Distance between abode locations in the family history.

[gbottomley1]

I am finding several "potential" members of my Bottomley family from England.  Mainly weavers and laborers from the following areas listed below.  However, a few show a death or just potential parents who lived in Lancashire, United Kingdom.  I would think they didn't travel very far in the 1600's - 1800's.  Should I rule candidates out if they are too far away?

Dunkinfield, Chester County
Saddleworth
Elland
Huddersfield
Lancanster

[KGarrad]

Duplicate posting in Lancashire

See: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=850268
Where I have replied.

[Erato]

Dukinfield to Lancaster is just 60 miles.  They could walk it in three days or less; one day on horseback.  People walked across North America, for goodness sake. 

[KGarrad]

Erato, That's about what I said in the other thread

Great minds think alike, eh?

[Erato]

By way of example, when my gggg-grandfather was discharged from the Continental Army in January 1778, his pay included 12 days to walk the 233 miles from Providence, Rhode Island to his home in Topsham, Maine.  So, he was expected to do 20 miles a day on bad roads in the middle of the winter.

[iluleah]

Reality is people travelled, to where work was, as they often lived in tied cottages belonging to their employer if there was no work or they got fired they were also without a home, so of course they travelled and some consistantly travelled to find work.

However it is not the 'travel distance' it is proving individual people who just happened to use the same surname are even somehow related and that comes down to real records and pre civil registration ( 1837) that is where you have the issue as detailed connecting records are hard to find...... as you might find in the same village "John Bottomley baptised on xx 1740" giving no connection to parents and later in the same village a marriage between "John Bottomley and Mary Kane married on xx 1765" is it the same John Bottomley being baptised and later married or not...could it be that ther are 4 John Bottomley living in the same village born around the same time, or an 'incomier' from elsewhere, you have no way of knowing if there is no details of connection,

Online there are trees of 'my ancestry' none that I have seen are correct as far as I can see they each have copied their tree from other online  trees and the first one just name hunted  to find a name that would fit what they wanted,