Yorkshire romance? Given that the good folk of Yorkshire are proud of their plain-speaking and pragmatic ways, is this an oxymoron? Given that I missed the ‘Valentine’ theme associated with Valentine’s day for the 52Ancestors challenge, I decided to think a little more laterally for my late contribution than to talk about the day itself.
I recently made a little breakthrough with finding a record that solved part of a mystery about our Ellam family. Firstly, a little background. Neither one of the couple in this article was born in Yorkshire, but life brought them there. Several generations of their descendants lived there and were proud Yorkshiremen (and women!).
William Ellam
William Ellam was born in 1839 in Whitechapel, London to Samuel Ellam, a gunmaker and his wife Ann (nee Barnes). Sadly, Samuel died when William was just 11, and by the time of the 1851 Census William was living as a pauper inmate of the St Marylebone Workhouse. His mother was no longer an inmate, but was living alone very close to the Workhouse and working as a nurse, quite probably in the Infirmary there. Still there in 1853, he left the Workhouse to take up a parish apprenticeship with George Stubbs of Barking on his fishing vessels. This was the making of William, and when his apprenticeship was over, he headed north to Hull in Yorkshire where there was a thriving fishing industry.
Ann Maria Herbert
Ann Maria Herbert was born in 1840 in Coventry, Warwickshire. Her father was William Herbert. He never married her mother Jane Perkins, who was 26 years his junior, though they were all living together in the 1841 Census, she using her maiden name. By 1851, great upheavals had happened in Ann Maria’s life. At some point, they had moved to Hull, where William had collected a new ‘wife’ before moving on to York. Ann Maria remained in Hull, where she was a 10-year-old servant in the household of Mr John North. No trace of her mother has yet been found beyond 1841.
Yorkshire romance?
One could understand these children being hardened by their early circumstances. Nonetheless, they found one another and married in 1861. Try as I might, I could not find them on the 1861 Census. Then I noticed the date they married. April 7th. Census day. “AHA!!!”, I thought. “A bit of ‘Yorkshire romance’ was taking place, it was their wedding night!” And I stopped looking for this document for many years…
Marriage of William Ellam and Ann Maria Herbert, census day 1861
…until I checked on The Genealogist. I remembered this weekend that they’re very good for anything to do with people working on boats. I was actually looking for other items about William and up popped his entry on the 1861 Census under ‘Crew Lists’. Many other sites don’t have this category for the censuses, which is why he still doesn’t show up on searches on those other sites. This is much like the breakthrough I got when I found a census entry for Nora Vaughan that was missing from Ancestry but was on FindMyPast and ANOTHER reminder for us to check all the sites!
William Ellam, finally found on the 1861 Census, spending his wedding night aboard a fishing boat!
It appears that William said his ‘I do’ then immediately rushed off to board the ‘Huntsman’ for a fishing voyage! Here’s where the romantic bit comes in. This census document is probably the first document where he ever described himself as a married man. Nawww.
I probably shouldn’t be poking fun at William racing off like that. These were hard-working folk beginning their lives together. Squeezing in their wedding between fishing trips was probably as good as he could manage at the time. At least he married her!
Yet more Yorkshire romance…
But perhaps there is a bit of true romance in the story after all. As you may recall, I am partial to a little FAN clubbing. The witnesses to William and Ann Maria’s marriage, James Hodgson and Eliza Vant married the following year. I like to think that maybe they met at the wedding, one his friend and one hers, and their courtship began after sharing their duties as witnesses.
My favourite photo cropped to show my grandmother’s face. Read on to see the whole of my favourite photo and find out why it ‘s the one of her that I love the most!
As I continue through 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, this week’s topic is a shorter and more visual one – ‘Favourite Photo’.
What makes a good family photo? It falls beyond the technical aspects, and beyond the artistic aspects. When it comes to genealogy it’s great to find a photo that shows you more than just an ancestor’s face. Any surviving photo is a good photo to have. But if I can get a glimpse into the personality of my family member it’s a massive bonus for me.
My favourite photo was not difficult to choose. It popped into my mind immediately. I present to you my paternal grandmother, Louise Taylor (nee Seal). She is on the left, and her sister-in-law Florence (nee Powell), is on the right.
I remember my grandmother as someone who enjoyed life to it’s fullest. Even my mum, who didn’t always get along with her, said she could make any occasion fun. Doesn’t that just shine through in this photograph? It really brings her personality to life.
A fun-loving woman, ahead of her time!
You can see she was a bit of a trailblazer. The photo must have been taken in either the late 1920’s or very early 1930’s. It was most unusual in those days for women to wear trousers and singlets. I suspect it was in the summer of 1930 or 1931. Summer for two reasons…England would not usually be warm enough to just wear a singlet in other seasons, and they appear to be standing on a beach.
