Author Topic: Don't give up !  (Read 1191 times)

Offline Jeuel

  • RootsChat Aristocrat
  • ******
  • Posts: 1,346
  • Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
    • View Profile
Re: Don't give up !
« Reply #9 on: Wednesday 16 September 20 18:13 BST (UK) »
Sometimes new records become available, sometimes you get a moment of inspiration, sometimes someone else sees a different approach...

But I do know that the harder you have to look for information the happier you are when you find it.  I was chuffed after years of searching to find my gt x 3 x gt grandmother Kezia.  I had her burial with age, so a good idea when she was baptised but couldn't find a baptism in the likely parishes for Kezia Seals, which was how her maiden name was recorded on the marriage entry.  I tried variants - Sale, Searl, Scale, which appeared as surnames in the register of the parishes where she lived but to no avail.

Finally I looked slightly further afield to a more distant parish and there she was - Kezia Saul!  The name seems to have been turned into Seals just for the wedding and later morphed into Sales for her brothers and sisters in censuses, marriages and deaths.
Chowns in Buckinghamshire
Broad, Eplett & Pope in St Ervan/St Columb Major, Cornwall
Browning & Moore in Cambridge, St Andrew the Less
Emms, Mealing & Purvey in Cotswolds, Gloucestershire
Barnes, Dunt, Gray, Massingham in Norfolk
Higho in London
Matthews & Nash in Whichford, Warwickshire
Smoothy, Willsher in Coggeshall & Chelmsford, Essex

Offline andrewalston

  • RootsChat Aristocrat
  • ******
  • Posts: 2,932
  • My granddad
    • View Profile
Re: Don't give up !
« Reply #10 on: Friday 18 September 20 20:10 BST (UK) »
Finally I looked slightly further afield to a more distant parish and there she was - Kezia Saul!  The name seems to have been turned into Seals just for the wedding and later morphed into Sales for her brothers and sisters in censuses, marriages and deaths.

Three letters the same, and in the right order? That's pretty close for a five-letter name.

It was well into the 19th century before spelling "settled down". People, even when literate, would be unlikely to correct someone in authority. Surnames changes as people moved from place to place. People wrote down what the thought they heard, rather than what was actually said.

I have seen many marriage entries where the signature does not match the name in the main entry, and the record might be indexed under either version, or indeed another one wholly in the mind of a transcriber.

We also seem to believe that dyslexia is a modern thing. I'm sure that the proportion was similar in previous centuries - currently 10%, with 4% at the severe end. I bet that I've come across the work of some clergymen who were in that 4%.  :)
Looking at ALSTON in south Ribble area, ALSTEAD and DONBAVAND/DUNBABIN etc. everywhere, HOWCROFT and MARSH in Bolton and Westhoughton, PICKERING in the Whitehaven area.

Census information is Crown Copyright. See www.nationalarchives.gov.uk for details.