Reaping what you sow

After a February dominated by family history writing but very little blogging, I’m back with a vengeance for (what’s left of) March!

Back in December I wrote a post called A tale of two discrepancies about how I’d handled errors that I had noticed in other people’s trees on Ancestry. In my final paragraph, I said: I know I would certainly appreciate a gentle correction on anything I’ve got wrong in my tree...

Well, this weekend, I received one such gentle correction, and it was indeed very much appreciated!

The Ancestry member in question sent me a message guiding me to a parish marriage record that I hadn’t yet found – on a very useful website, forest-of-dean.net, which I can hardly wait to explore further  – for my direct ancestors Charles Hancocks and Comfort Green. This record contained a priceless nugget that would appear to thoroughly disprove one of my long-held family history theories, as outlined in my post H is for Hancock(s)/(x), and re-posted here:

Charles Hancocks was born in 1839, in Longhope, Gloucestershire. On the 1841 census he appears in the household of Thomas Hancox [sic] and his wife Ann, along with seven other children: Mary (b. 1822), Charlotte (b. 1827), James (b. 1829), Susan (b. 1831), Caroline (b. 1833), Sarah (b. 1835) and John (b. 1836). Ann is aged about fifty so it immediately struck me as unlikely that she is Charles’ mother.

This is borne out by the 1851 census, which seems to confirm that Mary Hancox is the mother of Charles; he is ostensibly listed as son of the head of household, but an ink marking linking him to Mary in the row above seems to indicate that he is her son. She is listed as unmarried and the daughter of Thomas and Ann, so presumably Charles is illegitimate.

However, the marriage of Charles and Comfort gives Thomas and Ann as Charles’ parents.

My helpful contact also adds that there is an 1839 baptism for Charles, which was originally under the name of George Hancocks but has subsequently been corrected to Charles. It also confirms that Thomas and Ann are his parents. I’m still surprised that Ann gave birth at such an age (she was forty-eight in 1839, if the census is to be believed), but happy to concede that it is possible. Certainly, it seems most unlikely that Thomas and Ann would lie and baptise a child as their own if he was in fact their daughter’s illegitimate son. It’s definitely not something I’ve ever heard of happening.

Obviously I want to check out all of these new records for myself so that I’m satisfied that my theory is disproven – but I’ll be overjoyed if it is, as it means I can continue to follow my mum’s paternal line to wherever it may lead me....

L x

Another weapon for your arsenal

So, here’s the background: I was trying to help solve a small mystery posted on a LinkedIn group. I spent some time scrolling through the 1851 census on Ancestry at the weekend, but yesterday I started Googling for other options to see if perhaps we were dealing with an Ancestry mistranscription that was correct elsewhere.

I was specifically looking for census transcriptions for the areas they were living in, to see if we could check out their last known addresses and future know addresses – it’s notoriously hard to work by address on Ancestry, as it takes ages to find the right page.

However, what I found was www.ukcensusonline.co.uk, which popped up in the advertisements at the top of Google’s search. I thought I’d try it, since it claimed free access. It doesn’t do what I wanted to, but it is really very helpful.

The great thing about this census website is that you initially just pick a census year and search on a name. What you get is a basic, easy-to-read list including the following: forename, surname, age, occupation, county, estimated year of birth and place of birth. You can then ‘select a record set’, which basically allows you to filter by county. The numbers of the name in each county are given in brackets alongside.

I know it sounds fairly standard, but in fact it’s brilliant as an ‘at-a-glance’ tool.

On Ancestry you have to hover over each search result to get the crucial details, and often you can’t find the occupation without going into the image itself. Here it’s given to you up-front, which it makes it so much easier to locate the right person when we’re dealing with common names. In this respect it definitely trumps Ancestry.

UK census online also ‘wildcards’ the search (unless you ask it not to), as does Ancestry. But because their basic search doesn’t include any other criteria, what you get is a comprehensive list of possibilities with all their basic data there at a glance. And because it isn’t attempting to then organise your results by relevance, you’re not likely to miss anyone out.

I often find myself frustrated by Ancestry’s search, because if you put in multiple details, for example place and date of birth, it may bring up people born around the right time in the wrong place as more likely matches than someone who is born in exactly the right place but their birth date is out by a few years, or vice versa. Using UK census online’s basic search you get a simple list of possibilities, and it’s left to your brain as opposed to the computer to identify the right one.

The option to easily filter by county makes it easier to whittle down your options and perhaps check multiple locations without having to restart your search. It would also be a useful tool for finding out where specific surnames were most common at any given time, for example, so as to give you an idea where to conduct your search if you were completely clueless about location.

Of course, you could just search by name on Ancestry as well, but then the results aren’t so easy to scroll through, so you wouldn’t necessarily make your life any easier. One of the key strengths of this website is the very clear column-style layout of the list you get, which you can just run your eye down.

The limitations of this site are, firstly that you have to subscribe in order to be able to access the record from this search and to be able to conduct a more detailed search. As I haven’t subscribed (as yet ­– I’ll see how useful I find it), I can’t tell you how well the detailed search function works or what the standard of the images is.

