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Category: Genealogy

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Your Ancestors’ Wills – Part 2 – Finding Wills And Tackling Reading Them

Last week we looked at the uses of wills for family history research, and what you might hope to find in your ancestor’s will. This week, we’ll take a look at why they are often not used, and tackle the problem of finding wills.

Why Are Wills So Under-Utilised?

To be honest, I think people are a little scared of them! The reasons that I have heard often boil down to misconceptions, or things that can be easily overcome. It’s worth the effort! Here are some of them:

‘They’re too hard to read’

True, the writing can be daunting when you first look at it. However, practice does make it easier over time. Here’s a nice little tutorial from the UK’s National Archives on how to read the old script in wills.

As we discussed last week, wills generally have a fairly set pattern in terms of content. My suggestion is to look at that first paragraph where you know the words are fairly standard and use it as a kind of ‘codebreaker’ for the rest of the document. That way, you can also cover patterns in individual writing styles too.

paleography

‘My ancestors weren’t rich, so there’s no point in looking for a will’

  • Anyone who was an adult, not insane or a criminal, and was male or an unmarried female may have left a will.
  • Men with any amount of property who had children would be likely keen to make a will. If they didn’t and his wife remarried, all his property would legally pass to the new husband and any children that man might have with his wife, leaving his own children unprovided for.
  • People often made wills if they were going into the military or a sea-faring occupation, or had any reason to believe they would be at risk of dying before their time.
  • Of course, this doesn’t mean that the majority of people made wills. It’s human nature to think you’re immortal, even today! Based on comparison with burial records, it seems that between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 men left wills. That’s pretty good odds that you will find at least one in each family line even if not your direct ancestor. Remember the FAN Club!

‘There wouldn’t be much useful information in them’

It depends on what you mean by ‘useful information’. No, there are no vital records type dates in them. But remember, your ancestors are more than just dates and names. As we discussed last week, wills provide information about your ancestor’s relations and relationships, as well as an idea of his circumstances. And all written in his own voice.

‘I reckon they’d be expensive, they’ve been near a lawyer!’

You’d be surprised. Depending on where you are getting them from, they range from absolutely free through to about the same cost as a single birth, marriage or death certificate in most cases.

‘I wouldn’t know where to find wills’

Okay, there is some level of complexity in finding wills, as they are not usually all in one place for a single country. I am not even going to try to list all the sources for all the countries, or this blog will become a book! I would suggest taking a look here (and here for the UK only, and here for Australia only).

In a nutshell, the location of wills is dependent on the time period, the country, and the location within that country (e.g. county/state). Often they are found in national, state or local archives and record offices near the testator’s last known residence. Increasingly they are to be found digitised and online at some record office and subscription websites but there is still a long way to go.

Finding Wills In England

Probably the most complicated country for finding wills (and the one where most of my readers have ancestors) is England. Therefore, I’ll spend some time explaining how the location of English wills can be determined. If you can locate a will in England, you’ll find the rest of the world a doddle!

Finding Wills After 1858

After 1858, it’s simple. Go here. They’re all there and at about the same price as a certificate. All you need to know is the person’s full name and approximate year of death to find them.

Finding Wills Before 1858

Before 1858, wills were dealt with by the ecclesiastic courts (i.e. the Church). The country is split into dioceses for administration purposes. Each diocese has a bishop and a cathedral. The first step is to work out in which diocese the testator was living at the time of their death. A quick and easy way to do this is to use the FamilySearch Wiki. Enter the name of the parish in the search box and the ecclesiastical jurisdictions are listed in the box on the right of the parish page. That box also tells you the legal jurisdiction and the local archives which in most cases will house the wills proved within that diocese.

You should be able to order the wills online through the record office website in most cases, and if not you can do so by post. Wills for some dioceses are now online and more continue to appear all the time. Check the catalogues of your subscription sites regularly and remember Google is your friend!

Finding Wills When Your Ancestor Had Extensive Or Multiple Properties

If an ancestor had a property that extended across the border into other dioceses (or several properties around the country) his will went to a higher authority to be proven. Each diocese belongs to either the Province of Canterbury or ‘PCC’ (in the South) or the Province of York or ‘PCY’ (in the North). The provinces are headed by an Archbishop. If all his property was within one Province, that Province administered the will. If his property extended beyond one Province, the Province of Canterbury administered it. Also, all wills between 1653-1660 were administered by the PCC.

PCC wills are easy to get. If you have a subscription to TheGenealogist.co.uk or Ancestry.com (or can access either of them through your local library), images are accessible within that subscription. If not, go to the National Archives website and search your ancestor’s name. You can download the will for £3.50.

The National Archives in Kew, England

PCY wills are available from a less commonly known source, the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, but the search and ordering is done through this link at FindMyPast. PCY wills cost £7.50 and are delivered electronically within a few days.

Finding Wills Means Finding Your Ancestors’ Lives

So as you can see, the hardest part is working out where the will is. Once you know that, it’s generally easy to get a copy. Then the hardest part is reading it, but with practice, you will find that gets easier too. If you need assistance, you can always call on a professional genealogist for help.

Invest some time and effort into finding your ancestors’ (or their FAN Club’s) wills, and I really believe it will pay off for you! Your tree will be better verified, and you will know a lot more about your ancestors’ lives.