It would be out of the ordinary to visit the beach outside of summer in those days if you were from Birmingham. It’s about as far away as one can get from the English coast! The most common seaside place for Brummies (natives of Birmingham) to visit was Weston-super-Mare, and I think this is probably where the photo was taken.
You can also infer from the photo that she would do just about anything for a joke. Those are not their own clothes. Tiny Louise especially is drowning in those massive trousers, and she was otherwise quite a fashion plate. It appears the hilarity is because they wore their boyfriend’s/husband’s clothes for the photo. I wonder if the clothes were actually swapped. If so, no photo survives of my grandfather wearing my grandmother’s clothes. This will be an eternal mystery!
Your turn…What is your favourite photo and why?
When you look at your family photos, try to look beyond the occasion or the date. Try to place it into a deeper context of where, when, why and who. And not just who were they with. Who are they themselves? Who is behind that face? What can you see about THEM?
And then…does any of that correlate with what you know about yourself or their other descendants? Do they have the same twinkle in their eye as your Dad? Do they look like they are ambitious, hardworking, lazy, funny, serious…and what clues in the photo are telling you that?
This week’s 52 Ancestors topic is ‘Family Legend’. When I was little, I always heard that my grandmother’s mother, Leah Swinbourne was ‘born of gypsy blood’. She foretold her own death in quite some detail by reading the tea leaves. But that’s a story in itself, to be told another day. I know my Mum was always very respectful of the gypsy women that would come to our door selling pegs and heather. She always managed to find sixpence to spare, even during lean weeks.
I quite liked the idea of being a gypsy. As a little girl it conjured up all sorts of romantic notions of campfires, dancing and magic. To this day I enjoy the sound of traditional gypsy music.
By Unknown author – “Victor Hugo and His Time” by Alfred Barbou. 1882;, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28275842
It took a while to find any evidence of gypsy blood though. Even now it’s largely circumstantial. Leah’s birth certificate showed her to have been born in a ‘normal’ house in Birmingham, and the family’s census entries showed addresses that weren’t gypsy encampments. There was quite a large gypsy camp in Birmingham at a place known as The Black Patch near Smethwick. This has become rather well known for being the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin according to his family members, so I was hopeful of finding a link there! As it turned out though, the gypsy connection was from another part of the country.
Charlie Chaplin – proud of his gypsy origins.
Leah’s mother Elizabeth (nee Beckett) was born about 1856 in Bath, Somerset. She was the daughter of John William Beckett, a coach trimmer and his ‘wife’, Eliza Kaines. They seemed to avoid officialdom at almost every turn to begin with. There was no marriage to be found, their first-born Elizabeth’s birth was not registered. Nor was she baptised. Same with the next child, Alice, by which time they had moved on to Trowbridge in Wiltshire. Luckily, they eventually began to register the births (perhaps they had copped a fine!) and were visible in censuses, so they weren’t too difficult to keep tabs on. I even eventually found their marriage. In 1878, between the births of their 8th and 9th children, they finally tied the knot in Birmingham.
John William Beckett was himself the son of a coach trimmer, William Beckett. William had married Mary Ann Hayden…and this is where the gypsy blood enters our family line. Mary Ann hailed from Hampshire, also with family in Wiltshire, and I initially had no idea that she was a gypsy. In retrospect, it provides a good theory as to how she and William met. Gypsies, after all, often lived in vardos, the colourful little caravans that would presumably need repairs, maintenance and decorative tasks done on occasion!
I received an email around 20 years ago from a Hayden cousin explaining the family’s background and where we fit into the tree. This gelled well with what I knew and quietly blew my mind! She told me that right into the 20th Century the Haydens were maintaining the gypsy tradition of burning the vardo and all it’s contents after it’s owner died (a la Peaky Blinders!). Sadly, I had a hard drive failure and lost all my emails and therefore contact with this and many other cousins soon afterwards. A reminder to always disaster-proof all aspects of your research and back up regularly. I’m still broken-hearted about that loss two decades later, but older and wiser now.
Around 10 years ago, my mother and my maternal uncle were DNA-tested. Both of them came up with small but significant South Asian in their ethnicity results. This is a strong indicator of gypsy origins in otherwise ‘beige and boring’ completely British subjects. Sadly, it’s washed out of my genome, but at least I know it was there right up until the last generation. This is another reminder – that our genealogical family tree and our genetic family tree are not the same as one another. We don’t get DNA from every single one of our ancestors. How could we? Where would it all fit? This is why it is important to test not just yourself, but other willing members of your family. What doesn’t show up in you may show up in your sibling or parent.
So what signs of gypsy blood in the family have been apparent during my lifetime? My grandmother didn’t set much store by it all, but she’d had all that ‘nonsense’ beaten out of her by the nuns at the orphanage. That didn’t stop her however from having some strongly held superstitions which I think came from her mother. Shoes on the table were banned. I’ve not heard of this superstition anywhere outside our family. People just look at me blankly if I mention it. But it’s been passed on strongly and I cannot bear it if people put a pair of shoes on a table to this day.
