in 1758 - but it is interesting that you record a marriage of a Mathew Elbourn and Anne Row in Baldock in 1756.  Perhaps he was not listed after 1759 because he, his wife, and young child, were no longer living in Baldock ... ... ...

I have not had time to comment on your extensive collection of data but spotted one technical point. The letters C, M, and W on the burial register of St Martins  in the Field probably stand for Child (large numbers of both sexes), Man (all male) and either Woman or Wench (all female - wench was sometimes used as a word of endearment in England - but I understand developed a different, racist, meaning in America).