baptism date – The Nosey Genealogist's: Help Me With My Family Tree

18/02/2018

Can’t find the baptism?

I was reviewing a problem ancestor in my family tree this week and thought my notepad jottings may help others.

I am looking for a female ancestor who was born before the introduction of civil registration in 1837. According to every census, that she was enumerated within, her birth date was 1806, give or take a year. The place of birth remained consistent as Bigbury in Devon. The problem is that she does not appear in the Bigbury parish register for baptisms for 1806, nor for the years either side. There is someone with her Christian name in the registers, however by following this woman through to her marriage and death I have ruled her out.

This being the case I have to consider reasons why I can’t find my ancestor and so I noted down on a pad the scenarios that I needed to explore.

1. Was my ancestor disguising her age in the census to appear closer in years to her husband? – If so I need to expand my search for her using a larger range of years.

2. Was her maiden surname different from what I had discovered from a transcript of her marriage? Perhaps the name I was searching for was from a previous marriage? – To find this out I needed to see an image of the parish register and read whether it said Spinster or Widow at the time of her wedding.

3. Was she mistaken about being born in Bigbury? Perhaps she grew up there and assumed that it was where she had been born? – I needed to search the Bigbury parish register to see if any other family members with her surname were baptised, married or buried there.

4. Has the Bishop’s transcripts survived in the Diocesan Archive? – Sometimes entries may appear in the BTs that are missing from the actual parish register.

5. Was she from a non-conformist family and been baptised by a minister of another denomination other than the Established Church? – A search of the non-conformist registers may turn up my elusive ancestor, though not all of them were surrendered and so the collection at The National Archives is not complete. Some may be in the Devon Heritage Centre (County Record Office) while others are lost.

6. Could I find any siblings in the Bigbury area? – Searching first for baptisms, then marriages and burials. In this case I found her as a witness to a marriage of a woman with the same surname. Perhaps her sister, or a cousin. But it does establish a link to Bigbury.

7. Did she appear in anyone else’s published family tree? – Though they are notoriously inaccurate family trees that are published online may give you clues to go and research for yourself and confirm the accuracy of the information in the tree.

8. Does anyone seem to share the DNA with me from that area or from an ancestor with that surname? – Look for a distant cousin that has entered the information about their ancestors to a linked family tree on a family history DNA website.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it is a start to breaking down a brick wall.

How far have I got? Not as far as I’d like, as so many other things have got in the way of my research this week!

Send to Kindle

31/05/2013

2.6 million historic records of Surrey people now online

I see that Ancestry.co.uk has launched online Surrey Parish Records, 1538-1987, featuring more than two and a half million historic Surrey parish records in the most comprehensive collection of its type available online.

The records, the originals of which are held at Surrey County Councilâ€™s Surrey History Centre, detail baptisms, marriages and burials contained in Anglican parish registers, dating from 1538 to 1987.

Crucially many records in the collection pre-date civil registration, the government system established in 1837 to keep accurate accounts of citizensâ€™ births, marriages and deaths, making this collection a valuable resource for anybody looking to trace an ancestor living before the 19^th century.

Analysis of these records reveals fascinating historical trends, for example that the number of marriages increased by almost 1,000 in 1915 compared to the previous year, as couples rushed to the altar following the declaration of the First World War. (The number of marriages was 2,727 in 1914, increasing to 3,710 in 1915.)

Included in the records are a number of famous Surrey residents, such as:

Lewis Carroll â€“ The burial of the famed author of â€˜Aliceâ€™s Adventures in Wonderlandâ€™ -Â real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is recorded in the collection as taking place on 19^th January 1898

P. G. Wodehouse â€“ The baptism of the writer Wodehouse, who was born prematurely whilst his mother was visiting Guildford, is listed as taking place on the 17^th November 1881

John Derrick â€“ Historical sources reveal Derrick is probably the first named person known to have played cricket, while a pupil at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford in the mid 16^th century. Derrickâ€™s burial in Holy Trinity Guildford on 27^th October 1613 features in the collection

William Bray â€“ The baptism of Bray, whose 1755 diary was revealed to be the earliest known manuscript to reference baseball, is included in the records as taking place on 7^th November, 1736

Other names of note who feature in the records include Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who captained Darwinâ€™s famous voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, Sir Barnes Nevill Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb used in the Dambusters Raid, and Jerome David Kern, one of Americaâ€™s most successful composers of musical theatre, who met and married his wife Eva Leale in Walton on Thames.

In addition, the Surrey roots of Academy Award-winning actors Sir Laurence Olivier and Kate Winslet can be traced in the collection. The baptism of Olivierâ€™s father Anglican Priest Gerard Kerr Olivier is recorded as taking place on 30^th May 1869, 38 years before he welcomed young Laurence into the world in 1907, and the marriage of Winsletâ€™s third great grandparents Thomas Winslet and Priscilla Tasker on 7^th December 1824 features in the records.

