Westley’s ‘East Prospect’ of Birmingham in 1732, when it was still just a sleepy market town.
This week I’m sharing the story of my ongoing Grand Levy Book transcription project with you. When complete, I think it will turn out to be extremely helpful as a census substitute for those researching Birmingham ancestry in the late eighteenth century.
Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that much of my family history comes from the city of Birmingham in the Midlands of England. Birmingham began its existence as a small market town around a thousand years ago and indeed remained so for all but the last two hundred and fifty years or so. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, it rapidly grew and is now one of the major cities of the United Kingdom. How and why is a blog post in itself, which I may one day tackle!
The Plan of Birmingham, from William Hutton’s ‘The History of Birmingham’ published in 1782, the same year as the copy of the Grand Levy Book.
A few years ago, I stumbled across a published copy of the Grand Levy Book for Birmingham which was printed in the year 1782. This was a time of massive expansion of the population (around 50000 across 8000 households at that time). This was accompanied by all the stresses and strains on infrastructure which would be expected. The original annual Grand Levy Books for Birmingham are held by the Birmingham Archives. They are handwritten and available for consultation by appointment. So why was just this one printed for general circulation at the very time that it was in use?
The Library of Birmingham – here lie the original Grand Levy Books in the Birmingham Archives.
Collecting the Poor Rates
Firstly, let me explain what it was used for. Poor rates were collected around Easter time from occupants of any houses in Birmingham worth more than twelve pounds a year and were calculated on 2/3 of that property’s value. These rates were then redistributed and used as poor relief.
Birmingham at this time was technically still one parish despite its size. It was divided into twelve sections, one for each of the Overseers of the Poor, who were charged with collecting these rates. They would carry with them a rate book for their section and mark it off as they went. Afterwards, the twelve books were collated into one Grand Levy Book for the parish.
So back to the copy released publicly in a published form in 1782 – why did they choose to do this? The answers lie in the preface. It seems that at that time there was much grumbling amongst the ratepayers about perceived inequities in the rates they were levied. There was a challenge issued by publishing everyone’s rates, along the lines of ‘put up or shut up’. It was also used to publicly shame those who could pay but weren’t doing so.
So why transcribe this copy of the Grand Levy Book?
The Grand Levy Book of 1782 contains the names of the heads of households across all of Birmingham in order of the street they lived in. It gives an indication of the degree of their relative wealth and possibly the type of business they had. It may also give a hint of their character! The book is essentially an early head of household census at this time of great expansion in Birmingham. It is useful for finding the locations of ancestors, and in the case of those who immigrated to the town from other areas, confirmation that they were there by this time. Having the book listed in order of their address is helpful for cluster research too as you can see who the neighbours were as with the later censuses.
I had not seen this information anywhere else and the book is not easily searchable due to the print quality and font used. So I decided to transcribe it. So far I am about 3200 households in and about halfway through. It is a long labour of love assisted by this second lockdown period!
Will it ever be finished and available?
I’m trying very hard not to get sidetracked along the way with discoveries! Many of my family lines were in Birmingham at this time – some had already been there for several centuries, some were arriving from surrounding counties with the move from an agricultural to an industrial economy.
Initially, this was just a personal project. However as the broader value of this book to other researchers has become apparent, I plan to make it freely available once it’s complete (probably on this site).
As for the timeline, I hope it will be in the last quarter of this year, though I am tossing up whether to cross-reference it with contemporary trade directories to add occupations. Trade directories are nowhere near as complete as this list, especially at this time. It would provide an extra layer of information and context to a subset of the population though. This would naturally extend the time to completion. Thoughts, anyone?
But wait, there’s more…
I’m planning a sequel already! I recently found a copy of the Birmingham Out Poor List from October 1781. This was also published publicly in early 1782. The motive for the publication of this one appears to be the parish seeking justification for the rates that were being levied (probably again due to grumbling from the better off!). Between this list of those in receipt of poor relief and those who were (or should have been) paying poor rates, an almost complete picture of the population of Birmingham can be put together for this time. One thing at a time however, I’m only human!
