Job and Jane Miller of Elmdon, Essex

I am following Lena Parry's maternal ancestry for now as the families involved are all from the same district of England. Job Miller and Jane Corbey were the great-grandparents of Lena Parry, making them my 3 x great grandparents.

Job was born in Elmdon, Essex in March 1790. His parents were Joseph Miller and Sarah Burgess.  Job is a biblical name and is pronounced to rhyme with 'Robe'.

Jane Corbey was born in Elmdon in June 1794. Her parents were James Corbey and Jane Deane. 

The ancestral roots of both Miller and Corbey families are in the villages around Elmdon. Some parts of the family can be traced to the late 1500s, almost to the point where parish records were first established. 

Job Miller and Jane Corbey were married at St Nicholas Church in Elmdon in May 1819.  They set up home in Elmdon and Job worked as a ‘Woodward’, which was a forester or gamekeeper. They had seven children born between 1820 and 1836.

Job died in 1848 aged 59 and was buried at Elmdon.  After her husband’s death, Jane worked as an agricultural labourer.  Jane died in 1867 aged 73.  She was also buried at Elmdon.

We can find out a lot more about Job and Jane's family than earlier generations, mainly because of the census records. The first census of the UK was conducted in 1841, and then every 10 years after that. many of the original census returns have survived, and each census added a bit more detail to what was recorded about each person. The 1841 census was the most basic, but it still gives is a very good picture of the family.

Each line gives us the name, age and occupation of a person and whether they were born in the county in which they were now living. In the above example that I have extracted from one of the two columns on the page, you can see Job, Jane and five of their seven children. Two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, are not listed, because they were both working as servants in other homes (see below).  The word under occupation for Thomas is 'Son' and the word beside Job Jr and William is 'Do', an abbreviation of 'ditto'! Eliza and Edward are listed as 'Daughter' and 'Son' respectively.

In the 1851 Census we get more details such as marital status and date of birth. We also often get the name of the street or the name of the house. The level of detail increases slowly over the decades. Census records are usually released after 100 years are are available through some, if not all the major online family history websites. That means that for the UK at least, you can get up to the 1920s. But don't hold your breath for Australia! While summary records are available for the colonial period, the census records after federation were not preserved - they were destroyed! It was government policy to destroy census forms after statistical analysis was completed. This changed after 1996 and now you can choose whether your records will be preserved.

A final tip for any other family history researchers. The indexing of census records is a bit haphazard, and it sometimes pays to do a bit of double-checking or manual page-turning. In the case of this family, the records for Elizabeth and Sarah had been wrongly transcribed on ancestry.com.au. I found them by searching on findmypast.com.au. 

• Elizabeth is listed as 'Elizabeth Phillips' in the neighbouring district of Wenden Lofts. 
• Sarah is listed as 'Sarah Milkes on page 2 of the Elmdon returns. Her family above are on page 10.

These mistakes are understandable when you see the documents the transcribers worked from, but I think they are easier once you have a little bit of context.  See the original entry for Elizabeth Miller below.

Elizabeth is the second line. I can see how someone could read 'Phillips', but once you know it could be 'Miller'I think it is easier to see. It is easy to do some checking to see if there was a Sarah Phillips from the local area (people rarely moved far), and there are none in the right timeframe. Another clue might be the two younger girls listed below Elizabeth and also servants at the same house. Rebecca and Mary Corby were probably born in Elmdon in 1824 and 1826 respectively and they are Elizabeth's cousins. Their father was James Corby, Jane Corbey's older brother - the spelling of the surname varies.