A House in Plympton

A house in Plympton was all I knew about the photo above before I started doing some digging.  The photo had fortunately been labelled with an address, so it at least gave me something to go on.  First, I went to Google maps to see if I could look up the address and see if it’s still there on street view.  9 Moorland View, Plympton, UK, resolved to 9 Moorland Ave and the houses on the street all looked about the same, and beyond that it looks like the street had been reunumbered at one point.  GREAT.  One of the houses had a little plaque with “1899” above the door which helped me a little more.  If the homes were built in 1899, it’s likely that the 1901 or 1911 England censuses would be able to tell me who those two children are on the front steps.

The 1901 census pretty much told me the address didn’t exist then.  Okay, fine, on to 1911, which found the 9 Moorland Ave address via the address search on the census page.  I went to ancestry.com to check out the census images and sure enough, 9 Moorland View, Plympton, UK was the home to Bessie (Battin) Shugg and her sons Maurice and Gordon Shugg in 1911.  Bessie was the sister of my great-great grandmother, Jessie (Battin) Powis.  This was likely taken around 1911, before they left for the USA.  Bessie’s husband, Arnold Shugg, left for the USA in 1906, so he doesn’t show up on the 1911 census.

I’m counting this find as a small victory because I had a pretty large piece of information to go on – the address.  Still, it’s neat to be able to link the photo to a house that still exists, and the people who lived there.