Genealogy Chat

Hi Linda, The other thing to be aware of is that in the 1800s there were a lot of infant deaths, and quite often you will find that a newborn child could have the same name as the deceased.I have found this myself, when a child named William in the 1851 census was 3yrs old, then in the 1881 he was 16!! so beware ;) Viv

I agree, never take anything for granted. Another thing to bear in mind is that although most baptisms were of babies, it was not uncommon for someone to not be baptised until they were adult. So a baptismal entry followed by a burial entry 4 years later would have to be read in context of the parents situation. When they married? Any other children? Jim, Gosport.

It's useful to be able to share information with other family historians, but there really is no substitute for going out and doing the research yourself. For years I took it for granted that the research done by a distant relative into our family history was correct. Until, that was, I visited a village graveyard in the heart of the Devon countryside. The information on the tombstones of three generations of my family led to the discovery that the man we thought we were descended from actually died aged three years and nine months old!! The origin of the problem lay in the fact that there had been acknowledged innacuracies in the Parish Registers. These had led to transcribers of these records attempting to reconstruct missing entries. The result was that the date of death of the child had been attached to his grandfather causing a great deal of confusion - we are actually descended from a cousin of this child with the same name. The moral of the tale? Don't be too reliant on the research of others and where possible find hard evidence (tombstones are pretty solid!) for your theories.