Tag: Ancestor Came

Posted on

Fantastic Society of Genealogist Course!

Society of GenealogistsI’ve been to London this weekend and, on Saturday, I attended a great course at the Society of Genealogists on My Ancestor Came From Devon given by the society’s Genealogist Else Churchill.

Over the afternoon we were introduced to what we would be able to find in the library at the SoG in Charterhouse Buildings and where to look on the internet for Devon sources.

The talk encompassed sources for beginners to beyond and if you can’t make it down to Devon itself and find getting to London easier, then what is available at the SoG really is a good alternative for anyone who, like me, have Devonian ancestors.

I shall be returning to this lecture in a future post, but today I’d just like to mention some of the resources that were highlighted by Else Churchill.

The Society of Genealogists has registers for about 10,000 parishes. It houses published indexes and finding aids including the Devon FHS publications and also has many transcripts and indexes in microfilm and CDs.  There are various trade directories spanning from 1783 to the 1930s in the library and poll books particularly from Exeter and Plymouth.

Many of us subscribe to one or other of the subscription sites, but very few of us can afford to belong to more than one or two. Well that is where a visit to the SoG  can be useful as they have free access to a number of the pay per view websites so allowing us to do searches on the sites that we don’t subscribe to ourselves. This is an important resource for the family historian, as often the way the database has been transcribed can have a bearing on what you are able to find on one over another. So if you have hit a brick wall and can’t find a forbear on one site then it is worth looking on another. Also one may be stronger for the counties that you are interested in. Findmypast turns out to be particularly good for Devon.

Send to Kindle
Posted on

Family Tree Research When Ancestors Have Common Names

Are you having trouble finding birth records for family members who have very common names? Have you tried to figure out which ones belong to you and which don’t using the census data but just can’t be sure you have the right people?

Often, when you can’t find records for a person, it can pay to take a step
back and sort of zoom out from concentrating on the one we can’t find.

By this I am suggesting that you take a look at that person’s siblings, if they
have any of course, and identify where theses other children of the parents of your difficult forebear were born. Once you have done this, you may be able to then trace the parents back.

It is worth looking at the census records for the streets around where your ancestor lived as sometimes families occupied houses quite near to each other. Sometimes they can even be living in the same road. Maybe clues can be had from investigating these parallel lines to your direct branch in the family tree.

It could be that you will need to go and search the Parish Registers in the County Record Office, for where your ancestor came from, to see if there are any leads to be had by looking at the microfilmed copies of the parish church records.

I have found that many of my ancestors were simply called John Thorn, which is pretty common in Devon!

I was in luck getting back one generation because my 3 x great-grandfather at least had a middle name of Branton. On doing some delving I found out that this was in fact his mother’s maiden name so I could find his parent’s marriage.

But John Branton Thorn’s father was simply called John Thorn (with no middle name) and he married Sarah Branton in a city centre church in Plymouth. The records that I have seen of the Parish register do not say that he was “of that parish” and indeed omit to say from which parish he was from at all!

I have had to put him on the back burner and concentrate on other lines in my tree, until I can find the time to go to Plymouth and check the primary source of-line records in the Record Office, such as the Bishop’s Transcripts etc.

Good luck in your research into ancestors with common names.

Send to Kindle