My Mum was famous in the family for being great at interpreting dreams. Perhaps this was just that she was naturally intuitive. Perhaps it was that gypsy DNA making itself known. I once played the part of a palm reader at the village fête as a teenager to raise money for the Youth Club. It felt natural, the ‘fortunes’ just flowed and I loved doing it, but I don’t have that DNA. I just love playing dress-ups and had no trouble reading what the customers needed to hear!
Do you have any ancestors who moved about a lot, and seemed to avoid marking significant life events through the official channels? Do census entries show different birthplaces for many of the children? Does the DNA of you or anyone else in your family show more than a smidge of South Asian ethnicity? Consider the possibility that you may have some gypsy blood in your family.
The remaining members of the Barnett family in 1913 (LtoR: Leah, Jack, Ted and Annie).
This week once again I’m giving an example of how paying attention to a name helps to overcome obstacles in your family tree. We already saw how naming patterns helped break down a longstanding brick wall. Now, here’s a family story I finally proved after discovering an unusual middle name.
My grandmother Ruby had a difficult childhood. She was orphaned by the age of 7 and spent quite some time in an orphanage until her older half-sister Ann turned 21 and could take her home. Consequently, she didn’t know much about her family background and had very few stories to share. Those she did remember have since been shown to have a grain of truth but became distorted over the years by a child’s fickle memory.
Ruby’s mystery brother
Ruby claimed that one of her brothers died on the railway tracks because he was deaf and didn’t hear a train coming. I knew she meant either one of her half-brothers or one of her stepbrothers, as she was the only child of her mother Leah’s second marriage. Leah’s first marriage had been to a widower with a brood of kids, and they had also had several children together. However, she didn’t know which brother the story referred to, and he died well before she was born. The way she described him seemed to portray him as maybe 5 or 6 years of age. Perhaps that’s the way she imagined it when she was told the story.
Early on in my family history journey, I tried to find out what had happened. I had no name or year of death, a vague guess at an age, knew it was probably around Coventry and the surname was Barnett. Not uncommon. Back in those days, even consulting census records was cumbersome, and these children were all born after the (then) recently released 1881 Census. There was no 1939 Register to see who was still around in adulthood. Baptism record availability was patchy. And newspapers were difficult to locate from 12000 miles away. We are so spoilt now with the immediate availability of such a wide range of resources via the internet, aren’t we?
My research progressed over the years and my focus was further back in my tree as a result. The story of my great-uncle’s death had been abandoned and forgotten after those early attempts to find the truth. I hadn’t really thought about him in 15 years. But I decided to resurrect the search and take my own advice about periodically reviewing my tree.
Two of the seven step- or half-brothers in Ruby’s family were known to have reached adulthood. That left five possibilities to investigate. None of them was noted as being deaf on the censuses, so that shortcut was eliminated! I decided to systematically research each boy as though they were new to me. Joy of joys, I discovered that the baptism records for their parish were now available with images on Ancestry! This was the very simple key to unlock the story after all these years.
Alfred Mario Barnett
Alfred Barnett was William and Leah Barnett’s first child together. I decided to begin with him. This was fortunate as I immediately learnt something new about him from his baptism record. He had an unusual middle name – Mario! While that may not sound odd these days, we’re talking about Coventry in Victorian times. There were not very many people bearing Italian names in Warwickshire outside of Birmingham. I checked for a death record – an Alfred Mario Barnett aged 15 was registered in Coventry in 1912. It had to be him.
A snippet of Alfred Barnett’s baptism record at St John, Coventry revealing his unusual middle name.
So where to next? Why the newspapers of course! The British Newspaper Archive has recently reached the milestone of 40 million pages of newspapers. A young boy dying in a railway accident should be newsworthy. His unusual middle name was eminently searchable. I knew the year and the approximate place, and…
Searching using Alfred’s middle name led to finding the reports of his fatal accident.
…I found him! There were several reports including some very detailed inquest reports…detailed enough to pin down the location of the accident.
The approximate scene of the accident marked on the 1888 Ordnance Survey map.
How did Alfred die?
Alfred and his friend John Keal went for a walk on the morning of Sunday 22nd September 1912. They were headed for the nearby London & North Western Railway line, although John later denied they were intending any mischief such as putting pennies on the line.
They got to the Folly Lane railway bridge, heading for the iron bridge further down, and decided to cut down the embankment one walking each side of the tracks. Another witness who was on the iron bridge said they were about halfway along when the express train approached. He said there was a strong wind blowing and it didn’t appear that Alfred heard the approach behind him. This may account for my grandmother believing he was deaf. He was hit by the train at between 50-60mph which caused devastating and unsurvivable injuries. The train driver, perhaps fortunately, was unaware he’d hit anyone until he reached Willesden and was informed of the accident.
A train rushing along the same piece of track in 1910 where Alfred later met his fate.
