Browsing v indexes

[Phoenix]

Spelling is idiosyncratic in early parish registers, so I decided to browse Totnes between 1560 and 1600. I was getting along fine, until I hit 1590, when I ground to a halt. Page after page after page of burials - when plague hit the town. None of the people I was researching died, so had I simply used the indexes, I would never have spotted so important event in the history of the town.

[Olde Crone]

Phoenix

I completely agree with this method! Nothing beats browsing the originals and many things fall into place which would never come together if you didn't browse because you don't know what you don't know till you see it!

Three cases in point. A marriage in 1700s, two very common names in my tree, could have been several couples. The original showed not only other couples to eliminate, but the marriage itself was witnessed by no less than 15 people, all family, which enabled me to pin down the correct couple.I

A note in the register to say the roof had caved in on the village chapel of ease and that services would take place in another chapel of ease five miles awy, thus explaining a gap in the records and what my relatives were doing out of area.

A burial register which, by browsing chronologically, explained that John Green had married three times in 49 years and had produced 29 children! As two of the wives had identical names, merely looking at indexes produced an unfathomable problem.

OC

[Terri]

I always, always use the originals. I'm actually doing a spreadsheet of an entire village - births/marriages/deaths via the original pages. Up to page 21 out of 82. A way to go then. Fascinating though, seeing how the village and its families evolved.

On Ancestry, even among the later parish records, there are so many events that have simply been missed from the indexes.

[Olde Crone]

Terri

I have several village trees which evolved because there was so much intermarriage before about 1880 and it was actually easier to do a whole village tree than try to pick my way along just my stems.

Another thing you rarely see transcribed is the marginal notes made by some spiteful vicar or clerk. One of my favourites is "a great and incontinent whore" haha!

OC

[kiterunner]

It depends on the size of the parish, though. Easy to browse small parishes, but easy to miss the name you're looking for when browsing a large one.

[Phoenix]

Having done all of Norwich and most of North Norfolk for the early census years, Norwich being six reels of microfilm, it is extremely time consuming, but it is sometimes the only way when the spelling is so very different from what you might expect.

[Olde Crone]

......and if I hadn't browsed, I probably would still be looking for John Green, whose name was transcribed as John GUBBIN, haha!

OC

[Phoenix]

I'll re-issue my challenge to find Linda Lanning in the 1901 census. She is there: we found her. To make things easier, she does appear on the 1891 and 1911 censuses. B circa 1890.

[kiterunner]

Someone's put in Lanning as an alternative surname for her family on ancestry, so she's fairly easy to find now.

[Merry]

Someone's put in Lanning as an alternative surname for her family on ancestry, so she's fairly easy to find now.

That doesn't come up for me!

[Phoenix]

Nor me. And when it did finally show up, they haven't her first name right. Her cousin's name is wrong too.

[kiterunner]

No, the person who added the surname didn't correct her first name.

But it's probably a bad time for you to issue that kind of challenge, while ancestry's search is so messed up.

[Merry]

Oh, I did find them just now by searching for brother Harold (first with father Thomas, which didn't work, obviously, and then with mother Mary which did). I hadn't realised the image had the wrong name/s, rather than just being a mis-transcription. I don't know that I would have spotted them if I was browsing rather than using the search tools, especially as Mary's age is decades out and I might have accidentally looked too closely at the head of house, rather than the combinations of names. I know when I browsed a large proportion of St Pancras 1841 looking for OH's ancestors (130,000+ individuals) I lost the will to live ages before I found them, but they had the right names on the page!

[kiterunner]

I think the Mary on that census is the children's grandmother.

[Merry]

Oh, OK - Makes sense.

If I'd known the mmn/family background (hadn't looked) then it would have been even easier to find the family as the surname would have stuck out!

[Joy Dean]

I used to love browsing small parishes on film at the Family Records Centre in London, winding it on slowly, along the next road or path ...

[Phoenix]

I used to love browsing small parishes on film at the Family Records Centre in London, winding it on slowly, along the next road or path ...

You do get a feel for the place that way. Certainly it taught me that cottages are not necessarily neatly arranged in streets, but sometimes are just in clumps.