Brickwall and what comes next - what would you have done and now be doing?

[Brickwall Demolisher]

From researching and of what we know now.

These are questions I think I should have asked myself before starting my own Famiy Research ??

No doubt you could all add some more ??

Can you think back on what / why you wanted to start finding on your Family History in the first place ??.
Was Is it that you just wanting to know where you come from ?
What their status in society was ??
What were there skill's, Were they rich or poor??
What sort of housing did they live in ??
Were they foreigners, what country did they come from ??
Were there any murderers, criminals of any kind ??
Would you like to know of the crime's and who they had committed them on ??
Had you a specific plan ?
Had you set yourself that when you reach a certain year you would stop?
Cost - Had you set a figure limit on researching, and where are you with that at present or don't you care now?

Did you have other Family member's resenting you in digging up the past, when would you do as they ask, and stop ??

If you knew of a wrong doe'r found in your Family History, who would you tell?.
Could you just bring it out and tell just anybody in conversation or would you keep it to yourself and only let Family members know that want to know. ?

It leaves you to think on what you have found to decide to yourself whether it still needs to be kept under wraps?

What you have discovered may upset more than just one of your living Family members.?

By disclosing your find it break's up Family relationships, perhaps's for some time ?

With the finding's, found that you were uncovering an act ( illegal ? ) which was done deliberately, altering and making changes that would affect everybody who would / could be researching into the Family's name,  before now, - now, - and in the future ?   ( I.e. Census - altering of the true facts ! ?? )
Anybody researching the line, is or has been going in in the wrong direction. Making what I would a truly double brickwall situation.
A Total mess-up of a Family Line !!
These finding's were resolved by three of the family connections working together, combining notes, and with what knowledge they had of the family. One of us was not known before to exist from the other two and vice versa.
The connection of a Family member found through researching, you can't get a better result than that,  but It has to take 120 plus years before we know about each other family's.
To find each other from a Family History connection like us, we cannot really believe it.
Us deciding to work together to try and break the Brickwall.  I / We don't think we could have done it by working by ourselves. A One for all, - All for One situation I think. ??
Also definitely with some help of other's from this site, Rootschat. Many thanks all of you for your help, no matter how small.

Our predecessor's their time taken, tried, very hard to hide their deliberate changes ( illegal ? ) that they made to be put on legal document's.??

They somehow managed, continued to live their lives knowing what they had done was unlawful / illegal ??  by deliberately falsifying Census records ?.

Unavoidably, if anything else was done, even to try and put right their changes, I / We think that also might have been classed as illegal. The Family definitely wanted to move on. It seems / must have been a very hard decision to make. They did make that decision. From this what comes out of it,  does put an answer to certain things, certain happenings, unfortunate things, of a later date. Their decision on what they had made they must have known what the penalty  ( ?? ) would  be for falsifying a legal document. If is was ever discovered what they had done.

The  ""crime"" committed did not involve any other people other than chosen ( close ) family members. No one was Injured physically by the wrong doing/s. No one would ever be out of pocket by their action's taken. No one had anything stolen from them.( ) No other person needed to suffer any physical pain from their action's. THEY just had to live with knowing of what they had done, BUT had they broken the law ?.. Their crime was to themselves really, once they had made the decision to alter the information that was required. There really would be no easy way back and had to live with the choice ( crime ) that they had made for themselves for the rest of their lives.

They probably wanted to if they could, change totally some of the happenings of approximately the previous 10 years of their lives......

TBC.

[Brickwall Demolisher]

When you look at what was really done. First they name changed not a great deal of change, but what they thought was sufficient. (i.e./ example - Hester to Hettie / Jessica to Jessie ....They dropped their age/ ages by approx.10 year's. ......They did not give their full birthplace in the County on future document's, ......They just gave the County or Country. .......A change of  Country of birth  was also given to one of them expecting / knowing no research could be easily made on them. With time passing, they hoped it would not matter anymore It would all eventually be forgotten and hopefully they would never get found out. It leaves us to think should we research more into to see if they ever were found out??.