His unfortunate father had to identify his son’s mutilated body. No doubt it had a lasting impact. William died only 9 months later, leaving Leah and the remaining children in poverty.
Look out for those unusual middle names!
Finding that Alfred Barnett was actually Alfred Mario Barnett made the verification of this family story so much easier. After all these years, within 10 minutes of knowing this extra detail, the mystery was solved. Use names to your advantage. If they are unique, searching is a doddle.
So why Mario? It was an easy matter to check for Marios around Coventry, they were as expected, very thin on the ground. One was William’s former brother-in-law, Mario Veasey. Mario’s wife Maud had been a witness at William and Leah’s marriage, so it appears they were very approving of William’s choice of replacement for Mario’s deceased sister Lucy and the couples were close.
Serendipity strikes again
There were two little pieces of serendipity to this tale:
The next station down the L&NWR line was Rugby, just a few short miles away. This was the station at which Edward Horatio Girling worked when it first opened. This was of course before his unfortunate encounter with a cobra at London Zoo, after his return down south.
When I was 14, the same age as Alfred, I lived briefly in a village just outside Coventry called Baginton. As I was perusing the maps, I realised it was only about 3km as the crow flies from where Alfred had come to grief. I too had wandered as he did with friends at the weekends doing dangerous things (a homemade raft on the River Sowe comes to mind!). It’s amazing so many 14-year-olds survive to become 15 really, but it brought tears to my eyes. I wonder if my mum realised at the time that we were living so close to the scene of her uncle’s demise?
1912 brochure for the London and North Western Railway
The world is overwhelmed right now with the ongoing tragedy that is Covid. The second wave in many countries has sent people back inside where many are taking refuge in family tree research. This keeps them safe and occupied, but there is a family tree ‘deadly virus’ too, especially spread amongst those with less experience at genealogy. I call it UnProvid, and it spreads like wildfire.
All it takes is one infection… Photo by Christopher Rusev on Unsplash.com
What is UnProvid?
UnProvid is information accepted without question. By far the greatest source of infection appears to be other people’s family trees and it really does promulgate like a deadly virus. For example, one person puts something in their family tree. This generates hints to other people who have ancestors with similar names in their trees.
All it takes is one person to accept the hint without checking that it is information about the same individual and that the information itself is valid…and the virus is on its way. Once more than one person has that information connected to their tree, it gains credibility. So more people accept it.
Before you know it, that piece of information looks like the accepted wisdom. At this point almost everyone will see a page full of family tree hints saying the same thing and decide it must be right. CLICK…accepted.
STOP!
NEVER ACCEPT INFORMATION WITHOUT CHECKING IT THOROUGHLY! It will kill that part of your tree if it is wrong. Every further step you take from that point on will be wrong. It will not be your family. It doesn’t belong in your tree. Why would you want that in your tree?
Use critical thinking to analyse hints. Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash
Immunise Your Tree From This Deadly Virus
Check the sources. These should be cited by the other researchers. Look at the original images yourself if possible.
Are you absolutely sure that this great piece of information is for your ancestor and not someone else with a similar name? Check the context, dates, places, other people mentioned…does it all tally? Critical thinking is one of the greatest skills to develop as a family tree researcher.
Protect your tree with good research habits. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
I’ve actually gone one step further. You can adjust your hint settings so that you do not even see hints from other people’s trees, and I absolutely recommend it. In this way you still get record hints as a starting point, but the tree hints are tucked away out of sight.
You still need to vet the record hints thoroughly before deciding whether to accept them. However, you are beginning from at least one step closer to the actual evidence than by accepting tree hints.
Do not worry that you will run out of hints. It’s highly unlikely. The number will be less overwhelming (I lost over 14000 hints at Ancestry when I turned tree hints off, phew!), but as you analyse each one and integrate the information you choose to accept, more will be generated.
And remember, you can and should research using your own search techniques and other databases as well. Hints are our friend if used correctly, but they are just the tip of the research iceberg. Used incorrectly, they are worse than useless, and a deadly virus to our family tree.
Keep your tree healthy and protected. Photo by Rob Mulally on Unsplash
Your ancestors’ occupations can reveal a great deal about their lives. They provide a huge amount of context for the way the whole family lived. So it’s super important to make sure you are paying attention to the jobs your ancestors held.
Often, the occupations of our ancestors are one of the easier facts to find out about them. They are listed on birth, marriage and death records, censuses and wills, some of the most common records we use. Let’s really squeeze what information we can out of knowing what they did for a living.
I’m planning on beginning a series of blogs soon, covering different fields of common ancestral occupations. So today’s blog is just an overview of why investigating your ancestors’ occupations is a valuable strategy for you to use.
Do you know what a toymaker was? It’s not what you may think. All will be revealed in a future post! From Bisset’s Magnificent Guide of Birmingham (1808).
What are the benefits of exploring your ancestors’ occupations?
