Reynold's map of the East End, 1882
More than once while I was in London, I wished I had GPS to find my way around but that is not the type of GPS referenced in the title. The GPS used to find ancestors is the Genealogical Proof Standard. The idea is to come up with a well reasoned argument to explain your conclusion about the ancestry you are trying to prove. In this case my task was to find the birth family for my great-grandfather, Henry Cavanagh.
In the absence of direct evidence, like a father's name on a marriage certificate, one of the steps required was to do a reasonably exhaustive search of the area for the possible Cavanagh parents who had a Henry of approximately the right age. This would be easier to do in a smaller town rather than in London, which, according to Wikipedia, had a population of 3,272,441 in the inner city in 1871. (Why oh why, did you get involved with a previously married woman, Henry?)
As part of my search I took a look for Henry Cavanagh in the family trees on Ancestry. Unfortunately from the looks of things, the trees other people had posted for this Cavanagh line look to be very sketchily put together. Looks like I am on my own in proving this line of ancestry. We'll see how far I can get.
Sources:
Demography of London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London
Image:
Reynolds
map 1882 Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3847673
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