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Your Ancestors’ Wills – Part 1 – Where There’s A Will, There’s Information Galore!

old wills

I had a wonderful stroke of luck this week! I broke through a longstanding brick wall on my Field line, confirmed using my ancestors’ wills. As suspected, the middle name Palmer used across several generations was a massive clue. However, the partnership that brought it about was back at the turn of the eighteenth century and in a different place. Therefore, it’s taken a while to find it.

Because the find was not where I expected it to be, I was extra-specially careful to ensure I had all my ducks lined up evidence-wise. I couldn’t claim this Edward Field as my own just because he was born at the right time and married a Palmer. These are both common names, and extremely common at the time in the parish where I found them. They were both prominent families in the area, and both had many branches. Using ancestors’ wills and wills of others in these local families allowed me to pinpoint where they fit in, and why the name Francis popped up as the eldest son’s forename for several generations too! Now I’ve untangled all the Field and Palmer lines I can sense a couple of one-name studies in the wind. I know how I’m wired…

I spent all this week burying my head in wills, so I was reminded why it would be a good topic for this week’s blog. They are sadly often under-utilised as a resource, and often so rich with detail.

Why You Should Look For Your Ancestors’ Wills

Wills are a treasure trove of information. Some of the uses you can put them to are:

  • Confirming your research
  • Untangling family branches
    • Very useful when the same names are appearing over and over in different branches. Wills will often make it clear who is who.
  • Determining not only family relationships but often their quality
    • Who did they leave out that was still alive or who did they leave an insultingly trivial amount of money? (A caveat, a child ‘cut off with only a shilling’ may have received their inheritance already. Their parent may have set them up in a business or home, and the ‘shilling’ is just to prevent them arguing that they were left out of the will as an oversight).
    • Sometimes they used very blunt and/or revealing comments to explain why certain bequests were made. (See the snippet of another of my ancestor’s wills below as an example!)
  • Discovering the married names of the daughters
    • The testator would often list their children’s names. The daughters were listed using their married surnames. Possibly the husband’s name and the names of their children would appear too.
  • Finding an unexpected place of origin
    • The testator would usually give instructions regarding their burial preferences. Many just specified the local churchyard. However, if they had moved to the vicinity during their life they may have asked to be buried in a family vault in their original village’s church for example.
  • Hearing the voice of your ancestor
    • Not literally of course! But this is one of the few common documents where you will get a feel for your ancestor’s personality. It’s a lot more freeform than certificates for example. Unless your ancestor left a journal, diary or memoir this may be as close as you get to reading their thoughts and opinions in their own voice.
old wills charles girling
A snippet of Charles Girling’s will, naming his housekeeper’s five children (plus one on the way!) as his own. He clearly showed a will to live, rather poignantly also covering any further children he may have by her in this will.

What Is Contained In Your Ancestors’ Wills?

This can vary a little, but a formal will often follows this fairly standard pattern:

  • Their name, occupation and location
  • A statement that they are of sound mind
  • Their burial request
  • Who they appoint as their executor
    • Often a spouse or adult child if widowed
    • Sometimes a brother, brother in law or close friend
  • Instructions for distribution of their property, listing their beneficiaries
  • The date the will was prepared
    • This could be very close to the death date, or years before if they were organised!
  • The signature (or ‘cross’ if they were illiterate) of the testator and the witnesses.
  • The date probate was granted
    • This could also be very close to the death date if straightforward, or years afterwards if it was complicated or contested!

What Won’t You (Usually) Find?

  • Wills of married women
    • these are rare before 1882 as up till then, women did not have their own property. Anything they brought into the marriage became the property of their husband. Therefore she had no legal right to leave anything to anyone.
    • Wills of spinsters, on the other hand, can be gold, especially if there were a lot of nieces and nephews!
    • Once a woman was widowed, she may have had a will drawn up if she did not intend to get remarried.
  • A list of every possession
    • This is called an ‘inventory’ and is a separate document to the will. If it survives, it will be located in the probate file.
    • The inventory is well worth looking for, as literally EVERYTHING got listed. It provides a fascinating snapshot into your ancestor’s life. My ancestor John Girling (father of the Charles named above) made his own inventory. This was quite unusual and slightly OCD, as he also repeatedly updated it over the years. He went into excruciating detail which was great, as it revealed his previously unknown military life, but sadly not the identity of his mother. He noted the subject, artist and value of every painting he owned except her portrait, about which he was irritatingly vague.
  • Dates of births, marriages and deaths
    • This is not the document for finding these details. You may find out from the will that marriages have happened, or children are still minors, or other family members are deceased, but the dates will not appear. However, using the date the will was signed can help narrow down a timeframe for those events and help you locate them in the appropriate sources.

Stay tuned for the next gripping episode…

Next week I will be looking at and dismantling some of the reasons why wills are so commonly ignored, as well as how to find and use them.

In the meantime, has anyone found anything in wills that they never would have known without seeing their will? For me, finding out Charles Girling’s ‘wife’ was actually his housekeeper was an eye-opener, and has saved me countless hours of continuing searches for their marriage! Leave your comments below…

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Cluster Research in Genealogy – Let’s Go FAN Clubbing!