They may lead you to record sources
If your ancestor’s occupation was a trade, have a look and see if there are apprenticeship records surviving. These may include his own indenture, or maybe when he was older he was a master who took on an apprentice. There may also be records in the appropriate trade company, for example, freeman’s records. These records can provide all sorts of juicy details including the father’s name, occupation and residence. Were your ancestors members of a trade union? What records survive for their union and what information might they hold?
Likewise, if your ancestor’s occupation was a profession, there might be records of his university education, which can often contain useful details of his background.
Do they appear in trade or commercial directories of the time? A great way to track movement over time. You may be lucky enough to find advertisements from them too!
Check out the Inland Revenue records at The National Archives too…remember it is still free to download digitised records at the moment.
There are often extensive records for ancestors who were part of the military. For example, sadly here a local paper’s tribute to their fallen. Look at all the Ryles boys from one family on my father’s side.
They may explain migration patterns or reveal the origin of your migrant ancestor
If you are wondering where a branch of your family disappeared to there may be clues in their occupation. Conversely, if you are wondering which part of the ‘old country’ your family came from, the same applies.
For example, coal mining families in the United Kingdom may have come from South Wales, or the Midlands (around the Black Country and North Warwickshire especially), or maybe Yorkshire or Scotland. They won’t be from Kent! If your family were all coal miners and you know your great great uncle emigrated, maybe try looking for him in places like Pennsylvania in the US, where coal mines were extremely common.
Where did your ancestors’ occupations ground them or send them?
Ancestors’ occupations may help you distinguish between families
This one is critical when you are researching families with common names. You’re not sure who belongs to who in the records. So how can knowing about their occupations help? If you know one William was a cordwainer, and the other was a glassblower, the two sons named John could be matched to their father by their job. This isn’t completely foolproof but it can help. So one John is a bootmaker, the other is a glass grinder. They don’t have exactly the same occupation as their fathers but they are in the same field. This sometimes requires a little deeper knowledge of the field they are in to provide this context.
Also, if you are looking for your ancestors in newspapers, their occupation was usually included in any reports about them. So with a little bit of luck, you can eliminate the Charlie Smith who was picked up for drunkenness if his job was completely different to your sober and hard-working (of course!) Charlie.
They may reveal the source of family traditions or heirlooms
Do you have any family sayings, songs, recipes, or items passed down that you have no idea about the origin of? They may be related to a family occupation in times past. If you can make the link, you are helping to tell your ancestors’ stories.
If you’re lucky you may have had creative ancestors. Is the old painting handed down over the years actually done by a family member? I don’t have this painting by my relative William Alfred Rollason, but I wish I did!
Stop Press!
Coincidentally, the University of Strathclyde has recently expanded its educational offering on Futurelearn, which I’ve previously talked about. There are now short, free courses covering three of the occupational fields that many of us would have had an ancestor or two in. Those fields are railways, coal mining and textile mills.
Registrations of births, marriages and deaths did not begin until relatively late in Scotland, compared to England and Wales. It was not until 1855 that certificates were kept. However this did have the benefit that Scotland had had almost 20 extra years to decide what to include. Anyone researching in Scotland would agree that they used that time wisely, and that Scottish statutory records are much more useful than those produced by their counterparts south of the border! Let’s look at Scottish certificates and then I’ll let you in on a secret weapon for Scottish research (not really a secret, but a surprise to most!) that could really break down some of your brick walls in a flash!
What can you find on Scottish certificates?
From January 1st 1855, Scotland began keeping their statutory registers for births, marriages and deaths. The basic information is similar to what is found on English civil registration certificates though with some additional information.
Birth certificates
Forename and surname – in this column (up until 1918), it may also be noted that the child was illegitimate. On English certificates, this is usually indicated by the absence of a father’s name in the appropriate column.
Date, place and time of birth. The time was recorded for all births, not just multiple births as in England.
Gender
Name and surname of father
Rank or profession of father
Name and maiden surname of mother
Date and place of parents’ marriage (except for 1856-1860). This is a very welcome improvement on the English certificates!
Signature, address and relationship of the informant.
When and where registered and signature of registrar
Marriage certificates
When, where and how (i.e. banns or license?) the couple were married
Names of bride and groom
Their occupations
Were they single, widowed or divorced?
Their ages
The addresses of the bride and groom
Name, surname and occupation of father
Name and maiden surname of mother – not found on English certificates
Signature of witnesses
Where the marriage was registered and the signature of registrar.
Death certificates
Full name of the deceased
Their occupation
Their marital status
If married, their spouse’s name
When and where they died
Sex
Age
Name, surname and occupation of father – not included on English certificates
Name and maiden surname of the mother – not included on English certificates
If parents are deceased – not included on English certificates
Cause of death
Signature, address and relationship of the informant.
Where and when the death was registered and the signature of the registrar.
So as you can see, any Scottish certificate is already going to give you better information than those south of the Scottish border.
