Checking misinformation on public family trees

 

                                                  The children of Samuel Tripp as determined by my research

I received an email from FamilySearch about ancestors' weddings in this month and signed in to the website. Their interface has changed a lot and there is now a box encouraging you to build your family tree. Clicking around, I happened on a tree that included my great grandmother, Charlotte Tripp only her name was spelt Sharlot. Looking into the information on the tree further, I saw that Sharlot was listed as the eldest child of Samuel Charles Tripp and Mary Ann Roden, on the FamilySearch tree. Well, the father was correct but not the mother. Samuel Tripp had at least one child with Catherine Matheson, my 2 x great grandmother. I'm not sure which woman was the mother of Samuel's second child, Sarah May. The mother could have been Catherine, perhaps she died in childbirth, or Sarah May could have been the first child born to Samuel and Mary Ann.

It seems likely that the source for information on the family could have been the 1871 census for Fenelon, Victoria North, Ontario. The information on the entry for the Trips (sp) shows Samuel, wife Ann, daughters Sharlott age 5, Sarah age 2 and Mary 9/12. Sharlott disappeared by the 1881 census but there were more children to take her place. It would be easy to infer that Sharlott had died. But Sharlott, or more properly, Charlotte (often called Lottie) happened to be recorded twice in the 1871 census. She was also living with her grandfather, Keneth Mathison, in Fenelon, Victoria North, Ontario. Her uncle Angus (written as Agness) and aunt Heneretta Mathison were also part of the household. By the time the 1881 census was taken, Charlotte Tripp and her aunt, Henrietta Matheson, were living with the Thompson (sp) family, with another of Charlotte's aunts, Margaret Thomson.

It was a confusing situation to parse out originally and I was happy to see the family situation playing out in the official records. Now it appears that I will need to keep an eye on the information put on the FamilySearch tree so that misinformation doesn't take over the legitimate facts. Maybe it's time to check out WikiTree more fully too to make sure there is no more misinformation being entered about this family line. 

From Norfolk to the Big Smoke

 

                                                     Some of the Norfolk ancestors I've added to my family tree recently

There are always plenty of webinars to sign up to watch related to various areas of interest to genealogists. So many in fact, that it has been a long time since I watched any of the sessions available on Legacy Family Tree Webinars, a site to which I subscribe. I'm not sure what triggered my memory of the site, perhaps an email or some other mention, but I signed in and checked out what was on offer. That's when I saw a set of webinars called "England Counties Research Series". My ancestors came from many of the counties in England so that series looked promising.

I started with the session on Norfolk as I knew my 2 x great grandmother, Sarah Minister, had come from there. I took notes as I watched the webinar so I'm hoping that I'll be able to delve back further into my Norfolk family roots. Not that I've done anything much about that yet. It also made me realize that I hadn't filled in the information on Sarah's siblings, nor had I found the death of her father or mother. There's lots to be done on this family line.

Remembering that I wanted to branch out my family tree, I started adding Sarah's siblings. It appears that Sarah was the youngest, born in 1814. She had two sisters, Mary Ann born 1807, Eliza born 1818, and one brother, William born 1813. Interestingly, Mary Ann appears to have moved to London. Sarah also moved there. Both sisters also married in the big city. I wonder if their families got together and reminisced about life in Norfolk comparing it with life in the colossus that was the main city of England.

So I've made a start finding the descendants of this family and the surnames the women and children now went by. I'll see how much further my research takes me into their future before I start seeing how far back I can get into my Norfolk roots.

Sources:

Legacy Family Tree Webinars “England Counties Research Series” https://familytreewebinars.com 

Picturing the past

 

                          Google map image of Puslinch where a new chapter in the life of Alexander Mathison began

I've been researching my family's history for the better part of three, almost four, decades now and I've been able to take a few of my family lines far back in time. But the thing that I'm most interested in, the treasure hunt that has me going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, is the search for stories. My ancestors were a fascinating lot, at least to my eyes. They were there when history unfolded and were a part of social movements both intellectually and physically, as in moving from place to place. Moves that encompassed villages, towns, countries and sometimes vast oceans and endless lands on continents that were new to them. 

While uncovering some of those ancestral stories, I've also sought to hone my writing skills. To that end, I've attended various webinars put on by The Family History Writing Studio. The latest session was held this week. The students were led through a session on how to develop "Cinematic Scenes". It was a very effect session. It also made me realize that I needed a better visual of my work in progress to be able to convey the cinematic version. I haven't developed the story of Alexander Matheson, my 2x great-granduncle, very far but it's one that I find fascinating. Imagine losing track of your family for 40 years - but hey, there was no internet back then, not even any phones or phone books to help track people down. I've realized that my starting scene needs to bring 1850s Puslinch, Ontario to life for the reader. Presently that's difficult as I don't know what the area looked like so now I'm on the hunt for some views of Puslinch at that time. I need to picture it myself to be able to bring it to life for the reader. 

Filing in family information on Jersey

 

                                                                    Google map of the Island of Jersey

There are different venues to search for family information depending on where your ancestors were living. Searching for family information on Jersey is a bit of a mixed bag. I was able to find my ancestor on the 1881 census for the Channel Islands through Ancestry. It's written in English. FindMyPast also has various census years which can be found under "Channel Islands, other Britain and Ireland". I also found an earlier census for 1788 for St Lawrence Parish Inhabitants on FMP, not that I had any ancestors that I know of living on Jersey at that time.

I was unable to find the death of either William Chubb in 1877 or his son, William John Stainer Chubb, in 1878 at FindMyPast or Ancestry. Church of England records for the major life events appear to be available on both of the major genealogy sites. For information on your nonconformist ancestors it's best to check out https://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/ . So far I've obtained information about the burials of Chubb, father and son, in St Helier's General Cemetery. The entries are very sketchy containing the ages of the deceased, the date they were interred and by whom. They are also in French.

