It's on the net, it must be wrong!

I often hear variations of the following warning: 'Do not add this to your tree until it has been verified by YOU.'

I am an impatient transcriber and thoroughly resenting going through centuries-old parchment for a location which ought to have been included in the catalogue.  I mournfully wound my way through the Ditcheat PRs in Taunton and it became obvious a much larger Scott family existed. It was frustrating not knowing if they were close relatives, and being boggled by the out-of-sequence names.

Now, thanks to the net, I've found my Scotts. With the glorious overview on findmypast and familysearch, I can see all the burials, marriages and baptisms that have been recorded.  I can make judgements and compare across the whole county, being cogniscent of gaps.  I found that several of the marriages of Scotts in Ditcheat had a corresponding baptism in another parish, at Chewton Mendip.  Wasn’t that something?

I did get waylaid by some bad cataloguing: Curry Rivel, the lead item on the microfilm, being listed in error for Ditcheat as the place of baptism.  But that was infinitely preferable to slogging down to the record office and failing to spot key entries in the register.   A computer is much better than my eyes at combing through large amounts of data.  Without this global knowledge one can comfortably assume the girl baptised in the parish must be the one married there: often wrong.  Again with comprehensive census and good burial records we can be disabused of this parochial guesswork.

The biggest skill of a family historian is not to check every wretched source, and presumably extract an oath from their custodians that they are valid; but to take data of varying quality from a range of sources and to sort them: what is likely to be correct, what is suspicious and what is possible but not proven.  If jurors on a strict diet of daytime soaps can do this, I'm sure I can.

One needs some understanding of the background to a source or place: that includes London street names, the rounding of ages in 1841, the fact names are correct in probate records but not often elsewhere, the fact that women in England change their names when they marry and previous married names should appear on their children’s civil birth records; that birth dates before 1837 are rarely recorded officially; that it was easier to get into the main town than it was to cross the hill into the next valley.

I would prefer to carry on seeing YOUR transcriptions, and for me to concentrate on the analysis, which will include considering whether your hardwork belongs on my tree or not.

Skellingtons

Charles John Creed was born in 1886 in Holborn, the only son of his father, who later remarried.  Charles appears to be living in Paddington age 25, a seaman, unmarried, with an incorrect and implausible birthplace listed.  Two years later someone of his named married there to Annie Skellin, an Irish girl who already had a son, from perhaps her time in service in St John's Wood.  This unlikely couple appear not to have hit it off, as there is no trace of them emigrating, having children, or living together.

However, Charles's father bought a property in Pimlico Road, having done well as a furniture dealer, in fact it may have been the shop.  It was to this address that Charles John is registered in 1934, with a lady, not Annie.  Through following him onwards in the electoral roll we find his son, and learn the identity of his second wife, Edith.  It appears they never married, Edith having arrived in London aged 18 from Canada where she had spent 4 years in servitude as part of an English charity's then policy to rehome 'waifs and strays'.  Edith's father was unable to cope with three children, and it was the girl who was sent from her charming Shropshire home town, to the horrors of the home in Hull.  But perhaps they were kind to her, poor girl she had no other option.

One hopes that she fell in love with Charles Creed, and was content with separation from the Skellin lady.  If Annie Skellin was Catholic, divorce would have been an impossibility, and Charles John would have been trapped.  We would find it very hard to piece together this story and learn of Charles's story, and of Edith's childhood, without the London electoral roll's now on Ancestry.

The female line of the Scott sisters

Betty and Sarah Scott between them had 14 daughters, but none have a line to continue.  Susanna's great-grandson died in 2001, the last of her female line.  While her sister Martha's female line died out ten years before, despite going a generation deeper into modern times.

Martha was the bearer of the line through her eldest daughter Mary, herself having four daughters, but only her youngest, who sailed for Adelaide aged 17, another Martha, can have family.

We wish that line luck.  To find the line in any numbers in England, we have to go back to the 1690s.  Miriam Bond had a niece, though, Anna Feltham who wandered up the aisle to marry three days shy of childbirth.  The line continues through her in NSW, Kimberley South Africa and the States.

The last grandchild

I rarely get to do much on my Scotts, the family of James Scott and of Miriam Bond.  We know so little James, though his name was given to several grandchildren and beyond.  A descendant in South Africa, Rev'd L S Creed, baptising his daughter with middle name Scott, 1918, the same one he had.

Then came his will in 1995.  The pitiful estate duty extract on poor-contrast microfilm gives us a wealth of genealogical data.  He names three daughters Betty Haine, Sarah Boyce and Martha Crud.  In addition he names a grandson, and also Francis Scott.  Francis was nominated executor, and revealed as a brother on this tiny scrap of film.