But there is even more information to be found on these certificates if you can find an event in your family that happened in 1855.
What’s so special about 1855?
The year 1855 is your secret weapon for Scottish research. Depending on your target family’s timings, you may have to utilise collateral research to get the best bang out of it. However, it will be worth the effort and that’s something you should be doing anyway!
In the first year of statutory registration, authorities really took the opportunity to wring as much information out of the informants as possible. So you may be able to access information that would otherwise be difficult to get.
Birth certificates in 1855. Credit: Scotland’s People
These are your bonus facts, over and above what every other year provides you:
Birth Certificates
Other children born to the same parents, and whether they were living or deceased
The ages of both parents
The birthplaces of both parents
The parents’ usual residence
The baptismal name (if different from the name they were registered under)
Marriage Certificates
The birthplace and when and where registered of each spouse. WOW!
The number of former marriages of each spouse
The number of children by those marriages.
Death Certificates
The deceased’s place of birth
How long were they living in the district or parish
A list of their children in order of birth, including both their names and ages
I wish this had continued beyond 1855 but they streamlined to the (still pretty amazing) certificates we see today. So why did they not continue? Good question, I suspect they might have had pushback from informants or perhaps internally over the time and effort required.
1855 Colton map of Scotland. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
How can you utilise this secret weapon for Scottish research?
Firstly, have a look at your Scottish family and identify what information is missing. This will help you prioritise which type of certificate/s will most likely fill the gap.
For example, if you need to find the birthplace of the parents…
Were ANY Of the children (not just your ancestor) born in 1855? Even if they died young and you haven’t focussed on them at all before, their birth certificate will be useful to provide that lovely extra information about the parents. (Or died? Married?)
If not, let’s branch out collaterally…did any of the parents’ siblings have children or die in 1855? Getting their birthplace may be helpful in pinning down your target’s birthplace, especially if the sibling is close in age.
Another thing I love love love about Scottish research is that getting the certificates is so quick and easy as downloads from the Scotland’s People website. It’s also relatively cheap (always a bonus!). The downfall of them all being immediately accessible online is that it is way too easy to keep on buying more and more records as you plunge down the rabbit hole…or is that just me?
Hopefully by targeting the information that you really need and using the information above to help you find it, you will break down some brick walls quickly, easily and cheaply. 1855 is my favourite ‘north of the border’ year as it’s my secret weapon for Scottish Research. Good luck!
Placing genealogy research online has become more and more popular over the years. Most people stick to just having their own standalone tree on their website, or on one of the subscription database sites (where they can also pick up record hints to help with their research). However, there are also several sites where people contribute their research to one enormous tree. Examples include FamilySearch Family Tree, Geni and WikiTree.
It’s not a competition for ancestors, we’re all in the same boat. But how can we reduce the risk of errors? Credit: Martin Canma on Scopio
So what stops people from participating in this? The biggest factor seems to be concern over errors in collaborative family trees. They worry that they will upload the precious research that they have nurtured, then others will sloppily attach the wrong families to theirs. This is a fair concern. It happens. Not everyone is an experienced, organised or careful genealogist.
I am a great believer in collaboration between researchers. As you can imagine, I was quite excited to find out about a tool that can be used to clean up FamilySearch Family Tree. This tool is called Tree Sweeper. Tools such as this could make errors in collaborative family trees a thing of the past if enough people find out about and use them!
How does Tree Sweeper work to reduce errors in collaborative family trees?
This tool is blissfully simple. Just login using your FamilySearch account.
Tree Sweeper Home Page
Once you are logged in, there is a simple ‘options’ screen. You decide which person in the tree you wish to start with. I would suggest for your first sweep that you choose ‘Current User’, i.e. yourself. Be aware that the tool sweeps ancestors rather than descendants. Therefore, it will always be working backwards from your chosen starting point.
You can specify how many generations (up to 7) you would like to check for errors. You can also decide what kinds of errors to look for – definite errors, possible errors, or ‘research opportunities’ (which includes finding duplicates). Or you can just check everything.
Defining which errors you are seeking to correct, and in which part of the tree…
In the example below I chose to check 5 generations back from myself for definite errors. Tree Sweeper found five errors, and I can see already someone has been playing around in the tree. I have never heard of Edith Mary Bland! The red flag next to each of these listed people shows the number of impossibilities in the information currently listed for them. You can download the full list as a PDF via the big green ‘Download Results’ button.
Results of the defined Tree Sweep
Click on the dropdown arrow next to Edith’s name to reveal details of the error. According to the tree, she was christened before she was born. If I click on the green button below her ID number, I will be taken to her page and be able to assess and fix the problem.
The dropdown to the right of Edith’s name shows the exact problem
Once errors have been fixed, it is then a great idea to click the ‘watch’ star on the person’s page. This means that if anyone comes along and alters anything to do with this person you will be notified. This will give you the chance to assess what they have done, and potentially collaborate with a fellow researcher who is quite possibly a relative. It also gives you the chance to change things back if you are sure what they have done is not correct!
