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!