Deciding between 2 alternatives: tips anyone?

[Mike Morrell (NL)]

I'm a newbie here so forgive me for asking a question that has been answered many times in the past! I'd be happy if someone would give me a link to relevant articles, threads or posts.

I'm not completely new to Genealogy so I'm used to tracking people through census, birth/baptism and marriage/marriage-bann records. I try to do this as securely as possible by verifying ages, addresses, occupations etc.

I've come across a situation in which one my ancestors who I'm certain of in 1851 (married 2 years earlier) could - as a teenager - be one of two people (A or B) in the UK census of 1841. The census data of his married years indicate that his date of birth is between 1828 and 1830. This points to him being person A. However, the first names of his first two children correspond with the parents' names of person B (born in 1831). Both A and B were born with within 2 years of 1829.

Any tips on how to distinguish between "James A" and "James B"?

Thanks,

Mike

[KGarrad]

Welcome to RootsChat!

Any marriage certificate should name his father.
Does that help to solve the issue?

[groom]

Welcome to Rootschat.

I second KG's advice, the marriage certificate should give the father's name and occupation, which may help you sort out which one he is in 1841.

[philipsearching]

Greetings.

It is worth remembering that not every baptism happened shortly after birth.  Sometimes parents had their children baptised in batches, or waited until they got round to it.

Philip

[CarolA3]

I've come across a situation in which one my ancestors who I'm certain of in 1851 (married 2 years earlier) could - as a teenager - be one of two people (A or B) in the UK census of 1841.

Welcome Mike,

The 1941 census differed from all the later ones, in that the ages of people over 15 were supposed to be rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5.  Therefore your teenager should have been recorded correctly if he was 13/14/15, but if he was between 16 and 19 his age would still be shown as 15.

Hope this helps,
Carol

[Mike Morrell (NL)]

@KGarrad, @groom, @philipsearching, and CarolA3

Many thanks for all your fast and helpful responses! The marriage certificate does indeed clearly name one of the two fathers. I hadn't (yet) taken this information into account so thanks for pointing it out. It's a good lesson for me to make the best use of all available information.

@CarolA3: The person who's father I'm trying to identify would have been about 13-14 in 1841. But you make a valid point about his parents' ages in that census. Thanks.

I'm impressed by this first experience with Rootschat and I intend to stay actively involved.

Regards,

Mike

[carol8353]

You might also find a link to the family by the names of the witnesses,often a married sister or sister/brother in law.And of course the address on a marriage cert might well be where the family were on the previous or next census.

If you find the married couple with children on later censuses,sometimes an elderly rellie is living/staying with them and that could help too.

[jbml]

It's a good lesson for me to make the best use of all available information.

In this game, Mike, you have to make use of whatever scraps of information you can find, however slight, and wherever you come by them.

A good system of storage and retrieval of reference material, and a good index to that system, are an absolute must if you are going to try to go back more than a couple of generations. What seems irrelevant now may suddenly seem critically important later on.

So, tedious though it may seem, always note everything you find, including witnesses to marriages, whether they signed or made their mark (somebody who signed in 1815 is unlikely to be the same person as the person of the same name who made his mark in 1819, no matter how strongly all the other evidence may appear to suggest that they are), names of informants at death ... everything. At the time of finding he information, you cannot be certain what is vital, what is peripheral, and what is irrelevant information. So treat it all as critical. Record it all, file it all, index it all, cross-reference it all ...

[marcie dean]

because my marsh family was so involuted I ended up setting up aN excel sheet to keep a track of of more than three generations before adding them to my tree. do not know whether this system could work for others.