Advice for when you're snowed under with records?

[Gibel]

I see the marriage was by licence. Have you been able to find the licence? It might be helpful.

[M_ONeill]

I've been in touch with the Hereford Archives and Record Centre and they've confirmed that they hold surviving marriage bonds and allegations for the diocese and helpfully confirmed that the marriages of my 4x great grandmother's sisters are indeed covered, based on their indexes. There was no index covering 1787 on their open shelves, so they couldn't confirm my ancestor's marriage was there at a glance, but they believe it should be covered.

I'm currently living abroad, so sadly can't go visit, but I'm planning to post a lookup request thread later. 

[mike175]

My RootsMagic software (and I imagine most others) allows you to enter as many individuals as you wish on the inbuilt database. They can remain as unconnected individuals or be connected to others as parent/child or by marrriage.

While it may seem to 'clutter' the database to add possibly unconnected people, I find it easier to build up smaller family groups which can then be connected to the main tree if/when you find and prove the link. The unconnected people do not show up in the main tree, but just sit there in the background until you need them.

Mike.

[ThrelfallYorky]

As Guy Etchells suggested I used to build a tree for all the possible people - tracing them via censuses, BMD and other records, until I could eliminate them, incorporate them, or until I managed to be sure of the "One" I wanted. I kept these all in a huge ledger-like book, drawn out physically as trees, and census details etc in tiny writing around spare bits of d.p.s., and often much later a little light would go on in my brain, triggered off by something I found, and I'd look some branch up in this, and find a firm binding to others. The ones who I'd built up a tree/pedigree for and still seem to have not found a firm link, like all those Newboulds, just sit there, no hassle.

[coombs]

FindMyPast has a good "radius search" for a parish. You can search "Exact" or within a 5 miles radius and type in a year with for example 10 years either side of 1765. Type the surname. This can show up potential relatives but can still be hard with a common name, or even a lesser common name overall but was relatively common in certain areas of the country such as Smallman in Herefordsire. Still worth a try.

Sometimes I even do a personal blog and try and "float" theories on the candidates for my ancestor, and hope to find a burial as a infant/child or marriage to eliminate them. However it is going to be tough trying to work out who is who out of say 3 or 4 people of the same name in the same parish and/or surrounds.

[M_ONeill]

So I've been cataloguing Smallman names and families in a colour coded spreadsheet (green for Monkhopton, red for Ditton Priors and yellow for Much Wenlock) based on the great advice I've received in this thread. It's quite the undertaking, even though for the moment I'm restricting myself to those three places with a known connection to my tree!

It's already been very helpful, even though I've still got many entries to add. I've not yet found anything that discounts my theory that Thomas and Mary Smallman of Monkhopton (m. 1761) are the parents of my 4x great grandmother Mary, although from there it gets more complicated! There is actually another Thomas and Mary Smallman in neighbouring Ditton Priors who get married in 1764 and have a bunch of similarly-named children at around the same time as the Monkhopton couple. It'll take some time to untangle those births! Things are not helped by the fact that Thomas and Mary of Monkhopton seem to share the same surname prior to marriage!

However, the William Smallman who witnessed the Monkhopton Thomas and Mary's wedding married a Susannah Holland in Ditton Priors in 1762. I have an incomplete list of children with parents so-named and I found that while most of the births are in Ditton Priors, there are a pair of Twins, Robert and George born in Much Wenlock in 1805. I also have a burial record from Monkhopton in 1792: 'Mary wife of Thomas out of the parish of Much Wenlock'. Given that my 4x great grandmother and her sisters all marry in Much Wenlock in the 1780s and 1790s, I'm wondering if there might be some familial migration going on.

In short, all the advice I've had in this thread is proving super helpful, so thank you very much!

[coombs]

You can also try non conformist records as well. I seen to believe that non conformist ancestors is harder to trace beyond civil reg and census eras as many records do not survive. If you found a marriage of potential parents in a village where your ancestor was likely born but no children to the couple then it can suggest non conformity.