Family history through the alphabet – J is for Judgement

J is for Judgement

There is more to family history than just collecting and collating facts, certificates and dusty old photographs. It also requires analysis, evaluation and judgement. Among the judgement calls to made are when is a piece of evidence good enough to rely on it and move on. One example being, when I found a William Cracket baptismal record in the right place and close to the ancicipated year could I accept this as great great grandfather William or did I need to keep looking in other nearby locations? That type of judgement cannot be made just on the basis of a single piece of evidence, but should also take into account other sources such as census records, marriage records and death records to reduce the possibility that this may have been another William. Just a short alphabet post for me this time round as I am off exercising some of that judgement trying to break through a couple of Northumbrian brick walls.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge or read alphabet posts from other genealogy bloggers take a look at Family history through the alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – I is for Investigative Initiative

I is for Investigative Initiative

One of the things I have learned from my genealogy research is that if you get stuck then try again from a different angle. I use several different online sources and often find that something which may not be indexed on one will turn up on another. I have also learned that it is wise not to be too restrictive on search terms. A wider search can often throw up something that will be filtered out if the search criteria are too narrow. It can also give interesting collateral information about other family members than the object of the search.

I is for Ironside

I is also for Ironside, one of my Scottish pedigree lines which starts with 3x great grandmother Margaret Ironside. Margaret was born in 1816 at New Deer in Aberdeenshire.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge or read I-contributions from other bloggers take a look at Family History Through the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – H is for history

H is for History

I started out focussing on the family element of family history, but have now progressed to considering the history aspect too. With the exception of Romans and Vikings I was never particularly interested in history as a subject at school, so my knowledge of the history of the past two or three centuries is seriously lacking. As I have added new people to my tree I have tried to find out more about the historical context in which they lived their lives. This has given me much more insight into the transition from an agricultural society to the industrial age and also the timeline of events in the first World War. One of the most interesting pieces of historical research has been looking into where the Northumberland Fusiliers served in 1915 and 1916 to track the path of my great uncle Edmund Webb from enlistment at Amble to his death in battle at Flers-Courcelette.

Moving on from history to genealogy I can claim four H-names in my pedigree. All four come from my mother’s half of the tree.

H is for Hall

First in the alphabet comes Hall. My Hall ancestors lived at Elsdon in Northumberland and I have been lucky enough to find good sources of information about them.

H is for Hedley

Another of my pedigree H lines is Hedley. I have not found quite so many of them. They too have lived in the Elsdon area and I found them by following up the Hall line.

H is for Henderson

The closest of my H pedigree lines is Henderson, to be found in Amble and Cullercoats. My maternal grandmother was a Henderson.

H is for Hunter

My final pedigree H is Hunter. Yet another Elsdon connection found by tracking back up the Hall line.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge or read other bloggers’ H-contributions take a look at Family history through the alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – G is for Geography

G is for Geography

It was tempting just to hop right into G is for genealogy, but I decided to challenge myself more and go with G is for Geography. This is because my genealogy research has forced me to learn more about the geography of my own home country. My knowledge of some of the midland counties was very fuzzy so I have learned a lot as I have tracked my relatives from the mines of Northumberland back through mining areas in other counties to their agricultural roots. I have started to put together information about this geographical journey on my Places page.

G is for Garden

No, I am not about to change a lifetime habit and develop green fingers. Strange really that I have so little interest in gardening as both my grandas and my Dad were keen gardeners. Garden in this instance is the name of my 5x great grandmother, Isobel Garden who married George Ruddiman. Isobel was born sometime in the mid 1700s in Aberdeenshire.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge take a look at Family History through the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – F is for Fecund Forebears

F is for Fecund Forebears

My tree has many branches because large numbers of offspring appear to have been the norm among the mining, fishing and farming families of North-East England and Scotland. Three of my grandparents are from large families. Grandmother Ellenor Turner was the seventh child of ten. Grandmother Margaret Jane Henderson was the third child of seven. Grandfather George Crackett was the eighth child of ten. (Shown in the banner of my blog).

Taking it back one generation further the big families include: Cracket 8, Parkinson 5, Carr 5, Henderson 7, Thornton 11. Similar trends can be seen in the earlier generations too with most of the couples having somewhere between 5 and 10 children.

F is for findmypast

F is also for findmypast which is one of the resources I find most useful for my genealogy research. I find their transcriptions among the most reliable, although Cracket has on occasion been twisted to Crackel. So far I have just used the UK site, but expect I am soon going to have to take a look at both Ireland and Australia. I have not managed to figure out yet whether having a subscription for one country gives any discount opportunities for the other countries.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge take a look at Family History through the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – E is for Evidence

E is for Evidence

It took me far too long to learn the importance of evidence and of documenting my sources as I find them. This was partly because I found the formal documentation of sources in my tree software rather daunting. I now realise that even though I hopped over the formal documentation to start with that I could have saved myself a lot of extra work if I had at least used the notes section to jot down where I had found my information. The benefits of hindsight. Hopefully some day I will catch up with myself.

