Higgs of Oakley and Drayton Parslow

[dmart7]

This is a post to inform, to help others and to correct a widespread mistake.  It concerns a William and Elizabeth Higgs who lived in Oakley and had issue at least five children there 1799-1812.  Unfortunately, their marriage is difficult to find or prove.  This has led many researchers to conflate them with William Higgs and Elizabeth Carr who married in Drayton Parslow in 1794 and who had at least seven children in Drayton Parslow 1796-1816. Interestingly, I see that someone on this forum in 2009 realised the same problem - that there were two separate families in separate places. But the error persists elsewhere.  I know submitted Ancestry trees are full of errors which are then copied by others but, in one of the worst examples I've seen, more than 100 contributors have these two families combined into one.  The true account is actually quite easy to prove, even without the confirming the elusive marriage of the Oakley couple.