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Messages - JAKnighton

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1
Huntingdonshire / Re: Baptism needed for Townsend
« on: Friday 16 February 24 02:27 GMT (UK)  »
No baptism for a Richard Townsend or Townshend in Ramsey St Thomas for that time period. There is a Mary Townsend, daughter of William and Susanna, who was baptised there on 23 July 1788 however.

2
The Lighter Side / Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« on: Wednesday 14 February 24 14:00 GMT (UK)  »
A recurring problem in my research is that transcribers clearly have no knowledge of Huntingdonshire as a county. Very often "Hunts" in a place of birth will be transcribed as "Hants" or in some cases "Herts".

In fact this is such a widespread problem that on FamilySearch the "Huntingdonshire Parish Registers" record set, which is clearly dedicated to that county only, has some of the place names indexed under Hampshire.

3
The Common Room / Re: FamilySearch
« on: Saturday 27 January 24 15:47 GMT (UK)  »
Some of the big family tree websites introduced stricter login requirements after the recent 23&Me hacking scandal. Ancestry (and FindMyPast I believe) brought in two-factor authentification, and FamilySearch removed the "keep me logged in" feature.

I think because FamilySearch has a lot of users who mainly access the website through libraries and family history centres, they decided not to make it possible for users to accidentally leave themselves logged in.

4
Ancestry make no money from correcting errors so they don't bother!!!
About 8 years back i reported an error on 1841 census for Holme,Huntingdonshire where the transcription moves the parish to Hertfordshire,at the time i posted this on Huntigdonshire board to alert others and responses showed about 8 parishes were wrongly recorded.
Just now i have checked the board and my post and responses have been deleted!
Four generations of my ancestors lived in Holme so I am painfully aware of this issue. It has been like that since I first started using Ancestry in 2012. There's a similar problem with Holme in 1881 where the residence place is indexed as Glatton.

5
The Lighter Side / Re: What was your most painful mistake?
« on: Friday 05 January 24 21:19 GMT (UK)  »
However, 5 years later in 2022 the Norwich Consistory Court Norfolk (which also has many Suffolk ones due to Suffolk being in the Diocese of Norwich) marriage licenses came online with an index and scan of original image. I found a marriage in 1744 at St John Timberhill, Norwich of a Susan Riches to Charles Brandon, a worstead weaver. The age of Susan on the license was 10 years out she was said to be "about 40 years old, a spinster" but it did slightly alarm me as it was the parish the 1694 born one lived in. St Michael At Plea was also a select parish they could also marry in. Charles Brandon and William Baker were bondsmen. Alarm bells ringing.
I will have to check these records out. I have similar issues with my ancestors who lived around Norwich.

I was slightly embarrassed and disappointed that George Barrass and his amazing story was not part of my family history anymore.
Love the pun  ;D
I wish I could say that was deliberate!

6
The Lighter Side / What was your most painful mistake?
« on: Thursday 04 January 24 12:21 GMT (UK)  »
We've all made mistakes in our family tree. Usually as beginners, but even experienced researchers can slip up - and fixing those mistakes can be painful. We get attached to those who we believe to be our ancestors, so finding out that they're not related at all and having to remove them from our tree can hurt.

In my case, it was the parents of my 5x great-grandmother, Mary Barrass. Mary existed at an awkward point in time. I knew that she married her husband Robert Gray in Gateshead, County Durham on April 28, 1823 and that their daughter, my 4x great-grandmother Dorothy Gray had been born in Newcastle in 1834. However, the family had moved to Glasgow, Scotland by 1851, and this was just before the statutory registration system in Scotland had begun. Her husband Robert was a widow by 1861 according to the census and I could not find a death record for her after 1855 which meant she must have died between 1851 and 1854. This was frustrating, because if she had died after 1855, then the death record would have given the names of her parents.

But I (foolishly) persevered by making a silly assumption, that the place of her marriage, Gateshead, was the same place she was born. I managed to ignore the fact that her birth county in the 1841 census was said to be Northumberland and not Durham. I also overlooked that her first child, an illegitimate son named Edward Dodd Barrass, was christened in the parish of Earsdon in Northumberland in 1816, which should have been a big clue.

