Most of my ancestors lived in the same villages, until they left to come to the colonies (mostly NSW). I can trace them back to the beginning of the parish registers in most families. There are couple of exceptions -
The birthplace of my great grandfather Reuben Page has been variously described as Sandhurst, York Town and Blackwater. It was very confusing at first, till I discovered that that they are virtually the same place, crossing over the borders of 3 counties.
The other confusing family was the Collis family - in 1841 they lived in Hurst St Nicholas, Wiltshire. Soon after, this isolated part of Wiltshire was transferred to Berkshire. I wondered why Thomas who died in 1796 was buried in Sparsholt Hampshire - a search of the parish registers show he was born there, but owned property in nearby Winchester, Sherfield upon Loddon and Hurst, which he left to his various sons.
But the Sparsholt registers enabled me to take the family back several generations and I was able to fill out several branches.
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