Cluster research is a fantastic methodology to use when you’re stuck. You’ve sucked the well dry in terms of finding records for your direct ancestors. Or perhaps there are too many records for people of similar names and you can’t differentiate between which are your ancestor and which are not. Maybe a female ancestor has got ‘lost’ and you can’t find her maiden name. It’s time for some lateral thinking.

What is a FAN Club?

Cluster research in genealogy refers to utilising the FAN club (Family, Associates and Neighbours) of your direct ancestors to access information that you can’t find simply by researching them alone. The term ‘FAN club’ was coined by respected genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills many years ago. It’s a great way to remind yourself of what other sources of potential information to look for.

Your ancestors did not live in a bubble. They lived in a community, and probably several subgroups of that larger community such as their immediate neighbourhood, extended family, church, sporting or social clubs, workplaces, and political groups. Therefore they were coming into contact with other people every day and probably left their footprints across some of those peoples’ documents and stories in one way or another. Every cluster that they were a part of provides context about their life at the very least.

FAN Club Cluster research
The FAN Club consists of Family, Associates and Neighbours.

When we research our family trees, we often stick to direct ancestors. Indeed, people can be very critical of those who go down the rabbit hole of researching collateral lines, calling them ‘name collectors’ and casting aspersions on the larger size of their family tree. Do not be put off by this. Those people don’t know what they are missing!

Family Cluster Research

Collateral lines (or ‘extended family’) can provide gold when you’ve hit a brick wall. Was your direct ancestor not registered at birth or baptised, did he have no knowledgeable informant of his death, you can’t find his marriage certificate and there was no obituary published? You could be up the proverbial creek. But wait! He had siblings! Suddenly you have several potential sources for his parents’ names via each sibling’s records. For males, military records often contained parents’ names too.

Collateral family members can also help confirm which similarly-named person in a community is yours. Is a known brother with a less common name following the same occupation as your ancestor? Is the naming pattern of their children similar?

Extended family often lived close by, especially when families migrated somewhere together, so check censuses for them. They often witnessed each other’s weddings, were sponsors at their children’s baptisms and mentioned in each other’s wills – their lives frequently intersected. They often appeared in each other’s family photos, especially of large events. If you ‘lose’ a child from your direct ancestor’s family in a census, check that they weren’t actually in the home of their grandparents or aunts and uncles for the night! It can be very helpful when this happens. Sometimes the aunt was a previously lost sister of the child’s father whose married name wasn’t known!

Associates Cluster Research

Associates include people who were part of the same school/university, church/religion, workplace, professional association/union, sporting clubs, political associations or military units. They may have been business partners, their lawyer, doctor or any other sub-unit of the community. These people’s or group’s stories can often give a broader background to, and understanding of your ancestor’s life. If you are lucky your ancestor may be directly mentioned in surviving records or newspaper reports of these groups or workplaces, or journals of an associate’s life.

Cluster research Sports club
Many young men in particular were involved in local sports clubs.

I was able to find an account of an ancestor’s funeral in the newspaper because the only photo I had of him showed some masonic-looking regalia. This regalia turned out to be of the Ancient Order of Foresters who had put a notice in the paper. There were no notices from family as he’d left the state alone after his wife died and moved 2000km west!

cluster research freemasons
The masonic regalia on this ancestor helped to find a newspaper announcement of his funeral across the other side of the continent!

Neighbours Cluster Research

Find neighbours using resources such as directories, censuses and electoral rolls. These are the people that were often interacted with most frequently outside of the immediate family. The bonds could be very tight, especially among immigrant families. You will often find in these cases that the families immigrated together, either knowing each other before the journey or meeting aboard the ship. If you are looking for a town of origin and your family records aren’t providing it, you may possibly discover it via the neighbours they came into the country with!

cluster research neighbours
Neighbours’ lives were closely intertwined.

Neighbouring families commonly intermarried. ‘Marrying the boy next door’ was not just a myth. Of course not every romance ended up as a marriage. It’s probably a good idea to check close to home for potential fathers of illegitimate ancestors. If there are bastardy bonds available check those. If there aren’t, all is not lost however…DNA is beginning to uncover these dalliances by matching descendants of both families as cousins!

Neighbours can also be useful for finding a commonly named ancestor in subsequent censuses. If they had more unusual names than your ancestor and were still living in the surrounding premises, you’ve found him! If journals, memoirs or group photos from neighbouring families survive, you may well find that your ancestors are mentioned, so keep an eye out for those!

cluster research neighbours

FANning Out…

Now you know a little about cluster research, I hope you take advantage of using some of these connections to your ancestors. You may break down a brick wall completely. You may find supporting evidence for a hypothesis or a clue for another direction to go in. At the very least you will add context to your family’s story – a little more flesh on the bones. That’s always a good thing.

Remember, family, associates and neighbours weren’t mutually exclusive – some people may fit in all three categories. If they do, I advise focussing on these ones first. They overlap your ancestor in so many aspects of their life they stand a really good chance of bearing information you can utilise!