E is for Evans

E is also for Evans. Not a pedigree line for me, but nevertheless an important branch on my tree. My grandmother’s sister Jane Ann Turner (Auntie Jean) married a Welshman, William Daniel Evans in 1924. They lived in Swansea and had two boys born in the 1930s. Although I knew Auntie Jean from her regular visits to Northumberland I never met any of her family and have no idea whether her sons are still living or whether they had children. Too many Evanses in Glamorganshire for that line of research to be easy. Would love to hear from any of her family, so if you are one of her descendants reading this please drop me a comment and I will get back to you.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge take a look at Family history through the alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – D is for Deceased

D is for Deceased

I get many comments that it is strange to have a hobby that has so much focus on the dead, but genealogy has also given me several new living relatives, several of whom I have regular correspondence with. As far as the deceased are concerned I see this as an opportunity to document their lives and their fates, which are many and varied. A chance for some of them to be remembered before everyone who may interested in their stories joins them on the list of those who are gone. Among causes of death that I have found are fire, drowning, roof falls, crushed by a pit tub, run over by a steam traction engine, manslaughter, consumption, unsuccessful surgery on a brain tumour and many more. A lot of the fun in this hobby comes from finding out more about these people than just their names and dates. Fascinating to see what kind of lives they led and reflect on the influence that has had on subsequent generations including mine.

D is for Davis

D is also for Davis. My great grandmother, Mary Davis, was born at Whitwood Mere in Yorkshire on Christmas Eve 1868. Great great grandfather George Davis is from Madeley Wood in Shropshire, but came to Northumberland to work in the mines.

D is for deadline

Tonight I am also going to have to admit that D is for deadline. I have just a couple of minutes to get this published as my postaday before Cindarella’s coach turns back into a pumpkin pulled by little white mice.

If you would like to know more about this challenge take a look at Family History the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – C is for Calendar

Family History Through the Alphabet – Picture from Genealogy and History News

C is for Calendar

Surprised you there didn’t I? I bet you all expected me to take the easy option here and go with C is for Crackett. Well of course it is, but before I move on to my family name and the other three C’s in my pedigree I want to take a look at C is for Calendar. I picked up blogging again at the end of February, then during March and April I started thinking more about the dates of events. To begin with I just looked at what may have been happening on a specific date when I was short of inspiration for other topics. Then I realised that it could be fun to take a closer look at what was going on each day in my family history. This lead to my series of posts entitled “xxx years ago today”. These posts have inspired me to try to find out background information about the individuals who have an anniversary so that I can tell you more than just names and dates. Setting up my plan for these calendar event posts has revealed several dates with a lot going on. I wrote a few days ago about the date coincidences in the deaths of my great great granny Barbara Murray Turner, her father George Murray and his sister Barbara Murray Rennie. The busiest day in my family history calendar so far is 9 July which has five birthdays (1873, 1899, 1926, 1949, 1957) and a wedding (1947). Then when we get to November I will be telling you about my granny Crackett giving birth on her own birthday. So far I have 218 days in the year with identified family events, but I will not be blogging about all of them as some relate to living members of the family. 86 of those days have more than one event.

C is for Crackett or Cracket

C is for Crackett, my family name, which developed from Cracket by adding an extra T in the mid 1800s. I currently have over 600 Cracket/Crackett persons in my genealogy database and am now working on verifying vital records and tying together the various branches. If you are a Crackett somewhere out there in the big wide world then drop me a comment and let us see if we can figure out our connection.

C is for Carr

Another C in my pedigree is Carr, starting with great granny Sarah Ann Carr who was born in 1860 at Seaton Delaval in Northumberland.

C is for Corbett

C is also for Corbett. So far I only have great great granny Ann Corbett, who may have been Sarah Ann Corbett. Unfortunately I know little about her yet.

C is for Chator

C is also for Chator. My 5x great grandmother Susannah Chator, born in the early 1700s, is the only one of these I have found so far.

If you would like to know more about this weekly challenge take a look at Family History Through the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – B is for Birth and Baptism

Family History Through the Alphabet – Picture from Genealogy and History News

B is for Birth and Baptism

For this week’s alphabet challenge I am taking a moment to reflect on the pitfalls that any new genealogist runs into when researching birth dates. It took me a while to realise that I would have a better chance of finding a birth record if I started at the other end of life and was armed with information from death, marriage and census records first. I also made a few mistaken assumptions about birth years from reading baptismal records. I have since learned that having three children baptised on the same day did not necessarily mean triplets. Several of my ancestors waited a couple of years before they wandered over the hills to the church and baptised their children. Another little challenge which some of my family presented me with was the question of where to look for baptismal records as they were non-conformists. I have one set of Cracket ancestors whose childrens’ baptisms are spread over traditional baptism in the local parish church, dissenter records, Presbyterian and Methodist. This year I have also come across another interesting challenge in interpreting birth and baptism dates. This is the dual dating system which operated at the time of the official change from Julian to Gregorian calendar. I wrote about this in my  Double dating post on 24 April 2012.

B is for Bainbridge

In my pedigree B is for Bainbridge starting with great great granny Eleanor Bainbridge born about 1828 or 1829 at Walker in Northumberland.

If you would like to know more about this weekly challenge take a look at Family History Through the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – A is for Amble

Family History Through the Alphabet – Picture from Genealogy and History News

I rarely jump into weekly blogging topics, but I found this one interesting and challenging so I decided to give it a try. I found this challenge on Genealogy and History News. The idea is to pick a topic each week following the alphabet. The challenge started last week, so I am going to post both A and B topics this week.

A is for Amble

Finding a topic for A was pretty much a no-brainer for me. It had to be Amble in Northumberland where it all started for me, although my arrival in the world was a couple of miles away at the local nursing home in Warkworth. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Amble and return regularly even though I no longer live in England. You can read more of my thoughts about Amble on my Places page.