Is anyone else making progress with longstanding projects while time outside has been limited? Comment below, I’d love to hear about them!
Sometimes we hit genealogy brick walls and no matter what strategy we use, they just won’t tumble. Sometimes all we can do to save our sanity is to put them aside and move on with other lines until we find another relevant database or repository to search. That may become a repeating cycle for many years. In my case, 35 years – until genealogical serendipity occurred. Strap yourself in and make yourself a cuppa (perhaps not in that order) – this is a long post, but one which I hope you’ll find useful and interesting!
Searching for Norah Vaughan
My great-great-grandmother was Norah Vaughan. Norah obscured her early origins well. Perhaps not intentionally, but nonetheless the result was the same. The first documentation I had for her were census records in 1871, 1881, and 1891 after she became known as Norah Simpson. She was living in Birmingham with her bricklayer ‘husband’ Thomas and their children. The censuses indicated that she was born around 1848 in London. She died in 1893, but her death certificate shed no further light on her origins, as English death certificates rarely do!
Snippet from the 1871 England Census for Barford St, Birmingham – Thomas and Norah with their firstborn Thomas. Thomas’ name originally written as ‘Vaughan’ then corrected to Simpson.
The London connection
The censuses showed that her eldest son was also born in London. He was born in 1867, so I looked for a marriage certificate around that timeframe in the London area. Nothing. I kept broadening the search in both time and geography, and used wildcards. Nada. No apparent marriage. Interesting. I filed that away for future reference.
Thomas’ mother Hannah Simpson and his three youngest siblings turned up in the 1871 Census living in Wandsworth, just south of the Thames in London. His father William meanwhile, also a bricklayer, was back in Birmingham lodging with an unrelated family (presumably temporarily). Thomas and Norah were also in Birmingham by that point. I began to form a hypothesis that the Simpson family had moved down to London during the building boom of the 1860s, and that Thomas and Norah had met there. This family proved adept at not only building brick walls for houses but also genealogy brick walls!
At this stage, I only had Norah’s first name and no surname. There was no marriage certificate, so I looked for birth certificates for her children. Not all her then known children were registered, but I managed to find her maiden name on one – it was Vaughan. This explained the strange mistake made in the 1871 Census where Thomas was enumerated as Thomas Vaughan initially, then the ‘Vaughan’ scribbled out and replaced with ‘Simpson’. Now that I knew both surnames I tried again to find a marriage. Still nothing. The genealogy brick walls were just as high.
There was quite a gap early in the ‘marriage’ between the birth of the first, and so far known second child. Looking in the GRO indexes I found another child, Edward, born in Wandsworth in 1869. Given that it was likely that’s where my Simpson family were at about that time it was worth the punt. I bought the certificate. Lucky call, the mother was ‘Laura Vaun’!
Norah’s early years
I looked everywhere for a potential baptism for Norah. I started in London then spread the search wider. Nothing in the parish registers anywhere. There was one that caught my eye over in Herefordshire, but I followed her through, and her life continued on separately to our Norah’s.
I scoured the censuses of 1851 and 1861 for any possible misspelling of Norah Vaughan, and ultimately every Norah or variant of that name without a surname in the greater London area!
Once the Poor Law records for London were available on Ancestry, I found a reference to a workhouse admission in Stepney for a ‘Hanora Vaughan’ of the right age in 1863. She was admitted with a fever for a month and then discharged to the care of ‘an Aunt’. Not helpful, other than suggesting she was perhaps orphaned by then! There was an address that no longer exists, though I know where it was. I am still trying to trace who was living in that house at that time. I could find no other Hanora Vaughans in London that this one could be, other than my Norah.
There was only one other reference to an Honora Vaughan, also in 1863. It was a marriage – I sent for the certificate, but she turned out to be in her 30’s and a widow. Not mine, and not the workhouse Hanora.
