Drivers Fields, 1841
One page of the 1841 census, found 13 September 2026, containing the entire family this archive's oldest claim depends on — and one name nobody expected.
Everything this archive says about Gloucestershire hangs on one line in a Queensland death register: when Miriam Wakefield died in Brisbane in 1909, the registrar wrote her parents down as James Wakefield and Hannah Saniger. Nobody had ever found that couple in England.
On 13 September 2026 somebody looked in the census. They are all there, in one house, with a one-year-old called Miriam.
The household, exactly as it is written
| Surname | Forenames | Sex | Age | Occupation | Born in county? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SINEGAR | Lyddya | F | 70 | Independent | Out of County |
| WAKEFIELD | James | M | 35 | Mason Journeyman | Gloucestershire |
| WAKEFIELD | Hannah | F | 35 | — | Out of County |
| WAKEFIELD | Hiram | M | 4 | — | Gloucestershire |
| WEBB | Matilda | F | 2 | — | Gloucestershire |
| WAKEFIELD | Aaron | M | 1 | — | Gloucestershire |
| WAKEFIELD | Miriam | F | 1 | — | Gloucestershire |
Transcribed by FreeCEN from HO107/374, enumeration district 13, page 10. documented
A record nobody in this family had read, agreeing with them
| The census says | The family tree says |
|---|---|
| The parish St Paul, Bristol | the tree says Miriam was baptised at St Paul, Bristol agrees |
| The street Drivers Fields | the tree records her brother Jabez born at “Drivers Field, Gloucester” in February 1843 agrees |
| The father James Wakefield, mason journeyman, born in Gloucestershire | the tree has James Wakefield, born Gloucestershire 1799 agrees |
| The mother Hannah Wakefield, aged 35, born outside the county | the tree has Hannah Saniger, born 1805 agrees |
| The children Hiram 4, Aaron 1, Miriam 1 | all three are in the tree, with Hiram born May 1837 and Aaron 1840 agrees |
| And one more person Lyddya Sinegar, 70, living on her own means | the tree says Hannah's mother was Lydia — and that her father John Saniger died in 1824 and here it gets interesting |
Lyddya Sinegar, aged seventy, living on her own means
SINEGAR is one of the eleven spellings of Saniger — it is on this archive's own list, taken from the Gloucestershire registers. The list → And the family tree, quite independently, says Hannah Saniger's mother was Lydia, and that her father John Saniger died in 1824.
A widow of seventy, carrying the mother's maiden surname, living in her married daughter's house and described as Independent — living on her own means rather than working — is exactly what the tree predicts without ever having seen this page.
The 1851 census would settle it outright: from 1851 the enumerators recorded relationship to head of household and an exact birthplace. FreeCEN holds 221 Gloucestershire Wakefields for 1851 and 31 of them in Bristol, but not this family — nationally only 36% of the 1851 pieces are transcribed, and the piece covering Drivers Fields is not among them. a coverage gap, not an absence
Five clerks, forty-one years, one name
This archive spent a week trying to prove “Saniger” from the English end — parish registers, civil registration, a census. The answer was in Queensland the whole time, and the reason nobody had found it is that nobody had searched the index by the mother's name.
The whole family emigrated. James Wakefield died in Brisbane in 1857. Queensland death registrations name the parents of the deceased — and five of Hannah's children died there.
| Child | Died | Mother, as the clerk wrote her | Registration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ephraim Wakefield | 26/05/1868 | Anna Sanniger | 1868/B/4544 |
| Aaron Wakefield | 21/09/1896 | Hannah Sanegar | 1896/C/3402 |
| Zillah Frederich | 27/06/1900 | Hannah Saniger | 1900/C/3322 |
| Hiram Wakefield | 25/06/1905 | Hannah Sanigar | 1905/B/5782 |
| Miriam Sneyd | 12/08/1909 | Hannah Saniger | 1909/C/1054 |
And Hannah's own registration goes one further. She died on 4 July 1873 — the date the tree gives, to the day — and registration 1873/C/603 names her father as “John Jenniger”. The tree says John Saniger. A capital S read as a J is among the commonest misreadings in nineteenth-century clerking, and the forename and the remainder of the surname agree exactly. the obvious reading, and labelled as a reading
And the marriage this whole archive turns on. Miriam Wakefield married William Hartley Sneyd at Brisbane on 15 November 1859, registration 1859/B/255. She was nineteen — this site had said twenty-one. Corrected → Her brothers Hiram and Aaron married Margaret and Elizabeth Ann Birch four months apart in 1861.
Hannah was not born in Gloucestershire
Both women are entered “Out of County”. In a Bristol enumeration returned under Gloucestershire, that means neither Hannah nor Lyddya was born in the county — and it explains, at last, why a week of searching the Gloucestershire parish registers found no Hannah Saniger anywhere. She is not there because she was not born there.
The family tree says Hannah was born on 23 July 1805 at "Berkley, Gloucester". That looked like a misspelling of Berkeley in Gloucestershire — but Berkley is also a real parish in Somerset, near Frome, and a Somerset birth would fit “Out of County” exactly. So it was tested.
Which leaves Berkeley in Gloucestershire, where the transcript stops in 1677 — a hundred and twenty-eight years before she was born. Her baptism is not missing. It is untranscribed, and those are different things.
Where this leaves it
- The couple exists, and they are where the tree said. James and Hannah Wakefield, St Paul, Bristol, with Miriam aged one. documented
- Miriam's birth is registered — June quarter 1840, Bristol, volume 11 page 183, the only one in England in five years. documented
- A Saniger woman of the right generation is in the house, and the tree names Hannah's mother Lydia without reference to this record. inferred
- Hannah was born outside Gloucestershire, which is why she could never be found in it. Where she was born is now the open question, and it is a sharper one than the archive had yesterday.
- The £2.50 certificate still matters, and matters more. Miriam's GRO birth entry names her mother with her maiden surname. It would confirm “Saniger” from an English record for the first time. The queue →
The Gloucestershire registers, and what they did not hold → · Miriam Wakefield → · Every source read →