Myths debunked when doing family histroy.

[KGarrad]

My grandfather and his siblings were not with their parents in Wiltshire in 1911.
I eventually found them in Bedminster, Bristol all using their middle names as first names!

In every other census, BMD records etc., they used their "normal" first names.

[HughC]

It seems to have been common practice in many families to call children by their middle names.
Happens quite a lot among my ancestors and their siblings, which doesn't make the searches any easier, especially as middle names were often suppressed in the census records.

[Mike in Cumbria]

"Mean average": what means that?

It just specifies what the measure of average is being used (mean, mode or median). I agree though - they could just have used "mean".

[coombs]

I have commented elsewhere that I had found two instances of a person missing from his family at censuses, 1851 and 1901.  A long while later they were each found staying in hotels with surnames mis-spelled, presumably because the proprietors were not taking care filling in the form.

One was discovered in London on business.  The other was at the seaside, while wife and daughters (found previously) were staying with the mother-in-law.

That could be the case with my Quilter lot, they were in the local parish church on 30 March 1851 having 2 children baptised, but may have gone for an Easter break somewhere that day and missed the census. The father was a fisherman by trade. I will probably never know how they missed the census, if they missed it that is.

[sylvia (canada)]

I have this idea that our ancestors had a sneaky plan ..................


confuse descendants as much as we can!   

My maternal grandfather did it in real life ....... he never talked about any member of his family. Nor was there any mention that the spelling of his surname had been changed somewhere between 1850 and 1890, or that he had the new version while half of his cousins had either retained or returned to the original one. I've had to find it all out myself over the last 20 or so years.

At least I did know that his wife had 2 sisters because one lived next door to us when I was a child and the second was my mother's godmother and we used to get letters from New York. Mind you, no other member of her family was ever mentioned! The changes in her surname were due solely to mis-spellings!

[coombs]

Another myth is that you should be able to always find a record of a death of someone. It is easier from civil registration onwards but even then not always. Workhouse burials where the registers do not survive, non conformist burials, lost at sea, went missing and never identified etc, and so on.

Lots of overseers ratebooks and disbursement books for Essex are on FamilySearch for a number of parishes. I was able to pinpoint an ancestor's death year by this, as it said "William Ingram Snr" for September 1794 ratebooks but for Dec 1794 it said "Widow Ingram" for what seems to be the same property as the neighbours names are the same. No burial can be found in Leigh On Sea for him in 1794 but he may have been buried elsewhere or in a workhouse cemetery or NC grounds. Also the family were mariners so worked in a dangerous job, and he may have been lost at sea.

Handy to use such books if a burial cannot be found.

[sylvia (canada)]

Another myth is that you should be able to always find a record of a death of someone. It is easier from civil registration onwards but even then not always. Workhouse burials where the registers do not survive, non conformist burials, lost at sea, went missing and never identified etc, and so on.

Lots of overseers ratebooks and disbursement books for Essex are on FamilySearch for a number of parishes. I was able to pinpoint an ancestor's death year by this, as it said "William Ingram Snr" for September 1794 ratebooks but for Dec 1794 it said "Widow Ingram" for what seems to be the same property as the neighbours names are the same. No burial can be found in Leigh On Sea for him in 1794 but he may have been buried elsewhere or in a workhouse cemetery or NC grounds. Also the family were mariners so worked in a dangerous job, and he may have been lost at sea.

Handy to use such books if a burial cannot be found.

.............. and don't mention that you can find baptisms, especially before registration began! For one thing, not all vicars added the birth date to the Church Register, and not all did it all the time.

I've found some baptised when they were in their teens or even later, just before they married. Then there are the ones when siblings were baptised at the same time, sometimes because the family lived in an area where there was not a priest available (eg out on the moors), and they had to wait until one came on his rounds or they went to a village.

Many children were baptised late because they were just about to start work, and employers insisted on it. If the child did not know, then s/he'd be baptised again "just in case",

My maternal grandfather was baptised at the same time as his younger sister, which helped with his lying about his birthday!

[ThrelfallYorky]

... Sometimes we almost wonder if we exist, or are we figments of someone's imagination!
"I research, therefore I am" or were we dropped down by aliens???
(Bad day, so far - need to stop taking things seriously"
TY

[Nanna52]

... Sometimes we almost wonder if we exist, or are we figments of someone's imagination!
"I research, therefore I am" or were we dropped down by aliens???
(Bad day, so far - need to stop taking things seriously"
TY

Oh TY, I was definitely dropped down by aliens.  More fun that way I’m sure.  If it wasn’t me then some of my ancestors.