The Irish connection
Here came another hypothesis…why would Thomas and Norah not marry, and why would she be in no parish register? Why would her family perhaps be avoiding the census and the parish church? Why were they not baptising or even sometimes registering their early children? I began to get a distinct feeling that she may have been Catholic. Thomas was bog-standard Church of England. If neither could jump what was a wide religious divide in those days, perhaps they could not agree to marry.
What group of people were often Catholic and were less likely to feel comfortable being documented (or had literacy levels which made it problematic)? Next hypothesis – her family were possibly Irish. London had a large population of Irish immigrants in those years, often living in desperate poverty. Also, one of the names that Norah is a derivative of is Hanora…but generally only if the child is of Irish origin. I was grasping at straws at this point, but looking at the context of place and time and social history helped me to make some educated guesses.
It occurred to me that this may be where my splodge of Irish DNA had come from. I had initially thought it was just a bit of noise, as I had no known Irish ancestry. But as time went on, algorithms tightened, reference populations grew and I tested in more places. As I write, it seems to have settled into a fairly consistent and substantial 10% across most testing platforms and is flagging Cork as the likely source.
So now I realised I needed the Catholic records. Where were they? I had Norah pinpointed to Wandsworth, and at least in 1863, in Mile End New Town (possibly her ‘Aunts’ address). Wandsworth is in the Diocese of Southwark, and Mile End New Town in the Diocese of Westminster. Westminster was available through FindMyPast. Nothing. Southwark was unavailable. I settled myself in for possibly a very long wait, knowing that they were likely to become available on FindMyPast in due course. The genealogy brick walls remained up and I turned to other lines for a while.
I try with a little help from my friends…
…now I am writing with a Beatles earworm distracting me! (Credit: Karle Horn/CC BY)
For those who have been following along with my blog for a while, you will know that I took a genealogy cruise last year. Part of that included a workshop session focused on breaking down genealogy brick walls. I enlisted the help of a room full of hardcore genealogists, just to see if I had missed anything, and what a fresh look could do.
It was suggested that Norah may have been born in Ireland but moved to London so early that she didn’t realise. I hadn’t really considered this possibility, so we scoured Irish records, finding one possibility who had unfortunately eliminated herself from consideration by dying young. But otherwise, the consensus was that Norah was just being bloody difficult.
The incomparable Mia Bennett facilitating the Brick Wall workshop
The moment I’d been waiting for arrived…
On the 26th June 2020, FindMyPast announced that they had released the Southwark Diocese records. Thanks to the difference in time zones I found out right on bedtime. This always happens with new record releases, so I am very glad that FMP has theirs on a Friday when I don’t need to be up early the next day!
Naturally, that was it for the next few hours. I held my breath and checked for Norah’s baptism…
After a small sulk, a cup of tea and a hitching up of my big girl pants, I decided to take a look at all the Vaughans in the Southwark records and reconstruct family groups. The next step would be to cross-reference against other records such as censuses etc., to see if I could work out who were Norah’s people.
Then, targeted DNA testing occurred to me. If I could build out these trees enough then connect Norah’s tree to them with enough good quality DNA descendants of hers attached, I could perhaps get a nibble from a DNA descendant of one of those trees.
So whose DNA did I have? I had myself, my two siblings, and two maternal first cousins in my generation, but that wasn’t ideal for this distance back. Who did I have further back? My mum, my uncle and their first cousin. Pretty good, but it would be better to also have a descendant of another of Norah’s children for improved overall coverage of her genome. I know one descendant of her daughter Elizabeth. If her Dad was still alive, he’d be perfect!
I wrote to Sue and explained the situation, then gently asked if he was still with us and if so, would he mind if I bought him a DNA kit? Yes, he was alive. No, there would be no DNA test. She was still busy working with documents and wasn’t ready to go down that path. Okay, it was worth asking, and I totally respect that. These bricklaying families make good sturdy genealogy brick walls, even if their descendants don’t want them broken down! Or do they…?
