RootsChat.Com

Is it a particular time period?

Not really, I'm just doing broad searches of surnames in my family tree just to see what comes up. I have noticed this in records from 1864 all the way to the 1920s.

Have you looked for marriages for those people?

This is partly why I am asking if it is known that widows/widowers were recorded erroneously. I would like to look for marriages, but don't want to waste my time if the answer is already there.

Could it be ‘the curse of emigration?’

This is closer to the information that I was looking for. If there were indeed a lot of unmarried adults in Ireland because communities were dilapidated by emigration, that would explain what I am seeing.

I own a book called Fenland Chronicle by Sybill Edwards, which recounts the memories of her grandparents who were born in the 1870s. In one chapter they discuss working in domestic service and they go into detail about how different the experiences could be. Some women were treated horribly, but others developed good relationships with their employers that lasted a lifetime.

I have some evidence of this in my tree. My 5x great aunt Ruth Knighton was employed by a man named Healy Thomas Chapman. After she got married (to John Cunnington) she named one of her children Healy Thomas Cunnington. This name was passed on to other branches of the family as well.

Also my 3x great-grandmother Mary Ann Smith was a domestic servant for the Shepperson family in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. Her eldest daughter Sarah Ann Knighton worked for this same family when she was young. This may have been a coincidence but I like to think that she had a good experience and referred her daughter to them when she first started looking for work.

I know people will disagree strongly but I always feel if an ancestor is not a blood ancestor, then they are not a real ancestor, as they are not actually responsible for my existence, or anyone else thought to have descended from them.

What about a scenario where a non-blood ancestor decides to move his family to a completely different country? In that case, even if one or more of his children are not biologically his, his decision had a profound affect on all of their descendants.

Likewise, if your ancestor was fathered by an agricultural labourer, but raised by a blacksmith and adopted his trade, that would have a massive ripple effect on all of his descendants.

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has access to baptism and marriage records for Covington so that I can get some records for the Joyce family that lived there.

Find My Past has burials for Covington as part of their 'Huntingdonshire Burials' dataset, but baptisms/marriages for Covington don't seem to be online.

These are the burials that I have;

Anne Joyce, wife of John, buried 18 Apr 1729
John Joyce, parish clerk, buried 1 Mar 1730
Joseph Joyce, son of Richard & Sarah, buried 3 Mar 1740
John Joyce, son of Richard & Sarah, buried 11 Jun 1744
Richard Joyce, son of Richard, buried 10 Dec 1752
Joseph Joyce, lab, buried 30 Jan 1765
Richard Joyce, lab, buried 2 Mar 1772
Sarah Joyce, widow(er), buried 2 Dec 1772

I am able to build a rudimentary tree based on the information in the burial records but obviously the baptisms and marriages are necessary to confirm relationships.

Thank you.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that a memorial that was created for an ancestor three months ago came up as a hint on Ancestry last week. So it seems that is roughly the time it takes for a Find A Grave record to make its way to the site.