Stick To Your Guns!

[coombs]

Or they accept hints of a marriage 200 miles away from where the couple lived and just take it as gospel.

I had one like that, but I duly investigated and I'm glad I did. Husband (with unusual surname) was born in Yorkshire then married. The couple baptised several children in a village a couple of miles away from his birthplace. So obviously I looked for the marriage in that very small area. There being no evidence that the man had moved very far from this small part of Yorkshire. No luck.
A hint popped up of a marriage in London. Timing fitted (year before baptism of first child), but location seemed way out. I put it on the back burner, until I found the man mentioned in the will of a local aristocrat. He had been his valet. When I researched the testator, I found he had a London residence and had got married some years earlier in the same church in London as appeared in my rellie's hint. So it seemed much more feasible. A valet would have travelled with his master back and forth between houses in Yorkshire and London and likely met his bride when in London and married in her home parish.

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the marriage took place far away from where the couple lived, if the husband was a servant, soldier or sailor, but if he was a labourer, farmer, local publican etc then it is less possible. Dont discard the entry but don't just accept it. You may be surprised though. A Colchester ancestor before the census era mentioned relatives in Lincolnshire, a long way from Colchester, plus I have a Warrington mayor ancestor who lived in Kings Lynn and had land in London. People did move around more than we think but always best to check locally for a marriage, then perhaps try further afield. Of course the marriage record may not have survived, ie eaten by moths or Hitlers bombs got to them.

[LizzieL]

Ancestors of mine had their banns read in Colchester (full set of three) - I searched everywhere for the marriage - no luck. Then I discovered they had the banns read again in Colchester almost immediately afterwards, then got married. He was a soldier, presumably a new posting disrupted their original wedding plans and they had to start the process all over again.

[coombs]

Ancestors of mine had their banns read in Colchester (full set of three) - I searched everywhere for the marriage - no luck. Then I discovered they had the banns read again in Colchester almost immediately afterwards, then got married. He was a soldier, presumably a new posting disrupted their original wedding plans and they had to start the process all over again.

I have a lot of Suffolk ancestors who moved to South East Essex, the journey in about 1750-1800 took about 5 or 6 hours I estimate so nowhere near as quick or as easy as today. An ancestor from near Sudbury, Suffolk, moved to Foulness in Essex in about 1745. Quite a trip in those days.

Hence why you have to sometimes think outside the box, but you still have to verify that the person baptised 60 odd miles away is the same person, like I did with my Suffolk ancestor in Foulness through a will and marriage witnesses/same for my Lincolnshire lot in Colchester. Settlement records survival is patchy and not everyone needed such a cert.

[frostyknight]

We have all come across trees where a "family" has three children born in the same year on three different continents. 

....And several years after the supposed mother's death 

I've seen a tree where the guy married 25 years before he was born 

[LizzieL]

I have a lot of Suffolk ancestors who moved to South East Essex, the journey in about 1750-1800 took about 5 or 6 hours I estimate so nowhere near as quick or as easy as today.

Not been on the A12 recently then ? 

[coombs]

I have a lot of Suffolk ancestors who moved to South East Essex, the journey in about 1750-1800 took about 5 or 6 hours I estimate so nowhere near as quick or as easy as today.

Not been on the A12 recently then ? 

Probably easier in the horse and cart age when it was just a long dirt track.  Longer journey but easier.

[jbml]

Oh, don't get me started on the nonsense that is online trees! And once it's there, other people adopt it, so even if you get the original error corrected it keeps cropping up again and again, and people then use this "weight of evidence" to "prove" that they are right and you are wrong ... I gave up playing this game a while ago. If people wish to persist in their ignorance, that's their concern. If they want to publish this nonsense online, that's their concern also. My starting point is that every online tree is to be assumed a nonsense until the soundness of the publisher's research methodology has been established.

I do not have an online tree.

There ARE several "tentative" links in my tree ... but they are clearly identified as such. I will continue researching behind them, so that if the evidence to prove the tentative link subsequently comes to light, the work has already been done. But if the evidence refute the tentative link then they have to be pruned. The most I have had to prune was a block of seven really solid generations behind the tentative ancestor. But the tentative ancestor turned out not to be my ancestor after all, so they all had to go.

Most fo my research effort these days is focussed on these tentative links, with occasional returns to long-standing brickwalls to see if there is any other way of getting through them. My spending, however, is focussed on gradually buying in all of the certificates for all of my definitely proven ancestors, so that I can paint an ever more accurate picture of their lives.

[coombs]

If I do not have enough proof to be 99% certain it is the right person then they stay out. You can never been 100% certain of anything in our family trees but 99% or 99.5% is good enough.

Such as you find a baptism 25 years before the marriage in the same parish or a nearby one, but cannot prove it is the same person. Unless she was called Theodosia Alice Marmaduke Bracegirdle. And even then she may have had a first cousin of the exact same name.

[Newbie2023]

Everyone starts as a newbie and will make errors. Hopefully as knowledge and technique improves the "speed tree" comes to a halt, and some back tracking takes place. Its inevitable that inaccurate trees will be online. Buying certificates for this, that and the other soon becomes impossible for many as the tree expands.

At the end of the day I doubt it takes too long for Newbie researchers to realise its a minefield out there......