In his lecture, ‘Brick walls and Lost Ancestors’, Dave Annal talked us through the dreaded moment when your search for a family member turns up zero results! As he said, the chase is part of the thrill of family history research and we don’t want the information handed to us on a plate, but what happens when you can’t find that elusive relative and you’ve hit a brick wall? Well, the definition of a brick wall is ‘A problem which you haven’t solved yet!’
Dave used various case studies to illustrate how you could approach problems from different directions and work around your brick walls rather than trying to break them down. Often information on censuses is inaccurate as it is frequently third-hand, passed from householder to enumerator and later re-transcribed. Errors creep in for many reasons; through misspelling, sometimes through the ignorance of the householder (he may not know the birthplace of his lodgers) or through wilful deception (perhaps the lady of the house has married again and has tried to make herself younger) etc.
Sometimes ‘less is more’ and you might be better searching using just a first name, approx. year of birth and a keyword (place associated with the family) – this way you may not filter out the person you are searching for and a badly transcribed surname may show up. Surnames are very important to family historians but are the thing most likely to change and you need the vital evidence of parentage to follow your line. Complications include illegitimate births (the father of an illegitimate child had to be present to register his name on the birth certificate from 1875 onwards) and baptisms in adulthood or as a family ‘job lot’. The place of birth can be quite precise and dates of birth are very important; the year may be wrong but the day and month will be known as people celebrated their birthdays. Births started to be registered in July 1837 and this became compulsory with the Registration Act of 1875 – parents were fined for not registering their children.
You may have to carry out a ‘Family reconstruction’ looking for any mention of your family name in the parish registers. By putting the family groups together, you can see which group your relatives fit into and then eliminate people from your search. You may also be able to compare signatures on documents – a family relative may be a witness at a wedding and then get married themselves so you can confirm family relationships.
As more documents are indexed, there is more chance of finding your ancestors and online databases are added to all the time. The National Archives has enormous amounts of information, a lot of which isn’t indexed and may never be, but it is a priceless resource for family historians.
As Charles Dickens wrote ‘Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence’ to make sure you are following the correct trail. Dave certainly gave us many pointers to help us on our way and we all enjoyed a thoroughly well-researched talk.
Lesley J Smith Secretary Deal & District Branch of Kent FHS