The record I honed in on was the christening of Mary Ann Barrass in Gateshead in 1796. Her parents were George Barrass and Isabella Shipley who married in Gateshead in 1792.

I soon discovered that Mary Ann's father George Barrass had an interesting story. He was a linen draper and partner of the firm Messers. John Rodham & Co. in Gateshead, but then left to work on his own in 1786. In 1800 he was charged with forgery and he went on the run, and a reward of twenty guineas was offered for his capture. His body was eventually found, drowned in a brook between Whitburn and Sunderland, on 18 Oct 1800.

This was the kind of family story that we genealogists dream of. Particularly for ancestors born before the 19th century, who typically leave very little details of their life behind in their records. I traced George's family further back in Gateshead and into Whickham, which offered a tantalising possibility that he was connected to the famous Barrass brewery family that lived there.

But in 2022 a helpful member of this forum sent me a private message. She had managed to find the death of my 5x great-grandmother Mary Barrass in Glasgow cemetery records in 1854. Most importantly, she pointed out that Mary was far more likely to be the Mary Barrass born in Earsdon, Northumberland in 1794 - the same place her oldest son was born in 1816. This Mary's parents were named John Barrass and Jane Crammond, which matched the names of two of her children, John Barrass Gray and Jane Barrass Gray.

I was slightly embarrassed and disappointed that George Barrass and his amazing story was not part of my family history anymore. My real 6x great-grandfather was actually John Barrass, a pitman who died young in 1796 and didn't leave any more details about his life behind. I became aware of how common and widespread the Barrass name was in the north east of England and so have had difficulty tracing the family back very far with any certainty.

Having said that, there is a different satisfaction in knowing that you have a new family history that is better supported by the facts, and not just an assumption that has lead you astray. It's given me a new approach for how I analyse the evidence and I've learned a valuable lesson.

This turned out to be longer that I originally planned. I hope you found it interesting and that you will share your stories here!

7
The Common Room / Re: Baptisms / Christening around 1820
« on: Friday 08 December 23 17:35 GMT (UK)  »
Entire generations of my Knighton family were not baptised because they were non-conformists. Actually, that's not quite correct - some of them did get baptised, but only as adults.

It's made it very difficult to trace some individuals because I don't have specific birth years for them, only approximate ages. Some family members are only known because they were mentioned in wills.

8
The Common Room / Re: Can One Name The Author(s) of Books/Publications/Newsarticles?
« on: Wednesday 06 December 23 12:12 GMT (UK)  »
Over the years I have noticed that there seems to be a very strict interpretation of the rule against naming living persons. So what about referencing books or articles? Usually such a reference should include the author and year of publication. Is this banned on Rootschat?
The actual rule is written like this:

Quote
4. Specific Forum Rules
4.1 As a user you agree not to do any of the following:

....

17. Breach or request the breach of privacy of persons who are or may be living.
So if someone has published a work and attached their name to it, referencing their name in relation to the publication is not a breach of privacy.

Having said that, Rootschat doesn't like it when you reference living people in terms of genealogical searches i.e. sharing their name as reproduced in an index, citing electoral registers, names in obituaries for deceased people etc. even though those are all publicly available information and not subject to privacy laws.

I suppose the distinction is that if you have to do some digging to find out information about a living person then it's not acceptable to share, but if the living person has deliberately made themselves known then it's fine.

9
The Common Room / Re: Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors
« on: Wednesday 25 October 23 15:40 BST (UK)  »
My tree is quite large (15,000+ individuals) but that's because I do a lot of descendancy research. So not just my direct ancestors and their children, but cousins across multiple generations, including their spouses. I've also done research for the in-laws of my aunts and uncles, and a few of my friends, which I have all connected back to my main tree. That causes the tree to grow quite quickly. Despite this my tree doesn't go any further back than 1540 and most ancestral lines fizzle out in the early 1700s.

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