3589
« on: Thursday 17 April 14 18:25 BST (UK) »
Those of you who have older living relatives are really lucky. I hadn't any close ones still alive when I started out - but I did have a tree drawn out in the 1940s, for the main line who lived in one place for centuries, done by a previous generation member.
When I checked it out - it was very accurate!
I have an older relative, not direct line, who did quite a bit on the same surname, and shared her work with me.
Those things helped me to get further, but on "other half's side we've absolutely no-one and nothing, it was only via grave inscriptions, an odd co-incidence of a shared birthday between me and other half's grandmother, and her unusual first name that even got us off the ground.
I must admit I check out very carefully up and down the decades when I think I've found someone who fits.
Only if I find no information contradictions as far as possible via censuses, for example, dare I even pencil them in.
I always wonder at the people who gather up records that, when you check it out, show they've sort of fitted two families together to make them fit
- or where people seem suddenly to dash from one wife, family, job and even age and birthplace, to another, then back, over different censuses.
And I have vast folders of notes, mini-trees waiting to be transplanted into their place on the main forest, charts of censuses in successive years that often help me eliminate entries that at first sound very plausible.... and card indexes ... and diagrams galore ( I tend to work visually).
At present I'm "tightening the net" around the woman who may be the mother of one of other half's ancestors.... tracing relationships, eliminating possibles one-by-one ... I'll get there, someyear!