She wrote back again within minutes to say…but we do have the family bible with a lot of dates in, and some pressed flowers from between the pages, would you like photos? YESSSS!!! (please).
You thought this was going to turn into a DNA story, didn’t you?
Very quickly, Sue went round to her Dad’s place and took copious photos of the bible which had been presented to Thomas by the reverend at St Martin’s church in Birmingham in 1889. Thomas had written in the dates of birth for himself, Norah, and the survivors of their twelve children. I had only known about nine. He had put the children in order, and just written ‘dead’ after any that hadn’t survived.
The family of Thomas Simpson and Norah Vaughan.
This bible was literally a godsend! The minor win was being able to pinpoint a couple of the more commonly named children in the 1939 Register using these birth dates.
The major win was using the naming pattern to make some educated guesses about the names used on the Vaughan side of the family. I was then able to use those predictions to follow a paper trail to identify Norah’s birth family to my (almost) satisfaction. It wasn’t a DNA story after all, but I will only be 100% comfortable once I get a DNA hit using the family I found!
Following the names
Now that I had the full complement of children I could make sense out of the names and see the pattern that was followed. Many of the names were repeated throughout the Simpson tree.
Of the first six sons, there was one named after each of himself, his father and his grandfather. There was another that may have been his brother but was a younger brother rather than an elder one so I wasn’t sure, it was a bit out of whack. So that left a Charles, John and possibly Edward that were likely from Norah’s side.
The daughters made less sense. The first was Mary Jane, presumably from Norah’s side as there were none in the Simpson family. Elizabeth was too common a name to be specific, and Thomas had a sister called Harriet. His mother didn’t have a child named after her at all, perhaps she was due to be next but they stopped having babies!
So I did some poking around to see if I could find a Mary Jane Vaughan possibly associated with a Charles or a John that had any connection to London, and were maybe Irish, or had some other factor that could be pursued as a possible link to Norah.
Charles and Mary Jane Vaughan
Bingo! I’m sure I had seen and dismissed this family many years ago, perhaps before I made the Irish connection, and possibly because they were more of a Birmingham family than a London one. Charles Vaughan married Mary Jane Young at St Peter’s Catholic Church in Birmingham in 1865. Charles was a bricklayer. A BRICKLAYER! His father was Edward. EDWARD! I felt the bricks in the Vaughan genealogy brick walls begin to crumble.
I followed the family through the censuses. Charles and Mary Jane went to London soon after their marriage, i.e., around the same time as the Simpson family went there. LONDON! They had their first two children there before returning to Birmingham by the 1871 Census (as did Thomas and Norah). My final hypothesis is that Charles Vaughan and William and Thomas Simpson went to London together and it was through this that Norah and Thomas met.
Moving backwards through the censuses was easy enough. Mary Jane was from a small town called Chepstow, just across the Welsh border, and that’s where I found Charles too, although he was born in Cork, Ireland. CORK, IRELAND! In both 1851 and 1861, he was living with his parents Edward and Ellen (nee Reardon). I was expecting to find little Norah in the household in either 1851 or 1861. No such luck. My hopes were dashed. It had all been fitting together so well, perhaps I was just seeing patterns where none really existed, and those genealogy brick walls would remain standing.
The beautiful town of Chepstow on the River Wye. Credit: Roy Parkhouse / CC BY-SA
Because Charles was Irish-born I took my search from Ancestry over to FindMyPast, where the Irish records are fuller. And by then I’d done a bit of reading about Chepstow and Irish immigration. There was quite a dense population of Famine refugees from the late 1840s onwards. They all lived around the Thomas St area where Charles was living at the time of the Censuses.
I did a blanket search on Vaughans in Chepstow and found another family in the same street in 1851. John and ‘Anora’ and their daughters 10-year-old Margaret…and 3-year-old ‘Anora’. NORAH! For some reason, even knowing how she was enumerated I simply still cannot find this record on Ancestry, it seems a page has been missed from their collection. A reminder to check the same database on other sites if you can’t find what you’re looking for on your first site!