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What’s In A Name? Naming Patterns in Family History

What's in a name? Quote

I often hear wails of frustration from family historians who are trying to decide which John or Mary is theirs from a long list of possible Johns and Marys living in the same place at the same time. “Why couldn’t their parents have used a bit more imagination?”, they cry. However, imagination is a privilege we have today that was not so commonly used in our ancestors’ times. Not for them were books containing thousands of weird and wonderful name choices for their babies. There was a relatively small pool of names that were used compared to today (especially for boys). These tended to be recycled through the family generation after generation. ‘What’s in a name?’ when it comes to sorting them all out?

What’s In a Name? – How to use naming patterns to your advantage

Names were often given, not to express individuality as is often the case today, but to honour previous generations. Once you are familiar with naming patterns, you can use them to help identify the likely parents and grandparents of the ancestor you are researching.

Common naming patterns in Britain

The most common naming pattern was as follows:

  • The first son was named after the father’s father
  • The second son was named after the mother’s father
  • The third son was named after the father
  • The fourth son was named after the father’s eldest brother
  • The fifth son was named after the mother’s eldest brother or the father’s next eldest brother
  • ….and so on
  • The first daughter was named after the mother’s mother
  • The second daughter was named after the father’s mother
  • The third daughter was named after the mother
  • The fourth daughter was named after the mother’s eldest sister
  • The fifth daughter was named after the father’s eldest sister or the mother’s next eldest sister
  • …and so on

If a name was already in use with a previous child, they would simply move down the list and use the next name. If a child died, their name was once again available for use. So don’t presume a second William Anderson in the brood is a mistake or belonged to a different Anderson family, but look for the death or burial of the first one. It was common to repeat names in the days of high infant mortality. Of course, depending on the age of the first William’s death, this may throw out the order of names. Parents simply chose the highest available ‘slot’ when naming their children.

In Scotland, the naming pattern began similarly, but rather than move on to uncles and aunts, they often carried on back through the generations, working their way through great grandparents. If the family got big enough, they may even venture into great great grandparents!

Using naming patterns to identify your ancestors

So how can you use these naming patterns to your benefit? Let’s say you have a couple of Robert Newtons in the same village who are around the same age and one of them is your ancestor. One was the son of John and Mary, the other was the son of William and Susannah. But which is yours?

Firstly, go through the parish registers to find all the children baptised to Robert and his wife. If the wife was from another parish also check there, especially for older children, as the wife may have gone home to have her first child and baptised it there. Also check neighbouring parishes, as sometimes not all children were baptised in the same place. Do the same for both sets of theoretical parents.

Now put all the children in order and check what names crop up in Robert’s family, especially around the first son (John or William?) and second daughter (Mary or Susannah?). These may well be his parents’ names if you’ve captured all their children. Also, check for distinctive names appearing in their offspring. This may help further differentiate, or help you if somehow you’ve not found all the children. For example, if Robert has a son called Moses, and so do John and Mary but William and Susannah don’t, this may lend weight to John and Mary being Robert’s parents.

Of course, naming patterns weren’t written in stone, so you should always look at other evidence to support your theory. If Robert was a baker, and William was too, but John was a blacksmith, there’s a clue that William may be his father. Did John or William leave wills?

What’s In a Name? – Using middle names to identify ancestors

From the 19th Century on, middle names started to become more common. These can be very useful in identifying a parent’s parents, especially when they appear to be surnames. For example, I come from a long line of Fields with the middle name Palmer. My son’s Tully line has a family where every child had the middle name Morrall. Now these are not common forenames, especially in an age when forenames were quite limited.

The most common reason for this is that the middle name is honouring one of the female lines by using her maiden name. This is often the mother’s line, but may go back to one of the grandmothers or further if it is also found in previous generations.

Let’s go back to the example used earlier. Say Robert’s children all have the middle name ‘Parker’. Was his wife’s maiden name Parker? If not, do any of the children born to John and Mary or William and Susannah have the middle name Parker? Or can you find a marriage between a John Newton and Mary Parker or a William Newton and Susannah Parker that is likely to be that of one of the couples you suspect of being Robert’s parents? This can be a strong indicator of which family your Robert belongs to, and help you break down a brick wall, even in a small village where intermarriage between family lines may have occurred.

naming patterns
The parish registers are an invaluable resource for identifying your ancestors

Happy hunting!

I hope this post has provided a few ideas on the importance of paying attention to names and how they can help you move back through your family tree with confidence. Do you have any peculiar middle names in your family that you now plan on using as a clue? And are you ready to trawl through some parish records and find all the children?

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To share your research or not to share?…

…that is the question.

share your research
Share your genealogical gold!

Whether or not to share your research is an ongoing controversy in the genealogical community. Most of us these days have at least part of our research online. We may be building our tree on one of the major genealogy sites, such as Ancestry, Findmypast, or MyHeritage. We may have uploaded part or all of it to a communal tree such as at Familysearch or Geni. Or we may have our own family history website. Others prefer to do their research in an offline program such as Rootsmagic or FamilyTree Maker. Still others are truly old school and prefer to just utilise paper and filing methods to keep their genealogical research organised.

