Feast or famine.

[Asa]

I got a will for a Joseph Tirrold yeoman of Aston Tirrold in Berkshire 1716 yesterday, hoping to prove his relationship to two brides whose marriages he was bondsman to. I'm descended from both of the brides and the will proved he was their father but it also named three other daughters, another of whom is an ancestor.

Since I came across a will from 1780 which named amongst several siblings a direct ancestor as his brother, I can't stop finding direct ancestors and I now have a mound of paperwork to put into an online tree. Despite the patchy PRS, there's apparently a wealth of info for the ancestors of this one great x 4 grandfather out there and I need a lot more trips to the RO and now the NA.

It seems a long time since I made any significant progress and now I don't seem to be able to stop. Does anyone else find this happens when you get that one piece of information that proves to be a gateway? It gives me hope for some of the lines that I'm still still stuck in the C19th with....

[ElizabethHerts]

Yes, David. On a few lines I'm right back to the 1500s, and on one line I have wills in the 1550s, before the PRs began. However on other lines going back further than 1780 is a problem.

[Olde Crone]

Yes, my Greens of Gawsworth have been very obliging, by remaining in the same village (and mostly on the same farm) for 400 years, leaving wordy wills, having a finger in every village pie and marrying into every other family in the village over the centuries. So many connections and inter marriages, I had to start a village tree.

Ungrateful wretch that I am, I don't find them particularly interesting!

OC

[Asa]

I love some of my lines that I've found very little on but have spent many years searching around for but I'm loving this lot who I've not really got anywhere with for fifteen years or more. I think because I'm working through all the wills in three villages and building up a real picture of the society and connections I'm finding then very real and fascinating.

OC, I'm sort of doing that because they're all connected - I suppose it's a land thing....

[Merry]

Does anyone else find this happens when you get that one piece of information that proves to be a gateway?

No :(:(:(:(:( I haven't made any significant roads backwards for years. I have less than half a dozen people who have lived any of their lives in the 1600s, never mind before that. Most lines stop about 1800.

[Phoenix]

My Norfolk line has proved extremely rewarding, but by the time the library burned down in 1994 I really felt I had probably got as far back as I could on most lines. But Norfolk parishes are so small that if you sneeze, the germs carry into three or four parishes.

Spending a day and a half in the new RO in Norwich this summer has produced so much material, with networks stretching across the county as the men built up their connections. It is probably fortunate that this material is not online, so I need to assimilate each new piece of information before I grab another.

[Asa]

I've only traced one line back to the C16th with complete certainty myself, to a baptism in Shoreditch in 1597. I have one in Worcestershire a fair bit earlier but with so many Williams and Johns and all labourers that there is room for doubt. One other lot back to the early C16th but the main of the work was done by someone else and I can't get into it yet - I don't think most of us do unless we spend those hours and days studying documents and bringing them to life in our heads.

I do have a lot in the C17th though but then we all know it's about quality rather than date but I would be overjoyed for ever if I could find baptisms for half a dozen C19th ancestors :/

[Lindsay]

I had a huge breakthrough a few months ago with my Buckinghamshire branch which led me back to the 1500s on a couple of lines. For now, though, I seem to have exhausted the available Wills and documents online, and I feel at a bit of a loose end. Unfortunately I doubt if I'll be able to get to the RO in person in the near future.

I'm definitely going through a lean patch - but then, you wouldn't appreciate the ups without the downs. :D

[Asa]

That's it, Lindsay :-) I've been going strong I suppose since the London records went online so I've got nothing to complain about :-)