Snippet from 1851 Wales Census, Thomas St, Chepstow showing Norah with her till now elusive birth family. Her sister Margaret is on the next page, despite being the elder of the two daughters.
In 1861, Edward’s household contained an 18-year-old niece called Margaret. There is no record of a death of John and Anora’s daughter, nor was there another Margaret Vaughan around the area in 1851, so unless the first Margaret left town and another arrived to take her place, the evidence suggests that John and Edward were brothers. This makes Charles and Norah first cousins, although he was a dozen or so years older than her.
Life was tough for the Chepstow Vaughans. Norah’s mother died later in 1851. Edward and Ellen lost their youngest daughter 4 days later. A newspaper search finds multiple references to Edward and Ellen’s family, mostly in the court reports. They appear to have been a hard-drinking family with very short fuses. By 1861 I can find no trace of John and little Norah – I suspect they are in London by then – and they managed to avoid the census. Margaret, as we know, is with Edward and Ellen. She is still with the widowed Ellen in 1871 with her illegitimate daughter (also Margaret) then spends the rest of her life in the Workhouse, noted as an imbecile.
Charles is the only one of Edward and Ellen’s family to do well for himself. He leaves Chepstow with Mary Jane, marries her and the rest is history. I found some photos of them and their descendants back at Ancestry. The same cheeky face that my grandad had is there in several of those photos. Sue says the same of her family. That is not evidence of course. But it makes me smile.
A 130-year-old posy pressed between the pages of the family bible. I am intrigued to know what occasion this commemorated.
Now what?
I have built out the trees for the Chepstow Vaughans as much as I can at this point. I’ve attached that tree to another containing Norah and her descendants, then linked my spare DNA test at Ancestry to it. Hoping that I’ll get some hits on Thrulines. A DNA hit would really put the icing on the cake for me.
The odd names in the family bible have all been given homes. Mary Jane was not just Norah’s cousin’s wife but was probably almost a substitute mother to her. Charles was possibly considered a substitute father if her own had died or abandoned her (remember it was ‘an Aunt’ who took her to the Workhouse Infirmary, not her father). John was her father and Edward was her uncle…but I suspect John and Edward’s father could possibly be Edward too. Interestingly Charles had one son who he named Charles Edward John Vaughan. He distributed all the names to one child!
I’ve spent significant hours looking for the Vaughans in County Cork, but with no luck yet. It’s interesting that one of Charles’ daughters moved to Ireland for a few years and had some of her children there. Her husband was originally from Tipperary but they lived in Ballincollig, Cork. This may be a clue to pursue, or it may be a red herring. Time will tell.
This blog post is also unashamedly cousin bait. I’d love it if a descendant of Charles and Mary Jane was to stumble across this and reach out!
Finally, I have a renewed sense of hope around genealogy brick walls. This one had been niggling away at me for years. I guess it took a while for Norah to feel ready to make herself known. So this blog goes out on the 5th anniversary of losing my Mum, Norah’s great-grandaughter. I hope they’re getting along well!
There are multiple tools available these days to help turn your ever-growing list of DNA matches into a wealth of useful genealogical information (and meet new cousins!). Each of the testing companies has its own suite of tools on their site. There are increasing numbers of excellent third-party tools also available to analyse your information using different and more specialised approaches. One of my favourites for the past year or two has been WATO (‘What Are The Odds?’).
What-oh is WATO?
WATO was the brainchild of Leah LaPerle Larkin, aka The DNA Geek. Andrew Millard turned it into an odds calculator, then Jonny Perl transformed it into a user-friendly form. It is now freely available at DNA Painter. WATO uses statistics to help you decide who belongs to who in your DNA zoo, and make sense of your DNA matches.