Sharing your research is a very personal decision. Today I will go through some of the pros and cons. However, you will come to see that I feel quite strongly in favour of choosing to share your research. I’m proudly biased in this respect!

share your research
Working together to solve the family jigsaw

Sharing your research – the benefits

Imagine there are three people of the same name living in the same town at the same time. They are all of roughly the same age. You know one is from that town originally, the other two have come from somewhere else during the course of their lives. However, there’s only a vague suggestion of where those places are, and you cannot find official birth records for any of them. You have all their birthdates from their headstones. Which one is yours?

Then you find that another researcher has apparently identified the correct one, and has that family line extended for another five generations. Fantastic! You write to them and ask them how they identified that person. You can’t see for yourself because the tree is private. They may not write back. Or if they do, they may say only that they have the family bible listing birthdates. Which they refuse to share. So, do you take a risk and just believe their research without seeing any evidence? Of course not. You’re stuck.

share your research family bible
Only one branch of your family (at most!) will have the family bible. (Image: David Ball)

However, if they are kind enough to share what they have, either by opening up their tree for you so you can evaluate their evidence, or sending you a scan of the page of that bible, you can continue on with your research with a brick wall overcome. And when you, in turn, find information that they don’t have for that family line (perhaps a gem such as a photo of your ancestors in common), you’ll return that favour, won’t you? After all, you are cousins!

Everyone has access to different sources by virtue of what has come down through the family, or different subscriptions to databases held by different researchers. Someone may be close to where things happened and has access to local archives. Someone may simply have more research experience and know of obscure places to search.

By sharing with your cousins and vice versa, the tree for that line can be progressed more quickly and reliably, and BOTH of you have found another branch of the family by finding one another. Of course, you still need to check the validity of anything someone shares with you. If you find it is not accurate, you can (gently) let them know and help them to make their tree more valid too. This helps to prevent misinformation from being spread by the people who just copy things from one tree to another without checking.

Why do people refuse to share their research?

These are the most common statements I see when this topic pops up in forums:

  • It’s MY family. Why should I share my research with a stranger?
  • I have spent a lot of money on these documents, why should I share them?
  • I have spent a lot of time on this research, why should I share it?
  • This person has a large tree, therefore they are just ‘name-gatherers’ not proper family historians.
  • I had to do it all myself, and it was hard work, why shouldn’t they?
share your research

My thoughts on these questions…

First of all, the people who approach someone about a particular person on a tree is likely to be a cousin, and the information shared could prove or disprove it. If the relationship is proven, they are a distant family member. That’s got to be good, right?

Secondly, everyone spends a lot of money and time on their family research if they’re doing it right – it’s the nature of the beast. Wouldn’t it be good if we could ease that burden for others, and have it eased ourselves by sharing what we have with each other? I have scanned all my documentary sources purchased over the years and attached them to the relevent people in my main family tree. Literally everything I have is there for people to use. Yes they cost a lot of money and took a lot of time to gather, but it’s not costing me anything extra to share it and will save others the expense.

Thirdly, a large tree doesn’t necessarily equate to a sloppy researcher who just gathers names. My main tree is huge. I make no apology for that. It contains 35 years of research not just of my family, but my husband’s family, stepfamily (all of these with collateral lines snaking out from them), a few one name studies…you get the idea. And I source it all.

Lastly, yes it’s hard work. We all appreciate that. If someone writes with a specific question, they are not taking your life’s work away from you, they are just trying to clarify a particular point to get them over a hurdle. If they write with a non-specific question that sounds like they just want to access and copy your tree, ask them to be more specific. Their request may have been poorly worded to give that impression. Of course, there are some who want an easy ride without doing any work themselves. Or they may not be related at all but think your work looks like a good fit. By all means, vet them. But if a request looks genuine, why not give them a helping hand and pay it forward. You would have appreciated the same assistance if it was offered you early in your research. And probably did.

Share your research, it helps everyone, including you!

In conclusion, I believe that working together as different branches of the same family line can only help us all. It helps ensure that we are all on the right track, adds to the validity of everyone’s trees and we give each other access to things that only our branches may know building a deeper, richer shared family history. By collaborating with other researchers, I have also forged some strong friendships with my distant family which has been an unexpected but welcome bonus!

share your research
Exchange of gifts between a Maori man and Joseph Banks c1769
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Using electoral rolls in your genealogy research

Electoral Rolls. Polling station

Electoral rolls are a timely discussion topic since it is election day tomorrow in Australia! They can be a very helpful resource for finding ancestors, especially those who lived during the 20th-century. Other public sources may be thin on the ground during this era, therefore they can help to knock down a brick wall or two in your more recent family history.

Electoral rolls - Parliament House
Parliament House, Canberra

What are electoral rolls?

Electoral rolls are lists of all those entitled to vote in elections, whether at federal, state or local level. It is currently a legal requirement for all Australian citizens over the age of 18 to be listed (with their current address) on the Australian electoral roll.

Who was allowed to enrol to vote and from when?