Be aware of those brickwall's out there,

They just may hold something totally unpredictable and unexpected, and that they may be there for a specific reason for the Brickwall

Happy Hunting to one and All,

Regards,Just J



P.S.     Just how much does your family history mean to you ?? You uncover something in your family's history that they hoped to hide forever. Tryying to restart their lives. The big thing is did their changing of the record's have any come back on them. The family did have some unfortunate happening's. Whether this is connected to it just make's you wonder.

[Sloe Gin]

When you look at what was really done. First they name changed not a great deal of change, but what they thought was sufficient. (i.e./ example - Hester to Hettie / Jessica to Jessie ....They dropped their age/ ages by approx.10 year's. ......They did not give their full birthplace in the County on future document's, ......They just gave the County or Country. .......A change of  Country of birth  was also given to one of them expecting / knowing no research could be easily made on them.

That all sounds par for the course to me.   

May I ask which census(es) are involved? 

[Brickwall Demolisher]

Hi Sloe Gin,
      1891 & 1901 Censuses were the two in question.
    Regards JUST J.

[JohninSussex]

I'm not convinced that any of what you've written here is anywhere near a "crime" .  Hester and Hettie, Robert and Bobby, Jonson and Johnstone etc is no difference at all.  Giving an age wrong by 10 years, well probably that was knowingly incorrect at the time, especially if it was that person themselves completing the census.  They didn't do it to make your life more difficult 12 decades later, certainly not to hide from the authorities, just they had better things to do.

Your list of questions at the beginning is very interesting, much more than someone who is just satisfied if they know the names of their 32 GGGgparents and doesn't need to know how they lived and died or any other facts.  So do keep at it.

[Sloe Gin]

Hi Sloe Gin,
      1891 & 1901 Censuses were the two in question.
    Regards JUST J.

OK, you do know that all the census returns except for 1911 are transcriptions?  All we have is the enumerator's book into which he copied the information from the individual household forms.  Those were the primary sources, but they were later destroyed. 

So we have no way of knowing exactly who filled in the forms, and whether what they wrote down was accurate, or if they made guesses or genuine mistakes.   We also don't know how legible the handwriting was, and if the enumerator made transcription errors, or other errors such as copying the wrong line.

I could give you a whole list of anomalies in census info from my tree, such as people who clearly misunderstood what was being asked, people who were commonly known by their second forename and appear with different names in two censuses, people whose details were probably filled in by a third party in their absence - and that's without even starting on enumerator errors.

We really do need to keep a very open mind with census data.  Even with 1911, where we do have the original forms, things are not always what they seem.  At least two of my family's forms were not completed and signed by the person who is supposed to have signed them!

[pinefamily]

To answer some of your questions posed:
I started asking questions out of curiosity after watching Alex Haley's Roots on television. My mother had limited knowledge but she suggested I talk to various relatives to know more. My grandmother , my one paternal aunt, and a maternal great aunt set me on my way. And this was pre-internet.
I had no preconceptions or limits to what I wanted to know.
I have always taken the good with the bad. As I always tell relatives and others when asking for information, I never judge but simply wish to record. Yes, there have been some over the journey that haven't wanted to help. Some flatly refused, some fudged the facts. But that is all part of life, isn't it?
Regarding brickwalls, never give up on them. Sometimes you need to put them aside, and come back with fresh eyes. Here on Rootschat and other forums, there are plenty of people to help as well. I have broken down a brickwall myself recently, largely thanks to help from others, one in particular. Without her dogged assistance, I'd still be stumped.
And regarding what you find, if it is the truth then it is what it is. Some descendants might be upset, so it is up to you to know whether to share such information. With other researchers going down the wrong path, that's an unfortunate side effect of Ancestry public trees to a large extent. That, and lazy research too. I have one family line that I know to be true ( as far as possible anyway), yet there is a large number of trees out there with incorrect data, all down to one missing burial date.