Of course, without being able to click into the record, it’s harder to spot possibly mistranscribed people – for example if you had struggled to find someone on ancestry, but here you thought you had spotted them by their occupation but their age was wrong, you wouldn’t easily be able to check the original image. You would have to go and search for them on Ancestry or wherever and hope that they had the same error. And if it’s a transcription error you’re trying to confirm, you can’t be sure that you’re going to find them, because they may not have made the same one. Hopefully you’d have enough info from the record to search by, but what if other errors have been made? I suppose that if this particular situation arose I’d end up subscribing just to get the access I wanted, but it’s not really ideal financially. I’d prefer the credits option, like you used to get on the old 1911 census.

The other issue is identifying family members; again, you need record access to do this – though the same can generally be said of any website you’re not subscribing to, of course. With the original 1911 census, if I knew of household members I was expecting to find, but didn’t want to pay for the record, I would just search for them and see if there were matching possibilities in the same location as my original – easy enough if you’re looking for unusual names, but perhaps tricky otherwise.

I can tell you, however, that finding the answer to the above mystery (sadly a ‘no’, the person we were searching for doesn’t seem to be there) took me about ten minutes of scrolling through the results list, compared to an hour or so of flicking through the possibilities using various different combinations of search criteria on Ancestry – talk about a timesaver!

This site will be my go-to at-a-glance census searcher in future; I urge you to check it out and see if it can help you out too!

L x

A new trick

Happy new year to you all. I’m currently working up my goals for the year (on which more later), one of which is to progress with my descendancy of Joseph Bryan Geoghegan. It will be in a private member tree on ancestry, so that I don’t intrude on the privacy of my distant cousins who may not wish me to be poking about in their lineage. It also means I can play about with hypotheticals and alternatives without anybody taking it as gospel and assuming that’s the correct lineage when it may not be – it’s all still quite experimental at the moment!

It’s a work in progress, and I can’t help myself, I have to research as I go. As I input each descendant I find myself trying to get all of their vital info in place and fill in any blanks. And in the course of this, I learnt a handy new trick. I thought I’d share it. Though it may seem rather obvious to some of you, I’d never done it before, and perhaps it will come in handy for someone else too...

The action takes place at freebmd.com. Now, this website is not one I use very often, as the info is all licensed to Ancestry anyway. However, sometimes it’s helpful for double-checking – as I’ve mentioned previously, Ancestry isn’t always accurate.

I was looking for marriages of JBG’s daughter Marion, born 1870. There were two clear favourites. The first was a marriage in 1894 to either Patrick Kavanagh or James Henry Doran, which I’ve narrowed down again to most likely Patrick Kavanagh (as I think I’ve accounted for James Henry Doran and the alternative female spouse on the censuses).

However, the second possibility, in 1888, was one of those pesky marriages where the transcription info for the volume and/or page number is incomplete, so Ancestry can’t give you the usual list of others appearing on the original page. I’d just left this until now, but I decided to investigate further using freebmd. They had the exact same transcription error, and so I decided to follow their troubleshooting advice, and search by possible page numbers within the known volume for the date and place you need. (Ancestry won’t let you search by volume or page number.)

Helpfully it tells you what the expected range is, so you don’t have to search indefinitely. For example, my error was an unknown first digit: 8c _02 – but freebmd told me that the expected page range  for the district was, e.g., 327 to 544 – so it could only really be 402 or 502. I searched both sets of page references, but annoying they both had complete pairs on the page, so no spouses left unaccounted for to match up with Marion.

I went back to Marion again, and discovered that freebmd will let you see the original page scan – as, of course, does Ancestry – and so I was able to ascertain that the page number definitely read 502. I can see why the poor transcriber (is that right – surely it should be like scribe – a transcribe?) went wrong, because it did sort of look like a three, but if you knew that the expected page range didn’t include 302 then it was fairly obvious!

I soon realised that the only explanation for the lack of potential spouses appearing was that the one of the spouses on that page had been mistranscribed as well. Note, not necessarily Marion’s husband.

So, what to do now? I could just order the certificate, of course, but a) it would cost me, and b) given that Marion is only 18 at this point, it seems to me that the 1894 marriage is more likely and thus it would be a waste of time and money when I all I really need is to be able to identify the couple on the census and ascertain that this other Marion née Geoghegan is the wrong age (or from the wrong place, or whatever else). And c) where would be the fun in that, when I can surely solve the riddle using my wits, for free?

Frustratingly, BMD won’t allow you to ‘wildcard’ a volume number or page number, otherwise I might have found him in three moves: *02, 5*2, 50*. However – and this is the nifty bit – it will let you search for all the entries in a given volume for a given date and place – i.e. you can leave the page number blank. I tried it the other way around as well, and yes, you can search on page number without volume number – but as the volume numbers are less variable, it’s probably not so useful!

This search brought up a list of all the marriages registered in volume 4c in Bolton in March 1888. It’s long, but not so unwieldy that it takes long to complete the task, which is to run your eye down the column of page numbers, looking out for anything suspicious. It only took me a minute or so to spot him: Thomas Relpf, as the transcription had him, was apparently on page 5_2. Opening the original image I could see that this page number did indeed read 502, and his name was Relph, not Relpf.