Does Tree Sweeper do the trick?
Tree Sweeper is a fantastic tool for peace of mind. You can monitor your family line and make sure it stays correct. This is a great benefit for you, the wider research community and the memory of your ancestors. If this tool persuades just a few more people to take part in a collaborative family tree without fear of pervasive errors taking over, that is a great thing for the genealogical community!
Researching our family trees can take us deeper and deeper into rabbit holes. As we proceed further back, that is the direction we tend to continue to travel. However, it is important to review your family tree every now and then from the top.
“What a waste of precious time!”, I hear you cry. “It’s already done!”. Well, yes, that is true. But when you did it, you were a less experienced researcher, working with fewer available sources. I would recommend you review your family tree, even gradually branch by branch as an ongoing process, every couple of years.
Why Bother Reviewing Your Family Tree?
You are now a better genealogist. We all started somewhere. We may have started from scratch, talking to family members and gradually collecting documents to confirm each step of the way. Some may have found other people’s work (either published or in online family trees) and used that without reviewing it systematically, presuming it was validated. This is understandable – it’s human nature not to want to reinvent the wheel, and just to treat that information as a welcome windfall that allows you to proceed faster. But you’re better than that now. You’re working towards the Genealogical Proof Standard. You want your tree to be right. What is the point in researching a tree that is ultimately not yours because it is wrong?
New sources of data become available every day. Perhaps they have been published online. Perhaps you’ve learnt of their existence in a brick and mortar archive or other repository and can now go review them there. Most data sources still exist only in the offline world.
Reviewing a line from scratch can help you resolve a brick wall. Coming back to a branch of your family tree after a break can help you look at problems with a fresh pair of eyes and new ideas.
However, don’t just review the lines where you have a known problem. I had an experience recently that has undone the ‘knowledge’ I have had about a family for the past 30 years.
Check the branches of your family tree regularly and thoroughly.
Reviewing the Fields – A Family Is Split
I had long believed that my 5 x great grandparents were Francis Palmer Field and Ann Calley. Palmer was used for several generations as a middle name for my Fields. This went back to the marriage of Edward Field and Honor Palmer, of two prominent families in Kings Norton, Worcestershire.
I have long found the Field family of Kings Norton to be fascinating. They are hugely interwoven and ended up spreading extensively locally to nearby Birmingham, Halesowen, Rowley Regis and other places, often repeating the same names in their various branches. So teasing the families apart has become a secondary genealogy project to my main research in recent years.
Add to your collection of evidence
I visit England quite frequently and usually find time to go to the Birmingham Archives. On one occasion I accessed a bundle of documents for a Francis Field of Rowley Regis and Birmingham. I hoped to find where this Francis fitted in with my known Fields. The bundle consisted of his father William’s will, a pocketbook with various notes scribbled in it, a bond and the apprenticeship documents for his son William. The pocketbook mentioned properties that had been left to him in the will and confirmed the documents had not just been randomly bundled together.
These documents proved that this Francis was a gunsmith. The Francis Field who married Ann Calley was also a gunsmith according to their marriage allegation of 1779. I realised that the only reason I believed my Francis Palmer Field was a gunsmith was due to that document that I had accessed about 30 years previously. The two Francis Fields were not the same person – one’s father was William of Rowley Regis, and the father of my Francis Palmer Field was Edward (son of Edward and Honor nee Palmer) of Kings Norton. With a growing sense of horror, I realised that there must have been two couples named Francis and Ann Field in Birmingham at the same time!
Review your family tree
I looked at their children. It was a large family to be sure, but they flowed very logically, children baptised every 1-3 years, the first few at St Philip, the second few at St Martin to be sure, but people often switched between these two nearby churches if they changed their address, or if one parent was originally from one parish and the spouse from another. I hadn’t thought anything of it. The names didn’t overlap with any other living children. Francis occasionally used his middle name on the baptism documents but not always.
Now it became clear that it was very likely the first 5 children were of Francis Field and Ann Calley. They stopped having children just as Francis Palmer Field and his wife Ann began to have their 5 children. If only I could locate wills for either of the two Francis’s as further evidence of this, but no luck yet!
So, who is my 5 x great-grandmother?
With the two Francis’s separated, and the children split into two families, the next question was – who is the second Ann?
I used all my available databases, both free and subscription, to locate marriages between a Francis Field and an Ann anywhere in the UK in a twenty-year timeframe. There were five possibilities. Four of them could be ruled out on further investigation on such factors as their location, subsequent children being born there, or the timing was at the fringes of biological possibility for them then having five children.
