Is Accuracy Important?

When it comes to researching and finding your family what is important is that you know where you found your records.  That you document why you picked those people if it's unclear.  Accuracy is a variable.  Yes it's important to be accurate, to be as accurate as you can, but it's also important to remain motivated and to enjoy the thrill of the chase.

Accuracy costs money.  That's a fact!  You have to accept that some of your research will lead you to grey areas, where you're not entirely sure that what you've found is the RIGHT family.  But you should take a note of what you found, where you found it - why you think it fits and why you think there are doubts.  Leaving yourself with these "random notes" will enable you to pick up that thread easily at a future point if you gain access to new information.  New information is available all the time, with new indexes, original images of parish records and new published trees online.

For me, even Jane Finding is in my "grey area".  To get to Jane I've had to make a leap of belief and faith or two, based on what I've discovered so far in the last five years and what is likely.  It is by creating and further researching these grey areas that you can sometimes find the "truth" or more evidence.

You cannot follow a line straight up.  A person is part of a family - and those families that stay in the same area will provide clues as to where others might have gone to.  Only by knowing where everybody went to, who they married, what jobs they did, can you more easily make the essential connections you need.

e.g. if your ancestors were ALL Agricultural Labourers, but you find one female who struck lucky and married well and moved to her husband's town, you might then discover she's taken in a nephew 20 years later who is apprenticed into her husband's business and the census has been mis-transcribed, but you (as it's your family) can spot that he's the lad who 'disappeared' from the family home - that's a golden moment!

Personally, I find this sideways research very rewarding.  Additionally, sideways research leads you to the websites of connected families that make things make sense.

Where was my GG-grandmother in the 1901 Census?  Apparently in a village she is not connected to and working as a housekeeper!  Seems unlikely, except by following the whole family you realise that she's moved in with her uncle (father's, sister's widow) after his wife died.  He was in his 90s at the time.  So she didn't move to a random village to suddenly become a housekeeper, this will have been done because the families were all in touch and the old fella needed looking after and my GG-grandmother needed a roof over her head (aged 60 herself).  Googling the name of the head of household she was living with yielded a whole website dedicated to the family history of that connected family.  That makes for an interesting link and maybe their paths crossed at other times too.

Record keeping is the cornerstone to accuracy. You need to keep good records so you can return to check your sources, or for updates.  If you don't know where you got information from, it's pretty shaky.

The Finding Family, Huntingdonshire

The Finding Family is a blog I've started to bring together my own collection of notes, records, resources and ideas on my own family history research.  The name was picked based on two discoveries: my ancestors seem to include a family called Finding (or Findin) and my preferred first two names for the blog were already taken!  So here we are.  The Finding Family - although I suspect they are a small part of my journey.

At the present time I've narrowed down my search and research to Jane Finding, who married John Stokes, in Upton, Huntingdonshire in 1822.

And that's pretty much my starting point for this quest.  Who was Jane Finding? Who were her family? Who were her parents?  Where did they all move to?  And then onwards to uplines, downlines and sideways movements around what will become a huge chart over the coming years.

So far my research has been contained in a simple family tree, started when my mother's cousin (there's a name for that!) sent me a cutdown GEDCOM of our family tree.  As with all family trees, everybody is interested and absorbed in a different route.  My source information benefactor's interest was in her own father's tree - he is no blood relation to me, having married my mother's aunt he was my mother's uncle.  My interest was piqued by what I call my "Lady Line".

Having been given the raw roots of research, I discovered that my GG-grandmother had left her children at the workhouse and been imprisoned for the offence.  An offence she repeated as soon as she was released!  So she did more time, this time hard labour in a prison.

So that was the start - I wondered "Why was she in the workhouse? Why did nobody take her in?" which then means it's necessary to research the trees of all her siblings and her parents' siblings - where had they all gone?

There are many reasons I've discovered why they were not in a position to take her in - the biggest stumbling block is that she had five children.  Not many households can take in six people at the drop of a hat. And that got me hooked!

So that's it, here's the first post - and the rest will be assortments of family tree snippets, ideas, sources of records specific to the villages my ancestors lived in and a rambling and never-ending journey!

I live 200 miles away from my area of research.  While this is not impossible to visit (just a car journey), it does bring into question the cost/time elements.  There's one churchyard where there must be 30-40 ancestors buried - spending a day there documenting/finding gravestones would be a day well spent, it'd also cost quite a chunk of money, so before I rush off and prowl that graveyard I first need to fully research if it has ever been done before.  Buying the information in, as a starting point, is often cheaper than making a visit yourself - especially if records show that there's nothing of note to be found!

So, here we go!