So, the complete set of people on page 502 is George Hodson, Margaret Ann Johnson, Marion Geoghegan and Thomas Relph. Now to find out who is married to whom... I’ll let you know!

I was also able to fix all of the other errors in the volume. I include them here:

Robert Hamer (3_4)­­ is the missing spouse from page 384 (William Lee King; Belinda Glover; Alice Ann Harwood).

Mary Ellen Hilton (3[56]0) is the missing spouse from page 350 (Thomas Atkinson, Martha Hannah Blake, Isaac Hill) – page 360 doesn’t exist.

Elizabeth Ratcliffe (3[41]1) is the missing spouse from page 341 (James Ball, Thomas Bogle, Mary Jane Faulkner) – page 311 doesn’t exist.

And finally, as the only two illegible reference numbers that didn’t match anything else, they must match each other: Thomas Holden ([3 ]*A) and Sarah Jane Holt (*) – both have been added to the bottom of their respective index pages in pen; it seems likely that they were indeed the same certificate, presumably somehow missed out during the original indexing.

It’s lost on me why this isn’t done by freebmd as part of a transcription check. It took me all of about 15 minutes to check and resolve these missing spouses from the pages. It’s probably not completely error-proof. The last one might be a bit speculative ­– if you had two such issues on a page you would struggle to iron it out without recourse to the censuses and you could still get it wrong. However, the other three were simple enough, and a little more time spent resolving this kind of thing would make it far less taxing to find a spouse! I suppose as always, time and resources are the difficulties.

L x

A tale of two discrepancies

I try to avoid relying on other people’s information, particularly others’ Ancestry trees, but on occasion I do have a look, because you never know when it might present something new that you didn’t know about. However, it’s always worrying when you then find something that contradicts your own info. On a couple of occasions in recent days I’ve been forced to investigate others’ info for myself, to see how they got their data and where they went wrong – or indeed, where I went wrong.

First up was James Thompson. I was looking at some of his grandchildren for one of my previous posts when I decided to click on the little shaky green leaf for their father, James’ son Albert Thomas Thompson, and check out his ‘hints’. On tree gave Thomas’s parents, whom I don’t have yet, so I was excited at the prospect of new info. However, when I had a look at the tree, it immediately became obvious that most of the info was utterly incorrect. James is given the correct wife, Sarah Ann Semley, but this tree claims she died in 1860, and then James moved to Shiloh, Texas, where he died in 1862.  An interesting theory, but since Albert wasn’t born until 1870, I don’t really see how that works! It also gives completely incorrect siblings for Albert as well.  

This kind of sloppy research really makes my blood boil. I’m very understanding when it comes to new researchers perhaps make unjustified assumptions or get careless about recording sources – we all have to make this kind of slip-up in order to learn – but less so when they try to bring people back from the dead!

Of course, there was very little evidence attached to this tree either, which would have set alarm bells ringing even if it hadn’t been for the obvious errors, and I would always proceed with caution, because people make mistakes all the time – I know I do. In this case, I was slightly relieved that this tree was so obviously wrong that I didn’t have to waste any more time verifying half-baked research!

I’m very much an advocate of ‘speculative’ genealogy, because sometimes I think it’s the only way to make progress. If you never take a gamble on something being the right record, you might struggle to get anywhere at all. But speculating that someone gave birth to a child ten years after they died is just plain stupid!

Take, for example, my Newbys (yes, them again!) If I hadn’t taken a punt on the birth record of Walter Newby, I can’t see how I would ever have tracked down his parents. And indeed, my second discrepancy was on this very line...

Walter’s mother Sarah Jane Newby actually appears in several online tree; it was quite a large family, and I have yet to explore the full extent of the parallel branches. However, I decided to check out her shaky green leaves – I forget why – and I discovered another tree that had her husband as a George Winters, and a daughter Olive Winters born in 1910.

After a bit of investigation, I concluded that Sarah Jane was not in the main line of this researcher’s tree, and he had probably just speculated on her marriage with this being the most likely candidate. I think  actually he was being a bit too speculative, as the 1911 census clearly says her birth place was Leeds, which is not entirely consistent, but even so, I can’t argue with the rest of his logic. It does remind me that I really mustn’t assume that all of my speculative marriages and children for siblings are 100% correct.

Whereas I was justifiably bemused and slightly irritated by the last discrepancy, this time I was sympathetic. This poor researcher wasn’t to know that Sarah Jane had gone off and had an illegitimate son or three and then pretended to be married on the 1911 census, had two more children and finally married in 1922. How could he? Even I’m not even 100% sure all the details are right yet!

Anyway, I sent the guy a message over the Ancestry message system, explaining to him my own findings about Sarah Jane and my process for getting there, and inviting him to help himself to info and records from my tree. Hopefully he will take it as the gesture of help it’s meant as. I know I would certainly appreciate a gentle correction on anything I’ve got wrong in my tree, and I thought this was the probably best way to handle it. However, I didn’t bother correcting the other tree-owner, on the basis that their tree was so clearly wrong that no one would ever take it seriously anyway!

