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It just goes to show that certs matter!

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  • It just goes to show that certs matter!

    (second attempt!)

    Last weekend I discovered that a fun-tree I'd been doing for an elderly church friend had a classic no-cert-back-up error: confused namesakes.

    I started this tree some years back: early enough that I didn't have my own Ancestry sub, but the help I was given demonstrated how important such a sub could be. It was a birthday surprise - which was received with all the delight I could have hoped for.

    Because the tree wasn't my own, and I didn't want to be intrusive, it has all been done on probability/logic, based on GRO index info and censuses... plus any other odds and ends (TNA seamen's records, etc).

    Well, the birthday has come around again, and I thought, last Friday, that I'd get a copy of the 1911 census for her maternal grandparents. And I found them: Robert John HAWTON and family, in West Ham (Walthamstow, actually). Since RJH's mother (Mary Jane) was a widow by then, I thought I'd look her up... Oh! Why was she with a quite different part of the family?... with RJH's namesake cousin, in Portsmouth? Then I realised what I'd done. There were two Robert HAWTONs born at much the same time in much the same area, and I'd latched onto the wrong one. :o

    Fortunately, they were first cousins, so I've been able to recover the position without too much heartache, but it does really illustrate the weakness of skipping certs. Had I bought the RJH marriage cert (about which I was confident, because all the other info is very specific), I'd have had his father's name, so I should have know which Robert HAWTON to look out for in the censuses: the son of Francis HAWTON, not the son of Francis's younger brother, Robert. One reason I had allowed myself to be misled is that one was a seaman, so not necessarily always around at the right time - and RJH didn't always bother to mention is middle initial. I did have a vague niggle about how the seaman had ended up working in the paper industry in East London, though... I should have picked at it a bit more, of course.

    So - this is just another thread to remind folks how much it matters to get available evidence before ploughing on. This is only a fun-tree, anyway, so it's not so desperate if there are errors. If it's your own tree, and you do want to find the right ancestral chart, then you really need to include certs in your shopping list!

    Christine
    Researching: BENNETT (Leics/Birmingham-ish) - incl. Leonard BENNETT in Detroit & Florida ; WARR/WOR, STRATFORD & GARDNER/GARNAR (Oxon); CHRISTMAS, RUSSELL, PAFOOT/PAFFORD (Hants); BIGWOOD, HAYLER/HAILOR (Sussex); LANCASTER (Beds, Berks, Wilts) - plus - COCKS (Spitalfields, Liverpool, Plymouth); RUSE/ROWSE, TREMEER, WADLIN(G)/WADLETON (Devonport, E Cornwall); GOULD (S Devon); CHAPMAN, HALL/HOLE, HORN (N Devon); BARRON, SCANTLEBURY (Mevagissey)...

  • #2
    your so right ,I wish I could afford more as I would get each one anyway, I just love waiting for the postman to arrive with them, and many a witness on a marriage has helped me in my research.

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