Finding info on one line while researching another?

[coombs]

The other day I was looking for people with the surname Martin in a Suffolk village in the late 1790s and was looking at the witnesses names. But during so, I found a William Pratt married Ann Barriot in 1794 in Little Glemham. Witnesses John Archer and Eliz Pratt (her mark). John Archer was my ancestor and he wed Mary Pratt in 1786 in a nearby village. He signed, and the signature matches the 1794 witness John Archer. I have not yet found Mary Pratt's baptism (She died in 1810 aged 51 so born c1759) but it looks like I found a couple of rellies of her when not actually concentrating on that line.

One time I was looking through an Essex parish for a baptism on one branch when I then found a baptism I had been looking for on a totally different line.

Shows how info can turn up unexpectedly, not just with new records coming online but while searching the records in the record offices.

[JAKnighton]

On the marriage record for my 6x great grandparents Samuel Knighton & Elizabeth Whaples, one of the witnesses is a Henry Wade, who is also my 6x great grandfather. Their descendants would go on to marry each other 150 years later.

[coombs]

If you then find what you were after initially, it is like killing 2 birds with one stone.

[Mart 'n' Al]

A distant ancestor was the registrar who recorded the birth of my grandfather's sister.

Martin

[jbml]

Oh yes ... while researching one of my great x3 aunts I spotted that one of her servants had a familiar surname ... and on investigating further it turned out that the servant was my wife's second cousin three times removed.

A general word of advice, though ... it does nothing very good for domestic harmony to mention to your wife that her family were your family's servants!