L x

I have a confession to make

Sometimes I worry that I am a bad genealogist

I worry that my research isn’t rigorous enough. That sometimes I hypothesise and don’t immediately have the evidence to back it up. That don’t obsess over county boundary changes when recording some ancestors’ place of birth and, shock horror, I might occasionally forget to record the full details of every source I use.

All this makes me feel guilty. I did a degree in history, and I should understand the importance of small details, and citing my sources. Indeed, I do understand the importance.

The thing is, I’m not a natural organiser, and I don’t particularly revel in the ‘recording data’ side of my family history adventures. Even my index, which I was so enthusiastic about when I started, is unfinished and hopelessly out of date, and I tend to rely on the quick record features offered in ancestry to keep track of my data. Even then I’m sloppy about the details.

What I love about my research isn’t the need to meticulously record everything, it’s the stories that the evidence reveals.

Who wants to stop and worry about whether this village was in West or South Yorkshire on a particular date when they’re busy trying to piece together what was the relationship between these two people, who was the father of that child, what happened to this ancestor...? The information I’m worrying about at that point is the vital clue that’s telling me what’s going on, and it’s unlikely to be what county a village happens to be in at that time – well, I suppose it could be! But my point is I only worry myself about such details when they become vital to my research.

I reason with myself that one day I will fix it all. That I’m so young that I’ve got years ahead of me to tighten up my records! I still worry about it though.

Once upon a time, before the internet, no one else would have known my guilty secret, but now everyone can see my badly-kept tree.  They probably think that it’s poorly researched and that I have no grasp of the Genealogical Proof Standard or how it should be done. It’s not that, it’s just that I’m bad at it.

And then I get cross because this is my family, my hobby, and I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about how I treat my genealogy. I’m only doing this for me. Everyone else should just be glad I make my tree public really!

Please, fellow genealogists, don’t judge me for the gaps in source citations and muddled up name spellings! I’m aware of my shortcomings, but I promise I’m not a bad genealogist. I’m just a poor record-keeper!

L x

On the Genealogical Dark Age (1921–1951)

Well, it’s been nearly an entire week since I last blogged, I think. Life slightly took over this week, as it sometimes does, but as promised, I am going to write something today. It’s been a quiet week for me on the genealogy front to be honest, so nothing exciting to reveal from my own research. However, all this talk of the 1940 census across the pond has got me very jealous.

The 1911 census release was so exciting. From when I started my research I had been desperate for the fresh batch of records and the thought of waiting 5 years for them was so frustrating. Like how people remember exactly where they were when they heard about Kennedy being shot, I clearly remember the announcement that the 1911 records were to be released early – even though I was watching TV on my own at the time, I pretty much went crazy with excitement!

Unfortunately, we really do have ten years to wait until our next census release here in the UK, and that will be the last one for quite some time. The 1931 census was destroyed by fire in 1942, and no census was taken in 1941 due to the war. This means that after the release of the 1921 census in January 2022 (when I will be 36, eek!), there will be a thirty year gap until the release of the 1951 census (by which time I will be 66, even bigger eek!)

It does beg the question of what will drive genealogy in the interim period, however, and how difficult it will be for new generations to get started with their research. However, given that more and more records are appearing online every day, perhaps this abundance of electronic data will make up for the lack of censuses?

Doing a spot of research for this post, I found out about one possible source of info for this period that I wasn’t aware of – the 1939 National Identity Cards. This was a wartime measure, designed to make tracking and managing the population easier, both for security reasons and to help with planning measures such as rationing and mobilisation.  

Approximately 46 million cards were issued. Information gathered for each individual was: their address, name, sex, date of birth, marital condition, occupation and whether a member of the armed forces or reserves. Cards were enumerated in a similar way to the census, with a district code and a schedule line identifying a household, so that the system can be used to identify other household members, much like the census.   

All the information that was recorded on the cards has been retained and can be accessed via the National Health Service Information Centre. There is a search charge of £42, and data is only available for individuals who have died and are now recorded as deceased. You can search for an individual by name, as well as requesting up to nine other individuals living at the same address, and you can also search for up to ten unnamed people at a known address.

I am tempted to put this search to use, though it’s not vital to my research at the moment, and it is quite pricey (particularly compared to a standard 1911 census search that would give much the same information). I’d like to think that this data will in future become more readily, or at least more cheaply, as it is the nearest thing we have to a census in that thirty-year ‘genealogical dark age’ between 1921 and 1951.

L x

On WDYTYA 2012: Follow-up

“Unfortunately, I’m not attending WDYTYA Live this year, mostly because I’m a bit skint! However, I am reflecting on what I would be doing if I were there, and, crucially, what I intend to do to fulfil the same needs instead...”

I haven’t been idle, and I’m slowly ticking things off the list. Here’s my progress update:

Must visit stands and must buys

I am formulating a shopping list / reading list. I will be ordering the FLH Handbook after my next payday. I am still considering storage solutions but intend to invest in the next few months, probably once I’ve got my record-keeping strategy finalised.

Historical Maps – How to find out more about Family History

I have found this rather useful guide to getting started. It’s really a project in itself so I’m saving it for a later date, but I’ll let you know how I get on!