The lack of information on these burial records makes me question whether it would add anything to my knowledge if I obtained the official marriage record of William S Chambers and Sarah Ann Conway Chubb. Newspapers seem to be a better bet for finding information as I found an article in the Jersey Independent and Daily Telegraph for March 14, 1885 about the defective drainage on Mrs. Chubb's shop on Queen Street in St Helier.

Sources:

FindMyPast Newspaper collections

 

https://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/

An elusive marriage record

 

                                                                             A modern take on newspapers

I've recently started reading a book set in Jersey, Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis. It's for an online book club and reminds me of the surprising family links that I've found to the island. It also reminds me of another brick wall that I encountered. I had searched for the marriage of William S Chambers and Sarah Ann Chubb for years. Their son, my grandfather, was born in Harborne, County Stafford in 1884, but they hadn't been married in the same place. Nor could I find a marriage record in any place that I had traced either of my great grandparents to before they were married. Many checks of the GRO registers turned up nothing.

Maybe they hadn't married at all or, like other couples in my family, had been married to someone else but left them to cohabit with each other. Divorce at that time was way beyond a working couple's reach. There was also the possibility they'd married after my grandfather's birth. But nothing showed up in the GRO records after 1884 either.

Then one day I checked out the newspapers on FindMyPast. It was The Northern Mercury of Saturday, November 13, 1880 that carried the marriage announcement that I sought. William Strange Chambers of Nuneaton had married on October 28 in St. Heliers, Jersey. His bride was Sarah Ann Conway the eldest daughter of the late Wm Chubb, of St. Heliers. So if a marriage record proves elusive, it just might help to trawl newspapers online. 

Sources:

FindMyPast Newspaper collections

Finding Brick Walls

 

I am a member of several genealogy groups, one large society and a smaller, more intimate one where participation is encouraged. Our meeting will be soon but the topic of our get together has been emailed to us already. We're going to be discussing brick walls and any ways that we've tried to get around them.

I've been going family history research for decades and have run into my fair share of snags in that time but once I've found a way around them, it's hard to retain the details of what I was seeking and how I found it in the end. I do have some current conundrums that I'd like to solve though so maybe I can mention those.

Many of my family lines ended up in London, a place from which it is very difficult to figure out a person's or family's origins. Although I did trace my Argent family back to Halstead, Essex but how I figured that out has been lost along the way. I do have a clear recollection of finding where the Arments hailed from. Yes, the two families were joined by matrimony in 1840 when James Arment married Ellen Argent. James gave his father's name as Thomas Arment, a carman. This occupation was to become more dubious when Thomas and his son Thomas were brought before the courts. The criminal records for the elder Thomas supplied a lot of detail about him and recorded that he came from Suffolk. That was how I found were the Arments had come from.

Then there were the brick walls in Canada and the US. Most of them hinge around the Matheson family. I'd really like to find something to confirm my great grandmother's birth to Catherine Matheson and Samuel Tripp but the only information I have comes from their daughter's marriage certificate which places her birth in Bobcaygeon, Ontario before 1869. I have been looking for a birth record for a long, long time. Confirmation of Catherine's death would also help and might even provide a clue as to who was the mother of Samuel Tripp's second daughter. Was the mother Catherine or his second wife, Mary?

Another brick wall for this family involved Alexander Matheson, the man who left home then looked for his family for 40 years. When he died in 1920 in South Dakota various people were mentioned in his obituary. I'd like to be able to identify and track these people in order to determine if and how they were related to Alexander. Just who were Mrs. J. Ruhe of Sioux Falls, S.D. and Mrs. R.L. Eagen of La Crosse, Wis who were named in his obituary? Mrs. Eagen has proven to be particularly elusive as I've tried tracking her through newspapers and directories but have had no luck so far. Looks like I do have a few brick walls to bring up at the meeting. 

Searching for further criminal records

 

                                            The first Arment family petition submitted after the trial of the two Thomases

It's almost unbelievable how many genealogy magazines I had stashed in boxes and stacks around the lower level of my place. Probably the smartest thing to do would be to take the stacks and recycle them all at once but it would pain me to do so remembering how much I spent on every single one of those imported magazines. While they are dated, they also prompt me to look at various records I haven't checked out in a while. A case in point was an article entitled "Victorian convict records go online". Of course this is not really news anymore because it appeared in the November 2010 edition of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine. 

I suspect that I didn't read about the newly available criminal records back in 2010 nor did I read the article before I wrote multiple posts about my own criminal ancestors back in 2018 which started with  https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2018/08/ and followed the trials of the two Thomas Arments, father and son, and their co-accused, Henry Samuel Chester. Some of my prized documents from this research are the petitions that family members wrote regarding the accused, the first from the elder Thomas's wife and the rest from the younger Thomas. I hunted those documents down in The National Archives at Kew.

The gist of the petitions allowed me to pinpoint the death of the elder Thomas. But when I read the words of the younger Thomas (if indeed he was the actual author of the petitions sent in his name. Were there clerks/lawyers who edited and wrote out the words of the inmates?) Whoever wrote the petitions it wasn't clear from the text if the young criminal was single or married. After reading the article in WDYTYA magazine, I searched the "UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951" on Ancestry for Thos Arment. In the records for Pentonville Prison > Register of Prisoners > 1849-1850 I was able to find the entry for Thos Arment age 28 which included the information that he was married and gave his wife's name as Harriet and included her address. Now I have another person to track down.

Sources:

Ancestry, “UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951”

The National Archives, Kew – Registers of criminal petitions

Who Do You Think You Are? On the Record: “Victorian convict records go online”