I'd never heard of the Boyces, but the name Crud.  I looked again, could that be.... it was CREED, in fact the name of the main family I was researching!  Betty's granddaughter married Martha's grandson sixty years later, and I am their descendant, so this document explains the connection very nicely.

I tracked the Boyces to London, their most prominent son having left an administration.  A trip to Guildhall Library gave me his address, and then, oh joy the 1871 census which led me to descendant Celia with whom I had many years of happy correspondence.

1. Betty had: James, Frances, Miriam (dy); William, Sarah, Mary Ann, Ann, Elizabeth (dsp); Martha, Susanna, Jane (issue). All discovered 1992 and traced, except Elizabeth whose fate, in Port Antonio, Jamaica, I did not learn till 2002.  The clue here being an old newspaper article about William:  ‘As brother-in-law of a West Indian missionary, he fittingly occupied the chair.’  I leapt to the, correct, conclusion that Elizabeth had married a Methodist minister, and found that his movements matched an 1881 census entry for his third wife and issue.  Solved.

2. Martha had Elizabeth (dy); James (?), Ann (dsp); Mary, Thomas, William, Sarah, John (all with issue).  Three were identified prior to 1992 by cousins.  Thomas raised his head later, and was not inked in till 1998, when a census finds him a very old man in Kent.  The final three of Mary, John and Ann were the result of searching for 'born West Pennard' on the Ancestry database.  Ann resisted capture until 1901, when she is found living with Sarah's children as their housekeeper.  Because the original 1901 census production was so dreadful, I missed a lot of clues, it being too expensive to look at the actual records.  Solved bar James.

3. Sarah had Martha, Hannah, Miriam (d in their 20s/30s); Sarah, Elizabeth, Stephen (dsp); James, Francis (issue). All discovered 1995 bar two.  We found Sarah's marriage in the Ancestry/LMA index, but Elizabeth’s marriage has so far only been indexed at the GRO.  I solved her only in 2012.  So it Sarah and her surviving children went to London in about 1830.  We do not have records for her husband in the capital but I think he was there.  Two nephews plus a niece, later came to London.  Now solved.

Wood hunting

The Wood girls Dorothy lived for many years in Scotland as Eva, and her sisters all opted for an easier life in Surrey.  But Wood you believe it?  Dorothy died in England, and Eva, the sister, in Scotland! No wonder I couldn't find them.  If anyone had died in Scotland I'd not have thought that 'Eva Wood'!
I have finally broken my duck and paid some hard cash to use Scotland's People.  As someone for whom my Scottish line is entirely unknown, but likely to hail from Kirkcudbrightshire, I am certainly racking up the Scots connections.
Dora's will told me that her brother had family in Falkirk.  I spent two hours interrogating Scotland's People and this was an occasion where I managed to get the information I needed at no cost.

primitive conditions and pins in Eyam

Although my great-great-grandmother died in 1901, she left a few clues.  Her estate wasn’t finally settled until 1976 and her photograph has recently emerged.  Also, her cousin survived until the edge of living memory, the 1940s.  This was Hannah Beresford - unexpected child of an elderly aunt who was soon an orphan.  I remembered that Hannah had a half-sister and wanted to follow her up.  She had gone up to Huddersfield in service and married a widower when she was 17, and later remarried in Manchester.  Fortunately the census keeps track of her, as she is reliably stated as being born in Eyam, every time.  Her only son from the second marriage was killed in the Great War.  But this unexpected record gives us the name of Hannah’s dwelling, ‘Corner Cottage’, in Eyam.   I believe the sisters moved back in together in old age.  Cousins remember going to visit this house and being startled at its basic living conditions.  Hannah has left me a puzzle.  She sends a postcard in the 1930s having put a pinprick next to her face in the crowd.  Smart girl! The postcard is hundreds of miles away and I have only the digital image - do you think I can find this pinprick?

Meet Mr Zero

I couldn't help but notice the existence of Mr Zero at the otherwise useful 192.com.  It's definitely a zero in the screenshot below.

I would otherwise rate this website more highly than Genes Reunited, Ancestry or LostCousins as a tool for finding modern cousins.

secrets of the deep web: the Welch girls in New Zealand

The phrase disappearing into thin air might well have been coined for Jane Welch, who is shown as living in the will of her sister 1894, but is certainly not anywhere in England.  The recent addition of some electoral rolls to Ancestry led me to find Jane in New Zealand.  Here she is.

I felt sure that Jane would have accompanied her sister Louisa and husband Albert Smith who had married in 1884 and also similarly disappeared.  Sure enough here is the birth of their child Faith in the helpful NZ birth indexes.  I later found Faith and her sisters listed in the NSW death indexes, unmarried.  But there was a fourth sister not listed - perhaps she had married?  Indeed Hope Bischoff is the one lead on this line.

This rather short article has had over 90 hits because of its title.  I stand by the title.  You can't google this stuff so it is the 'deep web'.