Family history and education

I have been on the Making History website, and I have signed up for newsletter. 

Reading the writing of the past – Paleaography

I will be taking the National Archives web tutorial in Paleography, and also in Latin, at some point in the near future.

Organising your research with technology (12 p.m.)

I actually have been dedicating more time to this than originally planned, and after a bit of research I decided to go my own way. Read about my shiny new index here!

Keynote workshop: Breaking the Barriers with Social Networking – Strategies and Tips

As you might have noticed, Probably Arboreal is now on Twitter – support from my readers much appreciated! A Facebook page will hopefully follow shortly. I have also joined Genealogy Wise, so I’m looking forward to making use of it!

Exploring  Google+ as a Tool for Family Research

I have signed up, but haven’t got much further than that yet! I’m slightly frustrated that if I connect it into my blog my Google+ profile will automatically supersede my Blogger profile. It seems like it’s quite difficult to keep my online identities separate from one another.

Google Search Strategies for the Family Historian

I have done a bit of research – see my recent post On my friend Google for a few tips. I will keep collecting and keep sharing anything useful!

On my friend Google

We all use Google routinely outside of our genealogical research, but I argue that we should be using it as a fundamental part of our research as well. You should be Googling all of your ancestors, and regularly. Here are a few Google Search tips that you might find useful:

If you didn’t already know, putting whatever you’re Googling in double quotation marks will make sure you get that exact phrase. (Single quotation marks won’t work.) For example, if I Google Joseph Bryan Geoghegan, I will get pages containing those individual words, but not necessarily as one complete name. If I Google “Joseph Bryan Geoghegan” I will only get those three words grouped together in that exact order.

In order to make the most use of this, however, I should also be searching him as “Geoghegan Joseph Bryan” “Joseph B. Geoghegan” “J. B. Geoghegan”, “Geoghegan J. B.”, etc. I should also be trying it without quotation marks as well, obviously. Googling an individual is much more time-consuming than you might think, but it can have fantastic results.

I recently discovered that you can also search on numeric ranges, using ellipses (...). So you could search Joseph Bryan Geoghegan 1812...1890 (no spaces before or after ellipses), to search for dates that fall within his lifetime. If a reference isn’t dated it won’t come up, and it does only mean within the page, content, so it’s not 100% accurate, but I’ve found it useful.

Use the minus symbol (-) to omit results that contain a certain word. Search Geoghegan –Ireland (Space after Geoghegan, no space between – and Ireland) to omit all results for Geoghegan containing the word Ireland.

Use the tilde symbol (~) (located on shift+# on my keyboard) to denote ‘similar to’ in a search.  So, ~genealogy (no space) searches on family history, family tree, vital records, census, etc. You can also use it before a URL in the Google search box to identify similar web pages: a search for ~www.ancestry.co.uk brings up find my past, 1911 census and various other useful genealogy webpages.

Finally, Google will generate definitions using define: followed by search term. E.g. define:genealogy  (no space). I have found this search useful for unusual occupations, for example.

Google has other handy functions too. Google Map is indispensable for finding out where exactly your ancestry locations are. Use the ‘get directions’ function to get a rough idea how far away places are from one another. If you’ve got an exact address, try streetview.  It’s not quite as good as being there, but you can get a feel for the area at least!

Google Images can also give you useful stuff. Though you’re fairly unlikely to find a photo of an ancestor, you can easily find old photographs of locations, or photographs from the same era to see styles of clothing, for example – helpful for comparisons if you’re trying to work out the date of an old photo.

I also use Google Calendar to store key dates, which I have then used with a Blogger application to generate the Calendar that appears on this page.

Finally, if you need to share genealogy documents with others online, Google Documents is a pretty good way to do so, though I have had issues with the upload tool. You can the link to this by email or within a blog or other webpage.

L x

On my shiny new index

I have now finished indexing my entire direct line (apart from one branch which goes back considerably further than I have taken it, but I didn’t do this research myself, so until I can reliably verify the info, I’ve chosen to hold it back.) I can hardly contain my excitement (I am a huge geek), so I thought I’d share with you some of the exciting things it can do, and some of the info I can quickly generate using it.

My spreadsheet can be sorted and filtered on a variety of fields. For example, I can choose to just see my maternal or paternal lines, or just see men or women. I can also sort it alphabetically by surname or forename – or just choose to see people with a certain name, and by date on birth, marriage and death.

Based on this, I can tell you the oldest birthdate in my line is 1753, and the oldest marriage is 1803. The first surname is Allott, the last surname is Woffenden. The most common forenames are John for men and Mary/Mary Ann for women. Unsurprisingly, my own surname has the most occurrences.

It’s also given me a great idea of where my blanks are, and reassured me that despite five years spent on my ancestors, there’s still an awful lot to discover, particularly on my rather bare Welsh branches! (Happy St David’s Day to them!)

