They didn't move in those days

[Phoenix]

A line of my family came from Petersfield, Hampshire. If you look on a map, it is right on the border with Sussex, and very close to Surrey.

When I researched the Poling (there is a village called Poling in Sussex!) family, it involved trips to the Hampshire Record Office. The wills were open access, but you had to load the microfilm and scroll through to find each one. So I just looked at Hampshire.

I can't find any Poling marriages pre the 1760s, and even in later unions, the women seemed to spring from nowhere.

Now, two wills from Sussex have mentioned the wives of my ancestor Thomas Poling and looped my line back into Surrey.

There aren't wire fences round county boundaries, and it's noticeable that people might be living in one county, but taking their babies to be baptised in another.

Ancestry has opened up avenues of research that were (to say the least) challenging in the past.

Is this helping you? Have your ancestors moved a couple of miles, but into a completely different jurisdiction?