Early Assumptions

[Rishile]

[
I also assumed that my parents would have remembered to baptise all their children but I was mistaken there too 

I had that problem with the above family too.  They were all baptized in neat batches of two or three, all in the same church except one which happens to be my gt-grandfather and I can't find his baptism anywhere.  Typical!!

Rishile

[Guy Etchells]

And perhaps my biggest incorrect assumption - that I would be able to trace all my ancestors in England back to the 16th century 

(three men named James Carter in the same village in the 1780s, two of them with wives named Ann, all three couples had daughters called Ann - no way of knowing which ones were my ancestors!)

Have you worked the trees of the other families to rule out the possibilities of the daughter being theirs?
Cheers
Guy

[Lisajb]

Assuming that the name they gave on the census was the name they were registered or baptised with.

I spent ages looking for the marriage of Henry Woodman, and bought a few incorrect certs, until a helpful fellow local genealogist pointed out that he was actually George!

I've no idea where Henry came from or why George suddenly decided that he was Henry.

[Mowsehowse]

Assuming that the name they gave on the census was the name they were registered or baptised with.

I spent ages looking for the marriage of Henry Woodman, and bought a few incorrect certs, until a helpful fellow local genealogist pointed out that he was actually George!

I've no idea where Henry came from or why George suddenly decided that he was Henry.

Assuming that the "given" name was in fact the given name!

So many times I have searched for someone and eventually discovered that the first name was not even a short form of what appears in the birth register.

   Evidently a common assumption!!

[coombs]

I found my great gran on the 1901 census in Camden. Her father's age was a year out. He was 41 but was said to be 40. I looked on the IGI and found his baptism which gave his DOB as 5 Feb 1860. I thought the one year age discrepancy meant it cannot be the same guy. How wrong I was.

[angelfish58]

I thought unusual names would be easy to  research. Ha ha ha.

[andrewalston]

When I started researching, I expected my ancestors to hail from the hamlet of ALSTON, on the outskirts of Longridge.

I ought to have realised that from the mis-spellings of surname which appear through my letterbox that this was not to be.

It turns out that the name underwent a couple of major changes from the earlier HALSTEAD. The first change was in the 1790s, the second in the 1890s, with many variants between.

[macwil]

I thought unusual names would be easy to  research. Ha ha ha.

Me too! So far I've found nine variations for Boraston and three distinct lines that no one has yet managed to link.

My other assumption was that first son was named after the father.
So my G'g'dad was initially the son of his uncle and to compound it, his wife was in fact married to his brother! It took me some time to sort it out, but I was young and naive then.
(I started less than ten years ago and am approaching seventy.)

[philipsearching]

And perhaps my biggest incorrect assumption - that I would be able to trace all my ancestors in England back to the 16th century 

(three men named James Carter in the same village in the 1780s, two of them with wives named Ann, all three couples had daughters called Ann - no way of knowing which ones were my ancestors!)

Have you worked the trees of the other families to rule out the possibilities of the daughter being theirs?
Cheers
Guy

Yes.  The three Anns did not die young and there is no pattern to the names of offspring.  No parents named on marriages in those days.  The ages given on the burials are missing or inconclusive.  No family wills.