I can easily find an individual’s parents, spouse and child, despite the fact that they don’t all appear consecutively. The index works on a generation by generation basis, starting with me and my brother, then my parents, then my grandparents, great grandparents and so on. So, the first few entries looks like this:

01 Me

02 My brother

03 Father

04 Mother

05 Paternal grandfather

06 Paternal grandmother

07 Maternal grandfather

08 Maternal grandmother

09 Paternal grandfather’s father

10 Paternal grandfather’s mother

11 Paternal grandmother’s father

12 Paternal grandmother’s mother

13 Maternal grandfather’s father

14 Maternal grandfather’s mother

15 Maternal grandmother’s father

16 Maternal grandmother’s mother

17 Paternal grandfather’s father’s father (...)

The great thing about this system, I figured out, is that it gives a mathematical formula for figuring out relationships (except for me!!)

The formula goes as follows:

Mother = N x 2

Father = (N x 2) – 1

Child (of mother) = N / 2

Child (of father) = (N + 1) / 2

Male spouse =  N – 1

Female spouse = N + 1

I imagine there’s one for grandparents as well, but I haven’t got that far yet!

The point is that I can generate the reference number for any new ancestor without having to fill in the entire pattern easily. So when I’d done as far as my 5x GG I went back through my tree to check if I had any ‘confirmed’ ancestors any later than that. As it turned out I had three 6x GG and one 7x GG. Using the formula I was able to quickly create places for them and fill in the relevant numbers for all of their relationships, even if I didn’t have people for them yet.

This means that while I only have 260 entries in my index thus far (many of which are unknown blanks in any case), my highest numbered ancestor is 1013!

I’m very excited by my new tool. Still to do:

1. Work out how best to reference and incorporate non-direct-line family members. My gut is to reference from the direct line sibling or spouse initially, but then this creates trickiness when I start incorporating third-degree family members – their spouses, in laws and children.

2. Put together my individual’s record template

3. Index and create a record template for census households.

4. Create surname variations lists

Plenty to keep me busy then!

L x

On recording names

As part of my bid to get on top of my record keeping, I am setting up an entirely new system, consisting of a database of individual and household documents and an index spreadsheet which lists and cross references ancestors and contains some basic info as well, allowing it to be used for quick reference during research.  I’ve now compiled the bare bones of my indexing spreadsheet and put my direct line ancestors in to see if it works – and it does!

I’ll explain more later about how the system works, but they key thing is that having established the basic functionality, I began defining rules for inputting information. This is more complex than I initially thought, names being the most complicated issue: How to spell them, what about middle names, what about where names change...

I decided that my key aim was usability. But as I said, the function of my spreadsheet is two-fold: To index and cross-reference my individual records (and later household records too), and to act as a quick reference guide when doing research.

So, I want to put the fullest possible version of an ancestor’s name in my index, so that it gives the maximum amount of info at a glance for searching from. On the other hand, I can’t possibly include all variants of spellings, initials and even order of names, let alone the various shortened forms and nicknames that are often used, because it would become totally unwieldy. And that, after all, is what my individual documents are for!

I believe that the ‘industry standard’ (for want of a better term) is to use the name as it appears at baptism, which seemed to make sense, so perhaps I will use that as my baseline – where I have a baptism record, at least! In the absence of one I will have to 'compile' a name based on the information available to me, in order to give the most useful parameters for searching. In either case, I will make sure that all known middle names are included, regardless of whether or not they appear on the baptism.

I will not standardise the spelling as it appears on the baptism record unless I feel that it is likely to impair understanding (i.e. due to extremely poor spelling), or to mislead (i.e. because it differs wildly from every other known occurrence of the name). Where I have had to ‘compile’ a name, I will use the most frequently occurring spelling in the first instance.

In the case of shortened forms or initials, I decided that it would be best to give as much info as possible, so if I know what an initial stands for (from another record) I will expand it. Where only a shortened form appears, I will have to make a case by case judgement. For example: Will might not be expanded to William because I can’t be sure that it isn’t the name in its own right, but Wm or Thos, as often occur, can be fairly confidently expanded to William and Thomas.

The above applies mainly to the forenames of the ancestor. I had to rethink my rules on surnames, because I wanted consistency across generations within my spreadsheet for ease of reference and sorting.

So for example, if the same surname was spelt differently across different baptism records I would want to eradicate that discrepancy in order to index all ancestors with that surname under a single spelling. In this case the most frequently occurring spelling will be adopted, but alternative spelling linked with an ancestor will be recorded in their individual file. I will also create a separate list, to be used alongside, of alternative spellings of every surname, with an indication of frequency of occurrence and under which spelling ancestors of that surname are listed.

However, I have already identified one possible exception to that rule: Hancocks later became Hancock. This highlights the fine line between a spelling variant and a change of surname. My instinct (although I want to assess this properly by going back through the records) is that there was a distinct shift from one to the other. While there may have been instances of them being used alongside one another at different times (to be recorded as variant uses), if my perception is correct and there is a clear change of name then they must be essentially documented as two separate surnames. The reason behind the change is something I will then explore, and the point of change be identified in order to record them separately.