For anyone whose brain saw the word ‘statistics’ and began to prepare to explode, it’s not like that. You have a few shared matches, and you’ve been able to work out how they are connected to one another. You can now use WATO to work out how your DNA tester fits into their tree. Really really useful for cases of unknown parentage, and for any group of mysterious matches that make no sense on paper.
To make sense of your DNA matches you need to be clear on what you want to know about the DNA subject whose kit you are analysing. For example, “who is her father?”. With WATO v1 you also need to have matches of over 40cM in size. And you need your matches to have common ancestors to one another that you can find or build a tree for.
Previous limitations of WATO
I’ve had great success with this tool but there have been limitations.
Being of British birth, my match list of closer relatives is smaller than average. 40cM is not a match size often enough seen in my lists to have used WATO as much as I would have liked.
The original WATO is purely about the statistical odds. Hypotheses that are mathematically highly possible may be impossible in real life. The father is not going to be someone who was 3 years old at the time. So red herrings are possible.
The statistics are calculated for hypotheses that you as the user put forward. If there’s an angle you don’t think of, the odds won’t be calculated. This is especially important when you consider how many half-relationships are possible in any tree, and the likely source of the answer to your research question.
Introducing…..drumroll……The New and Improved WATO2!
This month WATO2 was released and the limitations listed above have been addressed. There have also been with some other improvements that have turned it from a great tool into a brilliant one which I’ll be able to use far more frequently!
Firstly, there is a reduced match size requirement. The information used to initially calculate probabilities has grown over time. It is now way more accurate for more distant relationships. Therefore the restriction to matches sharing over 40cM is gone.
Secondly, WATO2 is based on more than just the statistics. It has been ‘humanised’ for increased accuracy. You can add birth and death dates to the people in your tree and WATO2 will take them into consideration when calculating the odds.
Thirdly, you no longer have to think of all the possible places in a tree your DNA target could go. WATO2 will generate all the hypotheses with the click of a single button. I actually squealed when I found out about that! Then you can just weed out and delete any that are calculated to have zero probability, or that you know cannot work (because, for example, that person emigrated).
All my problems were solved! But wait, there was more…
Instead of having to build the tree manually at the DNA Painter site, there is now the option to import a GEDCOM to make the whole thing quicker and easier.
And the other super cool feature for those who have already been using the original WATO … you can easily switch between existing analyses to WATO2 (and back) to compare or update. So you don’t need to start again in order to make sense of your DNA matches!
What has WATO2 done for me?
I have already managed to identify an unknown father of one of my testers very quickly. He had only half a dozen shared matches. Only three of these could be used in the original WATO due to their small size. The probabilities were much more clearly contrasted in WATO2 as a result of this and the consideration of birth and death dates. Then, by looking at electoral rolls and other records I could eliminate several of the hypotheses. I am at the point where I am very comfortable that his father is identified. If I wasn’t, I could consider target testing to prove it.
How will I be using WATO2 next?
My next task is to unravel a large Irish family branch originating from Tralee in Kerry. There are multiple shared DNA matches on this line. I have a tree that links most of them. The other interesting aspect is that they all also link to another surname which is not so far present in the tree of my target, other than amongst baptismal sponsors.
Traditional research has not yet managed to unpick these large families with repeated forenames. I was unable to use the original WATO to help with this as we’re looking at the first half of the 19th century, the matches are much smaller than 40cM. Also, the tree is big and my time is scarce!
The plan now is to import the Gedcom, add the match sizes, hit the generate hypothesis button and see what happens. It will feel like a miracle if after all this time, it gets sorted out in an hour!
My Hearty Recommendation
If you are a WATO fan already, no doubt you’re already all over WATO2. If you’ve previously tried it but not had large or plentiful enough matches to answer your questions, now is the time to revisit it and regenerate your WATO hypotheses on WATO2. You can make sense of your DNA matches so much more easily than before. If you’re new to WATO, or even to DNA analysis, head over to DNA Painter and give it a go. It’s free, it’s not a huge time investment for the amount of information generated, and that time is saved multiple times over by narrowing down possibilities to investigate. Go knock down a few DNA brick walls!