Timeline:

  • 1902 – anyone over the age of 21, who were either born in Australia or had lived there for over 6 months and were subjects (naturalised by birth or subsequently) of the King. Exceptions: people of unsound mind, traitors, people serving a 12 month or longer sentence anywhere within the British Empire, and indigenous people of Australia, Asia, Africa or the Pacific Islands (except New Zealand).
  • 1911 – enrolment became compulsory for eligible voters.
  • 1918 – 1921 – added anyone who met the above requirements except for age but who had served in the armed forces.
  • 1925 – added natives of British India.
  • 1949 – added indigenous Australians who were on state rolls or had served/were serving in the armed forces.
  • 1961 – added indigenous people of Africa and Pacific Islanders.
  • 1962 – added all indigenous Australians over the age of 21. This was voluntary, but once enrolled it was compulsory to vote.
  • 1973 – the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18.
  • 1984 – all Australian citizens over 18 plus British subjects already on the electoral roll. Enrolment of indigenous Australians now also compulsory.

What is included on the rolls?

At the very least, you will find the person’s name, address and gender, along with that of any other people of voting age living at that address such as adult children. Depending on the year and the state, you may also find:

  • occupation
  • age
  • whether their address is a residence, freehold or household (possibly with further details)
Electoral roll
Electoral roll, Maryborough, 1900 (Source: Queensland State Archives)

How are electoral rolls helpful?

Electoral rolls can be considered a form of census substitute, because of the household details (for the adult occupants) that they provide. They can be especially useful to find parents of an adult daughter because they often lived at home till they married. Find the daughter, and it is likely that the adults of the same surname listed above her at the same address are her parents. Of course, don’t accept this as gospel, as relationships are not specified in the roll. For example, she may be living with grandparents or uncles and aunts. Follow up your research using these names to verify the relationship. Perhaps take a look at newspapers as your next step.

By finding people in electoral rolls from various years, you can track their movement (or lack of it) around the country, which will help you to know what local sources to consult and from when.

You have an address, or series of addresses, for the family now. Why not put these into Google Maps and see if the house they lived in is still there and what it looks like now?

Fewer other sources for this time period are available compared to earlier centuries, so it’s an important part of 20th-century research to consider electoral rolls.

Limitations of the electoral rolls

  • Coverage is incomplete, and coverage for the 19th-century electoral rolls of the individual colonies (now states) is particularly patchy.
  • Children of the household are not listed unless they are over the voting age.
  • Relationships between voters at the same address are not specified.
  • Sections of the community were not able to enrol to vote (see timeline above). If you had an ancestor who was not a British Subject or was indigenous, they may well not have made it onto any electoral roll.

Where to find the rolls

Some are available online. If you have a subscription to Ancestry or Findmypast you can find some there (if you don’t have a subscription you may be able to access their library edition at your local library. Other useful websites containing links to electoral rolls are Coraweb and Cyndi’s List.

It is well worth visiting state libraries and archives as they generally have a broad range of electoral rolls. You will find it helpful to check their catalogue online before making the trip so you know what time periods and areas are covered.

If you are looking for a living relative, you can access the current electoral roll at any Australian Electoral Commission office. Please note, you cannot copy any image you see there electronically but may do so by hand.

Electoral rolls. Polling station 2016
Polling station, Mebourne 2016 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I hope you have found this topic useful and are now ready to not only do your civic duty tomorrow but also explore electoral records to help expand your family tree!

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Lyfelynes Family History – an interview podcast

I’m giving you a break this week from my written ramblings here at Lyfelynes Family History. However, you don’t get off that lightly, because I’m substituting verbal ones instead! Earlier this week I was interviewed by Adam Roach for his ‘Melbourne Northern Suburbs‘ podcast.

Recording a podcast

We chatted about all sorts of ‘things genealogical’, including:

  • Why someone might use the services of a professional genealogist
  • Research sites
  • DNA
  • Oral history
  • Verifying sources
  • Brickwalls
  • The excitement to be found both with genealogical breakthroughs and just the process itself!

I invite you to have a listen here.

Have a wonderful weekend and Happy Mother’s Day from Lyfelynes Family History to all the mums in countries that celebrate this Sunday!

Mother and child
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Taking a Wrecking Ball to Your Genealogy Brick Wall

Wrecking ball smashing brick wall

Do You Have a Brick Wall Ancestor?

Assembling your family history is not always easy, despite some of the recent major advances in accessibility to a broad range of records online. Most family historians will inevitably run into an ancestral brick wall at some point. These are ancestors who seem to have somehow dodged every way of leaving a useful documentary footprint. We know they were born, we know they had at least one child, we know they died. That may be all we know. Somehow they resist our every effort to pinpoint where they came from.

Brick wall
Beyond this, there be ancestors…

Brick Wall Smashing Ideas

Start with what you KNOW.

I don’t mean what you think you know. Especially if you’ve been working on this ancestor for a while, you may have unwittingly gathered some assumptions that you are now working from. They may be leading you down the wrong path. Start from scratch. Relook at every piece of both evidence and hearsay with a critical fresh eye. If you have been well-organised and cited all your sources, it will be an easy task to gather everything in front of you and begin again. If not, rummage through it all till you have everything.

Reassess each piece of evidence one by one.

  • Are you sure each one pertains to your ancestor? Is there any chance that one or more of them refers to another person of a similar name? Eliminate any red herrings.
  • Do you have the primary source of that evidence? If what you have is a transcription or an extract from an index, or you have found it in someone else’s tree, or just heard it on the grapevine you need to find the actual document if possible. It may well contain more information and is less likely to contain errors.
  • Are there potential clues that you overlooked first time around? For example, witnesses and informants who may be related to or close friends of the brick wall ancestor, or causes of death which may lead you to a newspaper report of an accident.

