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.
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.
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.
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.