Mary Jane Gilderdale

There are some problems with attributing Mary Jane to this branch of the family. In the 1881 census there is a daughter of Mary Jane's age, described as born at a Heckmondwike, York, who was a sixteen year old scholar - but she is called Martha. No birth record is evident on the online BMD register for a Martha born in 1864, but there is a Martha born in 1870 and registered in Wakefield. There is no Jane given in the 1881 census, but in the 1901 census, there was a 30 year old Jane working as a dressmaker from home, where she was living with William and Martha. The options would seem to be

1) Mary Jane belongs to another family, and Martha's birth record is missing, along with Jane's - who, though the youngest, was not at home for the census of 1881.

2) Mary Jane did a biblical name swap and called herself Martha - subsequently changing again to Jane.

3) There were transcription errors in the census, meaning that Mary was given as Martha, and that her age was misread as 30, when it was 36. There are several other possible versions of transcription errors

So all in all, birth records in Heckmondwike need to be looked at to establish who it was that was born in 1864, and whether there was another daughter born in 1870 or 71.