TIPS FOR PROVING ANCESTRY IN GENEALOGY RESEARCH IN ENGLAND

These are adapted from tips given at an evening class taught by the late Roger Trunkfield at Wilmslow Guild in Cheshire, England.

If you have traced your family back as far as about 1840 using General Registration, you need to be as confident as possible about your work before going back to the 18th century.

• 1. When looking for a birth or baptism before 1837, examine as many sources of potential birth dates as you can, based on the ages given in census returns, on death or burial records, on monumental inscriptions and on marriage certificates. Do not be surprised if these various sources are not in full agreement as people often misreported their ages on marriage, were forgetful, had no written records in their home etc. Monumental inscriptions would be devised by the relatives not by the deceased.

• 2. Try to confirm the birth year with at least 2 census returns. The 1841 census rounded ages down to the nearest multiple of 5 so ideally one would use the 1851 and 1861 returns. Using two sets of records also gives a better chance of finding the PLACE of birth. The 1841 census indicated only that birth was in or outside the county.

• 3. Once you have formed an estimate of the birth year, consider baptism records at least two years on either side. It is not unknown for people to be baptised at the age of 20. If you have only one date to rely on for the birth then search five years on either side for the event.

• 4. While searching census records, extend the search as far as reasonably practicable for that area. With the census available on sites such as Ancestry it becomes easier to find all the people fo that surname resident in a given area. However, be wary of the poor quality of transcription that can cause records to be under an unexpected variant of the surname. This helps to find additional ancestors and provides information that may help you to identify other branches of the family and identify other families with the same name who may need to be considered for elimination purposes when assembling baptism, marriage and burial records. Most people now search for census records on the Internet and home in rapidly on one entry. Most of my own family history was done in the days when you went to a library and wound through a film of the census. It was not uncommon to find an interesting item a few streets away from the one being sought! So, it is worth looking at the page on the internet that shows an image of the entry and then clicking backwards and forwards to see who is in the nearby properties - perhaps members of the extended family.

• 5. If you have a date for a marriage but no ages, it is best to search for the baptism of the bride and groom in the period from 16 to 40 years before the marriage. Remember that many people died young and in particular many women died giving birth or shortly afterwards. Widowers often remarried, sometimes to women who were some years younger than themselves so don't expect all newly weds to be in their early 20s. In the middle of the 19th century 15% of all marriages were a second marriage for at least one of the couple.

• 6. If your only information about a man is the birth of his children, subtract 16 from the date of the first born child and 70 from the birth of the last known child and search the period between for his birth or baptism. For a woman allow that the first child could have been born when she was only 16 and last child when she was 50. If a woman is known to have had only one child then it unlikely that she had it much after the age of 40.

• 7. Do not restrict your searches to one parish; search several around the district. If there are no ADDITIONAL records for a baptism for a person with the name that you seek, it strengthens the case that you have found the correct person. Do not seize on the first one you find, it may be the wrong one! Families did not necessarily remain in the same parish and we tend to underestimate how mobile people could be, particularly during wars, and with the coming of the canals, turnpikes and railways.

• 8. Once you have found a baptism record that could fit with the one that you seek, search the burial records to make sure that the child survived. If possible, search the burial register up to the year of the marriage of the individual. If the registers are very large and you are unable to do this at one attempt, then try to check for at least ten years after the birth or baptism, as children were more likely to die in their first few years. I have consulted the bills of mortality published in the "The Gentleman's Magazine" for 1760 and 1827. The magazine gave an analysis of deaths by age for the parishes within the City of London. In both 1760 and 1827, half of all deaths were people under 20. Infant mortality was commonly higher in the towns than the countryside and during the 19th century the infant mortality rate (number of children dying in the first year of life) remained steady at about 17%.

• 9. It is very common to find that there is more than one person with the name that you seek, baptised in a given area in your search period. This can occur even if the surname is not that common. For example, two brothers may both name a son after their father so you have two cousins born within a few years of each other with the same Christian name. To determine which one is your ancestor, try to eliminate candidates by checking if they survived to adulthood by using the burial register in the parish of birth and the adjacent parishes. Secondly, try to find marriages for the various individuals in their parish of birth or in neighbouring ones. (Couples usually married in the home parish of the bride.) The dates of the marriages may help sort out the various candidates, for example if one would have been under age at the date of a marriage. Don't forget that marriages by Licence are the most interesting as you may be able to find the marriage bond and allegation at the appropriate county or diocesan record office. These can give details of the ages of the bride and groom and the names of relatives. For marriages after 1754, the names of the witnesses may give clues to family connections.

• 10. Consider the possibility of Nonconformism. It is not unknown for families to baptise some of their children in the Anglican church and some in a Nonconformist chapel. Do not assume that all your ancestors belonged to the same denomination. There are many Nonconformist denominations such as Baptists, Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Calvinists, Quakers and Roman Catholics. I have come across cases where a couple moved from the Church of England to a Nonconformist chapel, and then had their children baptised a second time in the new denomination. The International Genealogical Index has mainly records from Church of England (Anglican) Churches. The Lancashire Parish Register Society and similar ones across the country focus on Anglican churches. Records from Nonconformist chapels are much harder to research but may be in the County Archive. There was no centralised copy for Nonconformist chapels akin to the bishops' transcripts required by the Church of England. Many have not been transcribed or put on the Web. The religious census of 1851 showed that only about half the population were then Anglicans; the other half were a wide variety of Nonconformists and Catholics.

• 11. If you have examined the parish registers and are happy with what you have found, check the entry against the bishop's transcripts for the same event. There may be additional details of locations, ages or occupations.

• 12. A child born out of wedlock will commonly be baptised under its mother's maiden name. Check the baptism registers for the years prior to the marriage for children named after the mother. If the parents then marry one commonly finds that the illegitimate child assumes the father's name. I have come across examples of this even after 1837, where the child had been registered with the mother's surname but assumed the father's surname by the time of the next census.

This article has been published on the web site of 50connect.co.uk in the genealogy section where you can find many useful articles on how to get started and how to do genealogical research.