One remained. Francis Field married Nancy Culwick on March 1st 1790 at St Peter in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. Nancy is a popular pet name for Ann. Wolverhampton is not far from Birmingham and there was an influx to rapidly growing Birmingham at that time. It also tied in beautifully with the baptism of their first child in 1791. This could be a possibility. The witnesses provided no clue, they were church officials. I made a note of Francis’s signature (definitely different from the Francis Field who signed the marriage allegation with Ann Calley), Nancy did not sign.
Francis Field married Nancy Culwick March 1st 1790, at St Peter in Wolverhampton.
I have Culwicks!
Culwick is an unusual name. I did a bit of digging through surrounding parish records for other Culwick (and variant surname) families. Eventually, I hit paydirt. I found another marriage in 1797, witnessed by Francis Palmer Field and Ann Palmer Field! Checking the signature it was the same Francis Field who had married Nancy Culwick 7 years before. The only difference was that he had chosen this as one of the occasions when he used his middle name as well. This provided evidence that THIS Francis Field who married Nancy was the same Francis Palmer Field that I am descended from.
Francis Palmer Field and Ann Palmer Field witnessed the marriage of Benjamin Langford and Frances Cullett (an accepted variant of Culwick) on July 5th 1797 at St Mary in Handsworth.
I split my tree. I’ve kept Gunsmith Francis and his wife Ann Calley as an unattached branch. I’m pretty sure they will turn out to be a collateral line, but now my Francis Palmer Field is unique. Everybody else who has researched him came to the same conclusion, based on logic and the easily available data, that he married Ann Calley. Sometimes you need to dig deeper. He married someone else entirely.
The Cherry on Top
Because Culwick is so unusual, I decided to also check my DNA matches. I did a search for Culwick in their trees. One hit. I knew this match was related on my Field line already thanks to our shared matches. He had no Fields in his tree, but he does have a Culwick from the same parish as the marriage where Francis left his confirming signature as a marriage witness. On its own, this is not enough to confirm my theory, but it’s a great piece of supporting evidence!
So, no matter how long you have been researching, periodically review your family tree. Can you find more evidence to support your conclusions? Or perhaps it leads you in entirely a different direction. Either way, your research will be stronger for it.
As the novel Coronavirus takes a firm hold on the world, we are being encouraged to ‘flatten the curve’ of infection in order to keep our healthcare services from being completely overwhelmed. Social distancing, keeping away from the hordes, appears to be the most effective way of limiting the spread of the virus. Indeed, the same measures were taken during the Spanish Flu outbreak a century ago.
This means many of us will be at home a lot more than usual. Social distancing is the new (temporary) norm. But it’s not all bad news. There is so much we can do to pass the time that we may not usually have enough space in our days to do. Let’s make lemonade! Our family trees can benefit enormously from this enforced time out from our social lives!
Social Distancing Genealogist-Style
Here are just a few ideas to pass your time productively and progress your family history…
1) Get organised
When we dip in and out of our genealogy whenever we get a spare moment, things can quickly get disorganised. Social distancing time is perfect to invest in getting your research organised again…a crucial part of efficient research.
Do you have a pile of documents that needs sorting and filing?
Have you scanned all your photos and documents?
Are your computer files sorted so you can find everything easily?
Have you written a research plan?
2) Read
We all have a pile of reading material we need to get around to tackling. Do it now while you’re social distancing!
Non-fiction – now is the time to dig out all the family history society journals, history books and other reference books that help provide knowledge and context to our research. Educate yourself.
Have you seen all the episodes of your favourite genealogy TV show? If so, can you track down other versions of it? For example, although ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ began in the UK, there are also several seasons of the Australian and US versions. Even if you don’t always know who the celebrity is, the stories are always interesting and you can get some insight into how to solve nutty genealogy problems.
4) Research
With a bit more time on your hands, social distancing gives you the opportunity to go really in-depth with your research. Perhaps it’s time to get stuck into…
Analysing your DNA results, maybe trying some new tools such as AutoTrees
Looking for gaps in your documentation and ordering copies in. Don’t forget to ‘kill off’ all your ancestors!
Doing a ‘deep dive’ into one of your brick wall ancestors. Start again from scratch with them and see what you can find.
Digging out some of those wills that seem a bit daunting and focus on working out their contents!
5) Involve the family
Phone elderly relatives and ask about their memories. Get those stories from them while you have time to really listen. It’s a good way to check up on their wellbeing too since they are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus.
If you are home with the kids due to school being shut, help them pass the time by doing a family tree project. This is also a great way to get them involved and perhaps recruit one of them to carry on as the family historian after you have gone!
6) Volunteer
Family History Societies and local history groups are always crying out for volunteers. Why not see what your groups need and offer to help with things you can do from home? Transcriptions of registers and other documents can be done from your computer.
Memorial sites such as Billion Graves and Find A Grave rely on people transcribing uploads. If you’re good at reading headstones, this is a great use of your time.
So there we go. Your social calendar might be emptying, but give it a couple of weeks and you’ll wonder how you ever found time to go out and play! Stay safe and well, and happy researching!