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!
These are extraordinary times. We’re all doing it tough. In theory, blogging should be easier in lockdown, right?
Wrong. I’m afraid I’m struggling. My creative juices have dried to a trickle, as has my energy. I was quite unwell for a week or so (tested negative, so it seems it was a flu). An immediate family member is trapped in another country behind closed borders and life-threateningly ill.
So many of us are in similar situations, it seems self-indulgent to say I just can’t blog right now. I’m still researching, so still feel free to contact me with your queries if you need, I’m not shut down, just uncreative!
Hang in there please. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. In the meantime, I will blog when I can.
Stay safe, (virtual) hug your loved ones. This too shall pass.
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!
These are challenging times indeed. The novel coronavirus and the consequent outbreak of Covid-19 has made its mark on our world in an indelible way already, at a level unimagined since the Spanish Flu a century ago.
Use your time safe at home to explore more of your genealogy
No matter how dark the times are, there is always something positive to focus on. For the past couple of generations, people have become more and more isolated and individualistic. The concept of community has become sidelined. During our enforced physical isolation we are now seeing people reaching out to one another. This is often aided by technology – virtual parties, sing-songs, games, and Skype chats. There have been some truly heartwarming stories shared.
The genealogical world is no different. As I write, I am intrigued by a virtual genealogy webinar featuring genealogists displaying their non-genealogical talents for our entertainment in a two-hour show. I am currently witnessing an origami demonstration!
This week, I’d like to share with you some of the free genealogy online resources that are now being made available by libraries, archives and other database providers. This is their generous response to our self-isolation/quarantine/lockdown situations across the globe. Have a look and see if any of these might help you with your research while you have more ‘inside time’!
Most library buildings are now physically closed. Holders of library cards are probably aware that their library offers online access to various databases. The content varies from library to library so check the web site of yours. In addition to the regular database access from home options, many libraries are also currently offering access to databases you can usually only reach when inside the library. For example, you will likely find you can now access Ancestry Library Edition free of charge from your couch! Some libraries are also offering remote access to FindMyPast while the library buildings are shut (Tasmanian readers, you’re in luck!).
You should be able to access many newspapers and journals too. Look for JSTOR additional access, you will be thrilled at what you can find! Remember to check all your library memberships; your local library, state library and national library, as what is not available at one may be available at another.
The Internet Archive has also made additional items available under the name ‘National Emergency Library’. It should probably be called the ‘International Emergency Library’ since it is globally available! This collection consists of over 1.4M texts not usually available due to copyright restrictions, many of them useful for genealogy research and all of them interesting!
The US National Archives has some useful free genealogy online resources available. You can also source around 300 of their collections via Ancestry (search for ‘NARA’ in the Card Catalog).
Additional Free Genealogy Online Resources – Other Sources
MyHeritage recently launched a photo colourisation service. Normally you would have to be a subscriber to use it for more than just a few images, but for now, they’ve made it completely free of charge to colourise an unlimited number of photos. It’s amazing to see them come to life!
Do you have any South African ancestors or collateral lines that emigrated there? You can now get free access until 17th April to the databases at Ancestors South Africa!
I’m sure there are many more also becoming available, these are just the ones I have heard about in the past few days. If your favourite sites aren’t mentioned here, go take a look at their page. They may be offering something extra at the moment.
Also, remember, the above resources are ‘extras’. They are over and above their usual offerings in the online space. Your usual access to some of the amazing free resources such as FamilySearch Digital Library, Catalog, and Historical Images is all still there too. After all these years I could still lose myself at FamilySearch for days on end! Go check Cyndi’s List and see if you can find some new links you’ve never tried before for an area of your tree you want to expand upon.
I hope these suggestions help fill a little time for you. Now that we’ve moved from simple social distancing to something that is looking much more intense and long term, we need all the distraction we can get. Stay busy, look out for one another and above all, stay well!
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!
