SIT: Specialist County Surname Interest Table - Your Views??

[Arranroots]

It has been suggested (on the Gloucestershire board) that a version of the Surname Interest Table could be created for a single county.

This would permit Rootschatters to detail the families or individuals they are interested in within the county.  names/ birth dates/ contact info for example.

In principle our wonderful SIT Wizard (aka Berlin-Bob) has agreed that it could be done.

In order to establish what sort of detail would be included, he has suggested that responses are gathered here and then

TIME PERMITTING!!

he would be willing to have a go!

I may not have phrased this very well, but there does seem to be merit in creating a table or database with slightly more detail than the SIT can afford, without negating the original countrywide version.

Please post your opinions here!

kind regards, Arranroots 

[r973g]

We must be careful of counties, to be really effective we must decide on original counties only otherwise it could get very confusing.
Ray

[Hackstaple]

Right on!

[Arranroots]

Thanks Ray

I knew I wouldn't have phrased it too well!

What I meant (although feel free to disagree) is one County SIT table for each of the Rootschat county boards.

Hack - a gentleman, a scholar - and an inventor of digital databases to boot - thank you!

[Hackstaple]

I don't think the database should be too complex or try to do too much. I do not even think we should be looking for dates or even individuals but only families and places. Searches for specific individuals are well enough covered here and in other places.
Surname - Village or area - County
After all this little board is for Surname Interests.
I might suggest that members not be too terribly specific about the village either - I have ancestors within a single family who are found in 5 different towns or villages in the Forest of Dean. If someone says they are interested in Lucas from Cinderford they may miss out on his daughter, a Lucas who married and went to Ruardean.
I will also agree that we should ignore all the nonsense about the "county" of Avon etc. If a Victorian census places someone in Gloucestershire then for our purposes that is what they must be.
Thank you, Bob, for offering your services here. 

[Keith Sherwood]

I think it would be a great idea, as long as BerlinBob doesn't mind rolling up his sleeves again and going on another labour of love.  I have found that from the 18th C (and working backwards) that a family surname (with obvious spelling variants) tends to be rooted in one small area of a particular county, though London even then was a bit of a magnet for ambitious individuals...
Keith

[maggiefishblue]

I think the idea of a separate county board is a particularly good one, and if Bob is willing to set one up that would be much appreciated by many people  - me included 

My only potential problem would be that I have ancestors who are on the county boundary between Gloucestershire and Worcestershire - their villages appear on one county's census for some years and on the other county's census for other years.

Therefore it would be important to mention the village/s in which they lived as part of the data base, as Hackstaple suggests.  Then others with the same surname interests could more easily identify the family - it would be a shame to miss out because on one census they aren't mentioned because the village has hopped into the next county for census purposes - I hope this makes some sense  or am I beginning to ramble? 

Maggie 

[Keith Sherwood]

Maggie,
No you're not beginning to ramble! - I've found the same problem with those places on the Worcestershire/Herefordshire border...
Keith

[Hackstaple]

The shifting borders are why I suggested "Village, town or area". The whole of the Welsh Marches are affected and many of the adjoining counties. However I see the database as like this - alphabetically everyone who is reseaching Bullock - then the location. You can then readily see from such a simple list who might be reseraching your own ancestors.Then a simple PM will establish contact and verify whether there is common ground. I doubt if such one-to-one communications should clutter up the Boards.
I wondered why Arranroots called me a Gentleman and I see it is on my Profile now but all the blokes are now Gentlemen and all the women are Ladies.  How genteel