Make a timeline

Now, construct a timeline of their life using your evidence to see what’s missing. You may find you have a reasonable picture of their later life but they seem to have popped up out of nowhere as an adult.

Focus

Looking at the information you have, decide what is the most critical question you need to answer about this person to move forward and focus on that with laser intensity. A scattergun approach will not serve you well. Don’t forget to document what you’ve checked as you go to prevent you from going over the same ground multiple times.

Where are the gaps?

For example, do you have a birth record or a baptism? Probably not, or they wouldn’t be a brick wall! What sources do you have that may give a clue to their approximate year and/or place of birth? Censuses, marriage records, death or burial records, obituaries, school records, military records, passport applications, electoral rolls, immigration records? Do they appear in any newspapers of the time? Find out what sources are available for the area that your ancestor was in at the time that might contain this information, and plunder them all mercilessly. If you’re pretty sure you know where your brick wall ancestor was probably baptised but they don’t appear in indexed searches, go to the parish register images and browse through every page in case they were missed or mistranscribed.

A rose by any other name…

Try every variant of the person’s name. There are often spelling variants for both given and surnames, especially before widespread literacy became the norm. Their given and middle names may be transposed in documents (they may have been known by their middle name in later life). Check for contractions or pet forms of their names, for example, Robert may be Bob or Rob or Bobby or Robbie. Sometimes they’re not so obvious – Mary Anns often became Polly!

Think big

What was happening in the local area at that point in history? If they didn’t originally come from there, what might have brought them to the area and where from? Look for local histories, newspapers etc that will give you a better idea of the broader social history that influenced their life. Check here for a good source of local histories.

Thinking big and wide

Think wide

‘FAN’ out! FAN stands for ‘Family, Associates and Neighbours’. By researching those around your brick wall ancestor, you may uncover clues to their origins. I will be dedicating an entire blog to the importance of FAN-ning, so stay tuned for that one!

Recheck periodically

If you do all these things and still don’t break the brick wall, put it aside for a few months and carry on researching a different part of your tree. It can be good to come back with fresh eyes, because you may see a pattern you didn’t notice the last time. Also, more and more records are becoming accessible every day. Therefore, what you can’t access now may well be easy to get to the next time you try.

Have you tried DNA?

If you haven’t already had your DNA done, consider it for this purpose. I’ve had a few brick walls smashed by utilizing information gained from matching with others and working out the common ancestor between us. Ethnicity estimates may also in some cases be a signpost to where to look, but are not specific or accurate enough yet to be taken as standalone evidence.

Consider professional help

If you are despairing of finding your brick wall ancestor’s origins, try a professional genealogist who has some experience of researching the country or area where your family’s history takes place (for British or Australian brick walls, in particular, you are welcome to contact me!). They often know of more obscure sources that may contain the information you need and will be able to contextualize the information you have to come up with some new ideas of how to find the information. Make sure you have logged everything you have already done and cited sources to minimise the time you will be paying for. Sometimes a professional can bring a breakthrough in just hours on a problem that has held you up for years!

Brick wall with door
Eventually there is a way through the brick wall.
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An underutilized free genealogy resource – FamilySearch Digital Library

Firstly, an apology for not posting last Friday. My intention was to do an Easter-themed blog, but instead we were dealing with a family emergency. Sometimes even the most tragically obsessed family historian needs to prioritise the here and now over those that are long departed. Normal service is now resumed…

FamilySearch

Most people who are constructing their family tree are aware of FamilySearch.org. As a totally free genealogy resource, it is invaluable and becoming more so every day. Those of you who have downloaded my free guide to my Top 10 favourite genealogy sites know I love this one! Many of the records on the site are indexes, and you really need to find and cite the original documents to verify the information. But even these are a great finding aid to help you on your way. In recent years, the team at FamilySearch have been adding many original documents to the site (just look for the camera icon to see the images).

It is common for people to focus on the top two items in the drop down menu under ‘Search’. That is, ‘Records’ and ‘Family Tree’. This is where you find the indexed records available to search, and the collaborative family tree that people contribute to respectively. But FamilySearch contains much more than just these two sections and I’d like to encourage you to explore beyond this. I spend a lot of time lurking in the ‘Catalog’ section, where so much more is available to see, though much is unindexed and you need to be quite focused in your search. I will talk a little more about the Catalog on another occasion, because today I want to let you know about the ‘Books’ section.

FamilySearch Home Page
Where to find FamilySearch Books

The FamilySearch Digital Library – a great free genealogical resource

FamilySearch Digital Library page
The portal to free book bliss!

‘Books’ (or more properly the ‘FamilySearch Digital Library’) has become a delightful treasure trove of easily accessible information that you may have otherwise had no access to. FamilySearch has been working hard to improve this section. Over 375000 books, journals, family histories and local histories are indexed here. Most of these are fully accessible. Even those that aren’t yet fully available due to copyright have generous snippets of content available and can be useful. The number of items available to search will dramatically increase as they are checking copyright status individually for each book and making them available as quickly as they can.