Another rule is that only one surname is used – the ‘final’ one. So Kathleen Birchall Geoghegan would take Geoghegan as a surname and Kathleen Birchall as forenames, even though Birchall (her mother’s maiden name) could potentially be considered part of her surname rather than a forename. Because both variants occur in record transcriptions, and it isn't always clear how the name was used, I decided that only the last name, which is indisputably used as a surname, should be recorded as such. (Though when carrying out searches it is wise to consider both variants) The exception to this would be where surnames are clearly double-barrelled / hyphenated in the records. There are currently none of these in my family tree – we’re not posh enough!

If I don’t know a name the field is filled in as Unknown. I am recording surnames at birth as the primary means of listing, with a separate column for married name, in which I record NA for men and Unknown if not known. This marreid name column refers to the married name that I have judged to be most relevant to my own ancestry. I then have a separate column for other surnames, to be coded for clarity: a name followed by (m) indicates a name from any other marriage. In either case, where no records have been found under the married name it is assumed to have existed anyway.

In other surnames section a name followed by (aka) indicates that this is a completely different name to their listed surname (not a variant), which has been used in a record. This section may include name changes, stage names - particularly relevant in my case, and names taken from step-parents.

Known forenames, particularly nicknames that differ drastically from the indexed forenames (as opposed to obvious contractions of them), will be recorded in the notes section. The obvious example from my tree is Ellen Geoghegan, who was also recorded as Dot Geoghegan in a couple of instances. 

All known variants of surnames and forenames, including all nicknames, and spellings thereof will be given in the individual record, with explanatory notes if necessary.

As you can see, this takes some defining, and I’ve had to do it for many other aspects of my index too. However, naming was definitely the most complex part. Thoughts and useful pointers on this topic gratefully received! I think now I need to boil these down into simple and easy-to-follow usage notes for my index, and then put them into practice and see how I get on!

L x

On writing it all down: 4. Online or Software

There are lots of options within this option, and obviously a lot of the functionality depends on what you’re using. My most recent methodology has been simply to try and make full use of the family tree builder on Ancestry.co.uk. I have always used this, but previously I used it mainly as a means to store the records rather than as my go-to for reference to my info. Having switched to it mostly for convenience, I’ve actually found it very good.

From a research point of view, it is great that it suggests records and allows you to connect to other members. However, I do think this engenders a kind of laziness in research which annoys me. I occasionally catch myself adding a census record without having really read it properly. this worries me – I might be missing crucial information, and I’m certainly losing the joy of the research by doing so. If you do this, then it just reverts to a list of names and dates with little meaning attached.

Also, in the last couple of years I’ve been making a conscious effort not to rely too much on other Ancestry members' info. I do worry that if that person has it all wrong, just accepting their info can basically spread an entirely made-up family tree that then become impossible to un-ravel. If I really am stuck, I might take their info, but then I will do my best to check it out and verify it. And all credit to other Ancestry members; when I have gone through this process I have usually found that their info checks out.

Essentially though,  Ancestry (and I assume other software and websites) allow you to do a combination of the things I’ve talked about in this posting – Have a page per individual, easily see their family and how that fits together, hold all records and documents in one place, and see the entire family tree overview in one go. The pros and cons of its search and member functionality are a debate for another day. In terms of recording my own research, I have found it really works, and would absolutely recommend it.

On the other hand, I do fully intend to attempt to get a proper, personal system going too. Reading back over this blog, I think a combination of these techniques, properly used, could really do the job quite well. However, I am still open to suggestions. I’m sure there are ideas I haven’t considered that would really help.

I also note that there are a couple of relevant workshops at WDYTYA Live this year, which might be worth attending, if I do make it.

L x

Next time: Why is extended family so important?

On writing it all down: 3. Freehand

A working document was my next port of call. When I began the rather laborious task of researching my father’s family tree, which was more complex than anything I’d done previously, I started a Word document of notes in what I can only describe as a ‘freehand’ format. I was literally writing down what I knew, my thought processes and what I came up with. Later, if I found it to be right I’d go back to the relevant bit and note this too.

What’s really great about this is that it helps me remember how I came to a conclusion. Have you ever gone back to a branch of your family tree you haven’t looked at for a while, and thought ‘how did I make that connection?’ Then you might have to retrace your steps to verify it, wasting valuable research time.

The notes make for an interesting read – I rather like the idea of recording how I do my research as I go. It means that my genealogical research becomes a family history story in itself. It echoes the idea that part of the fun of family history is in doing it, not just having the information.

I’d like to take a more methodical approach to this too, so that I can tick of where I’ve checked, what I haven’t looked at, what still needs to be verified. But of course, that requires a more careful consideration of what is needed and how best to go about it, which inevitably makes note-taking more laborious and thus less convenient.

The problem with this is fairly obvious. It doesn’t provide a detailed, logical record of each family member. You can’t easily flick through and find what you’re looking for (although search works), nor does it give you an overview in the same way as a family tree. It’s not even a coherent narrative, although obviously that could be improved.

I found that this method worked best when I was working through some of the trickier bits – but then I always like to get my thoughts down in writing when I’m struggling. I suppose if you’re not that kind of person it might not work so well.

When it came to the easier bits it slowed me down, and instead of actually typing things out, I would find myself just copying and pasting information. It makes for a good record of the evidence you’ve collected (particularly if you’re diligent about recording where it came from), and indeed the order in which you found it, but it loses some of its appeal without your own words in there, and you just end up with a mass of non-organised, non-filtered evidence.

