Hi David

I’ve been looking at records to see if I can help in your quest to find your William Cain b 1853 in 1861 and 1871. I’ve tried all the usual tricks but to no avail.

So I’ve been looking at the wider picture in the search for clues. As you say, by far the most likely parents are Edward Cain b 1821 IOM and Mary Ann Marsh. Can you be absolutely sure that the Mary Ann Cain who was in Prestwich Lunatic Asylum and died there in 1894 is definitely Mary Ann nee Marsh ? Is she listed as a widow, and have you seen her death cert ?

You wrote:

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“I've sent for death certs of Edward Cains (waste of £20), birth certs of some William Cains, but none has father Edward (waste of £30!). Current move is death cert of poss father John Cain (sadly no Will available) just to see if Edward mentioned.”

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Please could you put all the details from those certificates into a message so that we know which ones can be ruled out as possibilities, and also so that the information will be accessible in the archived messages for others who may be researching Edward and William Cains of that era in the future.

I’ll list some thoughts I’ve had on possible reasons for not being able to find William Cain in 1861 and 1871:

1) Mistakes made by transcribers and/or by the enumerators in transferring information onto the neat copies.

2) William’s family emigrated and William subsequently returned to Manchester. Perhaps someone with access to passenger lists could look for an Edward Cain b 1821 in the 1850s.

3) His father died around the time of William’s birth, and the death entry (still handwritten at that time) has been mistranscribed. His mother remarried, and William was listed as son in 1861 and 1871 with his stepfather’s surname.

4) I don’t believe the following possibility, but it can’t be ruled out: ie that he was the illegitimate son of a Miss Cain who subsequently married and became Mrs Surname Unknown. He invented the father’s details of Edward Cain, sawyer, when he married Hannah Hurley, in order to conceal the fact that he was illegitimate.

I wonder whether the christian names of William and Hannah’s children might include surnames from a previous generation which could provide clues ? The only one I could find was Charles Stewart Cain---- but then Hannah was Scottish, wasn’t she, so the name Stewart may have come from her side of the family ?

I’ve tried to follow up the siblings of Edward b 1821 to see where they were in 1861 and whether they may have had a William b 1853 listed as son, rather than nephew----I’ve drawn a blank though. Am I right in thinking that Robert died as a teenager in 1855 ?

Have you done the same for Mary Ann Marsh’s siblings ?

Jean C