Happy International Women’s Day! Let’s celebrate by looking at the amazing women in our family trees.
My grandmother Louise Taylor (nee Seal) and great aunt Flo Seal (nee Powell) in about 1931
Last time I blogged about researching your female ancestors, I covered some reasons why it was so important not to neglect that half of your family tree. Today, I’d like to give some pointers on how to overcome the challenge associated with this – how to find someone’s maiden name!
There are many strategies and sources you can use to find the elusive birth name of a female ancestor. Your mileage may vary for any one of these, depending on the location and era you are researching and the contents included in the suggested documents for those areas. There are plenty of suggestions here though, so you should find you get lucky using several of them.
Find Her Maiden Name In Marriage Records
This is the most obvious starting point. But watch out for her marital status on the document. If she’s a widow or divorcee, she will likely not be marrying under her maiden name. Check for her father’s name, and if it is not listed, the witnesses’ names may provide clues. Try to find her previous marriage record – search for her forename and her widowed surname, then look for death records of the husband and verify you have the right couple. That earlier marriage should have her maiden name.
My great grandmother Rose Seal (nee Davies) looking a bit concerned in my grandparents’ wedding photo in 1932. She had no need to worry, they were happily married till my grandmother passed away!
Don’t just look for marriage certificates and church records though.
Also look for:
banns
allegations and bonds
licences
agreements
newspaper notices of engagements and marriages
family bibles
her husband’s military records, such as records of service and pension records
divorce applications or papers
These may not only confirm her maiden name, but provide further family information too.
Find Her Maiden Name In Her Children’s Records
Many of the records of your female ancestor’s children will give her maiden name. The records from earlier in their lives will be the most accurate as the information would likely have come from either her or her husband. If you don’t find what you are looking for in the records of the child you descend from, try their siblings.
birth certificates
baptismal records for some religions, e.g., Catholics and some non-conformists give mother’s maiden name
marriage certificates – some record mother’s maiden name, otherwise again check witness names for clues
death certificates also in some places give the mother’s maiden name
do any of her children have an unusual middle name (especially if several do)? – this may well be her birth name.
An example of an Independent Chapel baptism register including mother’s parentage.
Find Her Maiden Name Using Census Records
Check all available censuses for your female ancestor. In later censuses, you may find her with an aged parent in the household. Remember if just the mother is there, check that she wasn’t widowed for a second or subsequent time before assuming her surname is the birth name of the daughter!
You may also find unmarried siblings boarding with the family.
Lastly, check the surrounding households for possible relatives, as often the families stayed in the same neighbourhoods. Remember the FAN principle!
My grandmother Ruby Simpson (nee Rigby) looking serene about 1935.
Can Her Maiden Name Be Found in Death Records?
In some places, the maiden names of women are included in their death certificates, and as an extra bonus, as mentioned above some will also include her parents’ names. So you also get HER mother’s maiden name!
My recently widowed great grandmother Leah Barnett (nee Swinbourne, later Rigby) about 1912
did she leave one? Probably not before the Married Women’s Property Act (different dates in different jurisdictions!) as she would have had little of her own to leave anyone. Check anyway, you may be lucky!
did her husband leave one? Check his will and probate records as they may mention members of her family. For example who oversaw her inheritance from him when she legally couldn’t? If she had already died, who became guardians of any minor children?
if her husband died, she may be featured in removal and settlement records as the parishes juggled who would be responsible for the fatherless family. These can be extremely detailed.
do you have an inkling of who her birth family may possibly be? Check the will of her suspected father – they usually list daughters by married surname and often name their husbands.
Are there any obituaries or death announcements for her in the newspapers?
Lastly, don’t overlook records relating to her burial. Even the headstone may include some information, check for her maiden name on the stone itself, clues in the epitaph, and the birth date may assist you in finding her birth. Don’t neglect to check surrounding graves. She may be amongst her family.
Good luck in finding your female ancestors’ origins and helping your tree to become as rich and full as it deserves to be!