On writing it all down: 2. Paper family trees

I love the look of a family tree – there’s something very magical about seeing yourself at the bottom, and watching all this interlinking of people that all leads to you. They are a very visual representation of your family as a whole (or a part of it). They show you how individuals are linked and how the different branches fit together.

Of course, you can play around with the concept of a family tree to show pretty much anything you want – I’m using the term very loosely to cover any kind of large-ish paper-based chart.

For example, I’ve experimented with tweaking my trees to accurately show the birth and death dates of each person, almost in a bar chart style. This allows you to see who is contemporary to whom in your tree. A variation on this is to produce detailed timelines for a selection of your ancestors, to see how the various events in their lives relate to one another. Or, try using a tree or chart to show your ancestors generation by generation – this is particularly useful when you’re trying to work out how many great-great-greats you need!

Another chart form I’ve used is to create what I’ve called a ‘relationship map’ to show how different people are related to a single individual. It’s basically a spider diagram with a branch each for parents, spouses, siblings, cousins, lodgers, even ‘servants’. Then from each branch have branches linking off to show the name of each connection, with any other info you want about them. You can even then link these connections to each other, to make it clear how they’re related as well. This can be quite useful if you’re trying to visualise a complex household, or a family group that is split over several households. And this is exactly what family trees are great for – visualising information.

The problem with a family tree is that it can’t contain very much detail. Not just in terms of each individual, either. For example, it’s not easy to see when and where people were living together. Nor is it easy to get everyone’s siblings on the tree. (Not with the number of children many families had in the past anyway!) Because of this a family tree often only ends up showing the direct line. To me this detracts from the completeness of the picture – siblings are important.

A family tree can also be fiddly to create, either by hand or on the computer. Realistically you need a MASSIVE piece of paper, which then creates storage difficulties. Again, altering them might not be particularly easy. If you realise that you got the wrong person down as someone’s mother but you had perfectly planned your family tree space to fit their family, and then you have to replace them with another family that just doesn’t fit the gap, you’re going to be kicking yourself.

Which brings us to another issue – is a family tree really a good method for recording information as you find it out? I reckon it’s useful and interesting as a presentation of a (fairly) complete picture, but not exactly a working document. Which leads me onto...

On writing it all down: 1. Index cards

I started out with this one (once I got past the hastily-scribbled-paper-notes stage, anyway!) I had a card per ‘family’, with the names, births, marriages, deaths and occupations noted for each member. I also noted which censuses I had found the family on and at what addresses. Each card had a number, which I could then note on other family cards against the relevant family member, to cross-reference generations

The useful thing about this approach was that it kept mother, father and children all together in one place, with all the information relating to them as a family group. It made it easy to keep track of who was related to whom.

The problem was when the children started marrying and disappearing from censuses. Obviously I would cross-reference them to their new ‘family’. But it meant a lot of duplicated info – someone’s birthdate was generally recorded in at least two places, occasionally more.

On the other hand, it meant that all the information on one family member wasn’t all kept together in one place. Their marriage wouldn’t appear when they were a child living with their parents; I would have to go elsewhere to find that. This made it difficult to easily see where there were gaps in my knowledge about a certain ancestor.

I did try running separately indexed cards per individual integrated into this system, but this just led to more duplication, and inevitably I would forget to update someone’s information somewhere.

Handwritten cards, which I originally started with, turned out to be impractical; there just isn’t the space to record everything. And it was impossible to neatly make changes without constantly rewriting cards. I switched to Word documents. But while this made updating easier, inevitably it made orderly note keeping harder – you can’t easily align columns without using a table in Word, nor can you just jot something in a margin.

And keeping an index of all this, in an orderly fashion, became a full-time hobby in itself! Plus there was the tricky situation of how to index it. As I started to go down different lines, linking it all together became untenable. The numbering was no longer logical, making it harder to work with. I would have had to completely re-index the thing to keep it running. I still have it, but rarely refer to it anymore.

Beyond how easy to use it is, I think there’s room for debate about how useful it is for actually looking at your family history. On the one hand I like the idea of having a document per person and per family. I like the logic of it, and if you could perfect the layout etc, each document could be extremely interesting – there could be space for a more narrative history or a description of each individual. It could be expanded into a file for each individual that contains everything you know about them – documents, certificates, photographs etc. On the other hand, it’s not the most stimulating presentation, it doesn’t really ‘show’ you your family; it just shows you an ancestor or a household. Which brings me onto...

On writing it all down

Last time, I promised you something a little more practical. I am going to turn to the actual nitty-gritty of doing genealogy, but I’m starting out with an area where I really do want help and suggestions: writing it all down.

It’s a tricky one, and I know that different methods work for different people. My own attempts at recording everything have gone through various guises. So, in the next few posts I’m going to attempt to examine the pros and cons of some of them, in the hope that it will help me to clarify what actually does work best. It might also give you some ideas, and I’m hoping maybe you can give me some advice in return!

As it’s quite a weighty subject, I’ve decided to split this into four parts. To be posted over the next few days.

L x