Albert Victor Fage and Louie Cade: more confusing connections

One of the things I've been doing over Christmas 2007 is seeing if I can find more information about my direct ancestors' brothers and sisters and their descendents, as I like to build up a wider picture of how, where and with whom my grand-parents, great-grandparents etc., lived.

Albert Victor FAGE was one of my grandmother Elizabeth Sarah FAGE's brothers, born in 1897 at Girtford Siding, Sandy. He joined the army like so many other young men, entering on 10 May 1916 (8th Middlesex Regiment). He was wounded and suffered from diptheria, and was taken prisoner of war during the following two years, as recorded in a press cutting kept by my grandmother:

A well-known Sandy Soldier

Pte Albert Victor Fage, of the 8th Middlesex Regiment, son of Mr and Mrs W Fage, of Longfield Road, Sandy, is now a prisoner of war at Munster No.2 Camp, Rennbahn, Germany.  He was widely known in the Sandy district and his many friends will hope that in due course he will return to his home in safety.  Although little more than a youth he has practically two years service to his credit for he enlisted on May 10th 1916 and in August of the same year was sent to France.  Trench fever and diphtheria caused him to be sent back to Blighty in March last year but he made a good recovery and was again sent out to France on June 30th 1917. he was later wounded in the back by shrapnel but the wound was not sufficiently serious for him to be sent home again.  He got better in the hospitals in France and returned to the line but in the fighting in Cambrai he fell into the hands of the enemy and spent Xmas at Minden Camp.  Since then he has been moved to Munster Camp and writing home recently he expresses satisfaction with the move."

From my mother, I knew that Albert had married 'Louie' and that they had at least one child, 'Albie', who died in 2006. MyRoots contact Merv has provided details of their marriage on 26 March 1921 at the Register Office in Biggleswade. The groom was aged 23 and described as a 'Labourer in Cement Works', his bride was 21 and both were living at 7 Longfield Road, Sandy. Albert's father is shown as William John FAGE , Market Gardener's Labourer. William died after an accident in 1940. It seems that 'Louie's' full name was Mary Louisa CADE, daughter of Henry CADE, also a Labourer in the Cement Works. The Cement Works are likely to be those opened at Sundon, near Sandy, in 1855 and which reached peak production in the mid-1950s. Merv notes the link with the CADE name: Albert's mother Alice was formerly Alice CADE before marrying Albert's father William John FAGE in 1893. So was Louie one of Alice's relatives?

Mary Louisa CADE would have been born around 1900 if the age on her 1921 marriage certificate (21 years) is correct. I haven't found a likely birth entry in FreeBMD for a Mary Louisa born in Bedfordshire, but there is a birth index entry for a Mary Louisa CADE in Orsett (Essex) in the September 1899 quarter (4a 557) and a 1901 census entry for Henry CADE, 32, a Bricklayer's Labourer, born in Sandy, Bedfordshire, his wife Louise and children Harry (4), Edward (3) and Louisa (1), all born in Grays, Essex. As Merv points out, a Henry CADE, aged 21 (born around 1869-70), also appears in the 1891 census as a patient (Soldier, Infantry, Private) at the Stoke Damerel Military Hospital in Devon, born in Potton, Bedfordshire. There the trail runs a bit cold, with no Henry CADE born around 1869-70 in Bedfordshire appearing in earlier census indexes (even with alternative spellings for CADE and the alternative form of Harry for Henry). The 1881 and 1871 census, however, does show a Harry CADE, born around 1870, but in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire. And this Harry is indeed Alice CADE's brother, suggeting that, if these connections are correct, Albert Victor FAGE married his mother's niece, and his own first cousin, Louie CADE. 

More investigations into Harry's marriage and family life are needed, but birthplaces are often confused in and between census entries, particularly where people move from their place of birth and give their residence instead. An interesting conundrum.