Acquilla Kingshott

Acquilla Kingshott – The Kingshott Who Wasn't

Every so often, family history throws up someone who simply should not be there.

For me, one such person was Acquilla Kingshott.

He appeared out of nowhere in the 1891 census at Camals Dale, Fernhurst, Sussex, recorded as a lodger in the household of my 4th cousin 4 times removed, Thomas Kingshott, and his wife, Mary Jane née Courtenage. Thomas was baptised at Fernhurst on 2 October 1864 and was a member of one of the established local branches of the Kingshott family.

So far, nothing seems unusual, but Thomas' lodger, Acquilla, has never appeared in any of the extensive research I've previously undertaken on the family.

This is the page from the 1891 census, taken on the 5th April 1891. Thomas' family is the last one on the list, and you can see Acquilla Kingshott right at the bottom. If you click on the image, it will open into a bigger version. The person we are looking at is Acquilla Kingshott, unmarried, aged 27, a farm labourer, born in Bramshott, Hampshire.

Who was Acquilla Kingshott?

I have been researching the Kingshott family since 1991 and have reconstructed the entire family since then. Every Kingshott around the world has been linked together, and we are all related. The surname is unusual and, although it occurs in a bewildering variety of spellings, the families can all be traced back to Fernhurst. Yet, in all that research, I had never encountered an Acquilla Kingshott.

No obvious birth or baptism appears for him. He did not appear as a child in an earlier census. I could find no marriage or death that fitted him. More importantly, no one of approximately the right age in the reconstructed Kingshott families seemed likely to have used Acquilla as an alternative name. He was a ghost, seeming to appear from nowhere in 1891 and then disappear again.

The first possibility, of course, was that the census was simply wrong about his Christian name. Perhaps "Acquilla" was a nickname, a middle name, or an enumerator's attempt at recording something quite different. But there was another possibility.

What if it was not his Christian name that was wrong? What if Kingshott was the mistake?

Looking for Acquilla without the Kingshott

Instead of searching for a Kingshott, I started looking for men with the unusual Christian name Aquila, or one of its spelling variants, who were born at about the right time and lived in the same general area. One candidate stood out immediately.

At St Stephen's Church, Shottermill, Surrey, Aquila Luff was baptised on 22 February 1863. He was the son of Shadrach Luff, a labourer, and his wife Elizabeth, who were then living at Shotter Mill. The name was almost identical. The age was right. And, importantly, Shottermill is only a short distance from Fernhurst.

It was enough to investigate further, but an unusual name and similar age are not, by themselves, sufficient evidence to turn one person into another.

Aquila Luff in 1881

The 1881 census provided the next piece of the puzzle, where Aquila was still living with his parents, Shadrach and Elizabeth Luff. The family were then at Hammer, in the parish of Linchmere, Sussex.

He was recorded as:

Aqula Luff, aged 18, son, unmarried, labourer, born Frensham, Surrey.

Ten years later, the supposed Acquilla Kingshott was 27, unmarried and a farm labourer at Fernhurst.

So we now had two men with essentially the same extremely unusual Christian name, born around the same time, both labourers, and living within the same very small area around Linchmere and Fernhurst. The obvious test was to try to find Aquila Luff in the 1891 census. If he could be found there, then the hypothesis that he was the same person recorded as Aquilla Kingshott would fail.

I couldn't find him in the 1891 census, though his parents were present. Shadrach Luff, aged 61, and his wife, Elizabeth, were found living in the parish of Bramshott. Three of their sons—Henry, Benjamin, and Ernest—still lived with them. Aquila was not.

That fact alone proves very little. He was about 28 years old and there was no reason why he should still have been living with his parents. But targeted searches for Aquila Luff, born around 1863 in the Shottermill/Frensham area, also failed to find him elsewhere in the 1891 census. Meanwhile, at nearby Fernhurst, we have our mysterious Acquilla Kingshott, aged 27. The coincidence was becoming difficult to ignore.

One more test settled the matter for me. Rather than searching the 1891 census for either Kingshott or Luff, I searched for men named Aquila—or spelling variants of that very unusual name—of approximately the correct age, without specifying a surname.

There was only one. Acquilla Kingshott.

In other words, the real Aquila Luff disappears under his own surname in the 1891 census at exactly the same time that an otherwise completely unknown "Acquilla Kingshott" appears a few miles away.

Both were approximately the same age.
Both were unmarried.
Both were labourers.
Both belonged to the same small geographical area.
And both bore an exceptionally unusual Christian name.

At the same time, decades of research into the Kingshott family have failed to reveal any independent evidence that an Acquilla or Aquila Kingshott ever existed, before or, after this 1891 census entry.

So what is going on here?

I believe the explanation is straightforward.

The man lodging with Thomas and Mary Jane Kingshott at Fernhurst in 1891 was not Acquilla Kingshott. He was Aquila Luff. Aquila Luff appears in records before the 1891 census and is buried later in the 1890s under the same name.

We cannot know exactly how the error arose. Perhaps the enumerator accidentally repeated the surname of the household when entering the lodger. Perhaps an error occurred when information was copied onto the enumeration schedule. Another explanation may exist, though enumerator error is most likely.

What matters genealogically is that the name written in the census cannot always be taken at face value.

Identification does not depend on a single convenient match. It comes from several pieces of evidence which point independently towards the same conclusion:

Aquila Luff was baptised at Shottermill on 22 February 1863.
He was living at Hammer, Linchmere, in 1881, aged 18 and working as a labourer.
By 1891 he had left his parents' household.
Targeted searches have failed to locate him elsewhere under the surname Luff in the 1891 census.
In neighbouring Fernhurst appears "Acquilla Kingshott", aged 27, unmarried and working as a farm labourer.
A surname-independent search of the 1891 census produces no competing Aquila of the appropriate age in the area.
No genuine Kingshott named Acquilla or Aquila has been identified in the wider reconstruction of the Kingshott family.
Aquila Luff survived the census period and was buried at St Stephen's, Shottermill, on 3 August 1899.

Taken together, I consider the evidence conclusive.

The Kingshott who wasn't

So, after more than a century masquerading in the census as a member of the family, "Acquilla Kingshott" can finally be removed from the Kingshott family tree. He was Aquila Luff, son of Shadrach and Elizabeth Luff.

It is a small discovery in the context of a family history stretching back centuries, but it illustrates something important about genealogical research. Records are evidence; they are not necessarily facts. Even an original historical record can contain incorrect information.

Sometimes the solution to identifying an individual Kingshott is to realise that he wasn't a Kingshott at all.