Checking it out…

The section has become much more intuitive to use and easy to search. Handy hint: if you are searching two or more terms, don’t just list them one after the other or you will get a cumulative number of hits. Make it a Boolean search to find items containing both terms. For example, Swinbourne AND Birmingham rather than Swinbourne Birmingham.

FamilySearch search results
Example of search results

I was delighted to find that a journal (‘Midland Ancestor‘) that I have subscribed to since 1985 appears to have its full run available on the site, which saves me trawling through back issues looking for occurrences of family names as I discover them. Even more usefully it gives me access to issues published before I took up my subscription. I found this journal popping up in the results for nearly every search I did.

I also managed to find a couple of published family histories covering potential branches of my tree, which I will be checking against documentation to verify; several historical tomes mentioning ancestors by name, some with illustrations of ancient documents that they signed, and some wills and probate inventories.

So, last night I made the mistake of quickly taking a look before I went to bed. Many hours later… you get the picture.

New Genealogy Resource Found
Credit: Wendell Washer

Take a look…

So if you haven’t checked out this section of FamilySearch recently, I highly recommend you find some time (not within a few hours of intending to sleep!) and go take a look. You can thank me later…

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Endogamy and Intermarriage in Your Family Tree – It’s Not Just Game of Thrones!

Credit: Matt Barker, Useful charts

Winter is right on the doorstep with the final season of Game of Thrones starting very soon. I thought it might be interesting to touch on endogamy (or ‘inbreeding’) and intermarriage to celebrate the show’s return.

You may think that the amount of intermarriage between a limited number of families, along with the incest which has become a crucial part of the plot, is a little far-fetched. Indeed it isn’t, it’s possibly the least far-fetched of all the story elements. There are many groups of families around the world who descend from a very small gene pool and are classified as ‘endogamous’. Furthermore, most of us at some point in our family tree are touched by intermarriage.

Causes of endogamy

Endogamous populations occur for several reasons, including:

Geographical – Remote or isolated communities often had little choice but to intermarry amongst themselves, as there were rarely others to choose a marriage partner from. Groups tucked away in mountains or on islands, especially if they came from a small number of settlers to begin with, tend to be very endogamous.

A good example of this is the Maoris of New Zealand, who all descend from a small number of immigrants from the Hawaiian islands several centuries ago. Even in pre-industrial revolution England, people often tended to marry people from their own village or from within a few miles around it.

The Hatfield clan in 1897
  • Cultural – For example, a group of people who settle somewhere with a different culture from their own or are not a part of the ‘standard’ culture of the area in which they live. Group cohesion and survival can be based on marrying within that minority group. Examples of this include Orthodox Jews, the Amish, Parsi and Yazidi.
Jewish wedding rituals
  • Societal – Aristocratic and royal families tend to intermarry among one another for political reasons and to keep the bloodlines ‘pure’, a la Game of Thrones. This of course never stopped them from sowing plenty of wild oats amongst the commoners. It is said that every English white Anglo-Saxon person can count King Edward III amongst their ancestors, so prolific were his appetites! Another example is the caste system in India, where it once was forbidden and is still frowned upon to marry outside one’s own caste.

So what does this mean for genealogical research?

Intermarriage and Incest

These are not confined to endogamous populations but can occur in any family. Society tends to frown on intermarriage between close relatives, and incest is universally taboo. However, the reality is that they do happen and children can be the result.

How endogamy and intermarriage can make research easier

People with endogamous backgrounds or occasions of intermarriage find that their family tree has ‘pedigree collapse’ at various points. This means that two or more of their family lines goes back to the same set of common ancestors. The more endogamous lines, the fewer distinct ancestors they descend from. This is the main reason why even though technically you have over a quarter of a million 16xgreat-grandparents, in practice most people don’t.

In my tree, there are several instances where the same names pop up, sometimes over and over. “Oh, YOU again?” Luckily it’s quite a long way back in my tree. To be honest, it can be quite a relief if that line is already researched beyond those ancestors! Can you imagine trying to find 262, 142 people to complete a generation of forebears? In a way, pedigree collapse can simplify your family tree. Although the same names appearing over and over again can make it look less interesting on a chart!

How endogamy and intermarriage can make research harder

However, complexity is added if you are researching your family but every second family in the area shares the same surname. In many situations, the naming patterns for the children’s forenames might be similar too. This means you end up with multiple possibilities to choose from. So there’s a lot of evidence gathering before you can decide who is the candidate for YOUR great-great-great-grandfather, William Jones!

Because of their negative connotations, incest and marriage between close cousins are often hidden by family members. This can make it very difficult to pin down the truth. Your older family members who know the story may be very resistant to telling it because of the shame they feel exists within the family. The fallout from the aunt/nephew relationship between Jon Snow and Daenarys Targaryen is likely to be ‘interesting’ – and that’s just Game of Thrones!

It also makes it more difficult to unravel DNA matches. Say you have the same ancestors transmitting the same pieces of DNA down the generations through several lines. It can be extra difficult to work out which branch you are related to somebody on in more recent history. Often people require additional assistance in working their way through that quagmire.

Have you encountered any significant endogamy in any of your family lines? How has that impacted your research?