The Gene Poole Self-help
Overcoming bottlenecks
We all experience bottlenecks in our research, and I hope that this helps you overcome some these problems.
Some of the most common problems are as follows:
- People's name spelling
This is a common problem, with spellings changing seemingly with every entry at times. This often happened as a result of illiteracy amongst the population, unable to confirm the spellings on the form.
Handwriting is also a problem in census forms and the earlier BMD registers, where you could misread the writing.
- People's name changes
It is not unusual for people to change their name for any number of reasons, but the most common would be as a result of adoption (official adoption came in in 1924, and children would often take their stepfather's name as a matter of course. This was also the case in common-law marriages.
The most obvious reason for changing a name for many people was fraud of some reason or another, though official records can register the old name - for example army records often show this.
Some people changed their names (christian and surnames) out of admiration for the celebrities of the day - normally explorers and adventurous.
- Bigamy
Yes, this was a problem, often out of ignorance. Wives could be 'sold' at market, with the impression that the sale also nullified the marriage. Divorce records are not easy to come by, so in most cases you expect one party to have died. If the families continue in two separate locations, alarm bells should ring.
Bigamy was probably more of a problem then, without the complex record keeping we have today, and had more serious implications as there was no social welfare for the destitute.
- Confused geography
Districts and parishes did change from time to time. There are even some enclaves of a county that belonged to another county (often the neighbouring one). Registration centres needn't be in the same county, so births, marriages and deaths could look as though they were recorded in the wrong county!
- Street names
Streets have disappeared, and been renamed in recent times, but street naming and numbering is a recent innovation in many rural areas. Landmarks may also have disappeared, so being next to the pub may no longer be relevant.
- Emigration
Some people may disappear from the records for a number of years, and it could be that they were abroad - even just for a holiday! Remember that the census was related to a single evening every ten years.
Re-immigration can recapture a family line in subsequent data, alternatively, you may find information in the passenger lists or in different national censes.
Emigration could also have been as a result of military service overseas, but any births, marriages or deaths should have been recorded under the 'overseas' category.
Finally, wrong doing in early Victorian times could lead to deportation. Deportation to the American colonies ceased with the War of Independence approx. 1783. Deportations took criminals to Australia from 1787, ending in 1868. Some criminals survived not only the voyage to Australia and the sentence there, but also a voyage back to Britain.
- Census indexing
If you are using the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon), or Ancestry websites, many of the transcriptions of the censes have been done by Americans who do not understand the geography or spellings of Britain, so misspellings and errors are commonplace, and they are being resolved - slowly.