Also included are a number of interesting entries, such as a baptism record revealing one John William Hoakesâ€™ job as the â€˜Inspector of a Royal Lavatoryâ€™, and records of the marriages of the humorously named George East and Ellen West in 1895, and of Luke Sex and Sarah Eager in 1743.

The collection can be searched by name, spouseâ€™s name, fatherâ€™s name, motherâ€™s name, birth date, baptism date, marriage date, burial date, and by parish.

Miriam Silverman, UK Content Manager, from Ancestry.co.uk comments: â€œSpanning half a millennium, these records are an invaluable resource for anyone looking to research the history of Surrey and its people â€“ including some of the countyâ€™s most famous literary and sporting residents.â€

â€œThese records have been added to our comprehensive collection of Parish records, featuring millions of records from the length and breadth of Englandâ€

Julian Pooley, from Surrey Councilâ€™s Surrey History Centre adds:

â€œWe are delighted that Ancestry.co.uk is helping us to make Surreyâ€™s records so widely accessible for research. Thousands of people contact us each year seeking Surrey ancestors because they feel a need to understand their history, their family heritage, their place in their community.Â The discovery of these roots is more than simple genealogical number-crunching; it teaches new research skills, it brings scattered families together and makes new friends and it increases knowledge and awareness of the communities we live in.â€

A free launch event for the digitised Surrey Parish Records 1538-1987 collection will be held on Saturday 6^th July (10.30am â€“ 3:30pm) at Surrey History Centre in Woking, with Ancestry.co.uk staff on hand to answer any questions about the records and help people search the collection, and experts from Surrey History Centre, East Surrey Family History Society and West Surrey Family History Society available to answer your family history questions.Â To book places on the presentations please phone 01483 518737 or email shs@surreycc.gov.uk

Send to Kindle

08/04/201208/04/2012

Beware of Shared Family Trees!

I was taking my research, of a branch of my tree that I have never really looked into before, a stage further.

It was the family of the Master Mariner that I had identified in Findmypast’s records of merchant navy records online that I looked at last week. I had traced back my 2 x great grandparents to their marriage in Portsmouth in 1859 and found that her family were living in that maritime city at the time of the 1851 census. Having failed to identify them in any of the other census from the UK, I then took a look at the LDS familyserch.org website to see if I could find marriages and baptisms for the parents. Now the results here were equally sparse. I did, however, find a marriage in St Thomas’ church Portsmouth for what I believe to be my great-great-great grandparents. From the census of 1851 I had got the Christian names of the family unit and my 3x great grandparents appeared to be called John Malser and Rosanna Craydon and John was born in 1811.

I thought I was on track until I tried to research back these families in Portsmouth. At present I have no leads from the online websites for the Craydon branch. What I did find was a possible baptism, from some Hampshire Genealogical Society transcriptions on the findmypast website for St Thomas’ Portsmouth. This gives the baptism date as being 1809 and so I can not be sure that I have found the correct man, but he is certainly a possibility.

We are all aware, in the family history community, how dates of birth in the census records can often be recorded incorrectly. This is where the subject wishes to massage their age slightly for some reason, simply doesn’t know their age, or in the case of the 1841 census the age is rounded down to the nearest five years for anyone over 15. Likewise we know that errors creep into transcriptions when they are copied and so that information contained within them may not be correct. So what I am left with is a tentative branch to my tree that awaits further investigation by looking at original, or at least microfilm copies of, parish records when I am able.

Before leaving this new line I decided to enter my newly discovered ancestors into a search engine. I quickly found a family tree that showed a link from the Malser’s to my parental family line, the Thorn’s. Here, however, it claimed my 2 x great grandmother was the daughter of a differently named set of parents from those that appear in the one census return that I have found. If I had done my research the other way around and had decided to put into my tree the information that was published on another’s tree without checking to a primary source, then I could have unintentionally introduced errors into my tree. As it is all I have is some leads that also need to be checked against the primary source, when time allows, but at least I have one census that has sent me in the right direction.

The names on that other tree could be different for all manners of reasons. They could be nick names, a case of remarriage or just plain wrong. Always check your ancestors back to a primary source before you can be confident that you have found your family.

Take your family history further by considering a subscription to these websites:

Disclosure: The Links in the above are Compensated Affiliate links. If you click on them then I may be rewarded by Findmypast.co.uk or The Genealogist.co.uk should you sign up for their subscriptions.

Edit

From → Beginning Family Tree Research

Send to Kindle

Tag: baptism date

Can’t find the baptism?

Like this:

Beware of Shared Family Trees!

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: