Family tree errors

[Thunder]

Why do people state that a person was born at one place when the birth index says they were born elsewhere (they are two distinct registration districts).

[Brunes08]

Sometimes people say they are 'from' rather than say 'I was born in...'. A relative is a case in point. Her mother went to stay with her cousin in Buckinghamshire to escape the dangers of the Blitz in London. She grew up in Middlesex (pre Greater London) but she always says she is from London despite later living in Essex. She now lives in the West Country and still says she is from London.
I have seen similar issues on Census returns. It would possibly depend whether the question on origin was understood as 'where from' or where born'. Of course some people may not have known exactly where they were born.

[Mick Loney]

If you think about it a little, most researchers initially get places of birth from censuses, and even these change from census to census. Their final step would be to find their birth registration or baptism. It is so easy to forget to correct their place of birth if it is wrong. If they don’t know the area well, are they aware which registration district it should be?

What is more worrying is when they show wrong parents for an individual even though they have a baptism to show correct forenames of parents, and birth registration to show mothers correct maiden name!

[Hardwork]

........ and birth registration to show mothers correct maiden name!

And even that cannot be relied upon in the birth registrations indexes. I have seen a dash given for a mother's maiden name where it does not relate to the birth of an illegitimate child but presumably where the mother's maiden name has not been given and also at least one family where the maiden name of the mother's mother is given for several births.

I'm not even sure if the maiden name should be given or the previous married name for re-married widows, as I have seen both, and in such instances surely the latter is more useful in tracing a family line rather (i.e. identification) rather than a maiden name which doesn't in itself offer a trail, thus defeating what is surely a major reason for the indexes in the first place, if a relationship needs to be proved, in probate cases for example. Not knowing if a name is a maiden or previous married name can really throw a spanner in the works of a search. As in all things with genealogy, caution has to be exercised even when using key records. It maybe the tree is correct and the index incorrect or misleading if sources aren't given.

[AdrianBruce]

Mick makes a good point. I had a dialog with someone recently who was reluctant to add the words "Reg District" to the birth-place when the data came from a GRO Birth index. So if the census says that their birth-place was Haslington, and the GRO index says that their birth-place was Nantwich (actually Nantwich Reg. District) - how do they handle that?

If they have two birth-places of Nantwich Reg District and Haslington, the suffix to the former should act as a prompt to consider that the answer might be that Haslington is in Nantwich Reg District.

If they have skimped (to be frank) on the text, they have two birth-places of Nantwich and Haslington - two places 5 miles apart and no prompt for how to reconcile without going way back into the depths. What would go into their tree? No idea - they might decide that one is a suburb of the other because it's too much work trying to resolve the geography (if that sounds like sarcasm, that's true in that simple case but there are complex cases that I'd have to spend a long time resolving. Such as which county is Dudley in??? ).

In my personal view, you need to record any qualifiers to the place-name (like parish, township, Reg District, Reg Sub-District, etc) or else you lose clues. And you need to spend time working out how those things relate.

[Mick Loney]

Hardwork,
You misunderstood what I meant regards evidence of mothers maiden name.

I was talking about a typical tree that shows parents as John Smith and Mary Brown, which is not supported by the listed sources :-

1. GRO clearly shows mothers maiden name is Green for all their children!
2. Baptism clearly shows parents as Fred and Jane rather than John and Mary.
3. Census shows parents as Fred and Jane.
I.e. The tree owner has ignored their own sources and still insist the parents are John Smith and Mary Brown.

NB it is the accepted custom to record women by their maiden rather than married name because
1. They may have married 2 or 3 times, so which married name should one use?
2. To move to the previous generation, her maiden name is needed to find her correct baptisn or birth registration or even census entries and thus her parents.
3. To move to next generation, it is used to find all her children, some of whom may not appear on the censuses.

[Hardwork]

Mick,

I understood your point, and don't disagree in general but I was showing a need to be cautionary. All I was trying to highlight really was that unless the sources for the tree are included, a source that we usually trust may still contradict reality, making it appear that the tree is wrong. For example, a tree I was putting together recently flummoxed me because the last three or four children had been registered with the mother's, mother's maiden name given in the birth indexes. That may be due to mother not understanding what she was being asked, possibly. There were no baptisms and I was dealing with a family with a common surname and forenames. No marriage could be found to fit for the parents that tied with the name given and the couple had moved from one part of the country to the other. Luckily there were older children, born in the original area and they appeared to be registered with another, uncommon maiden name given, but with inconsistent spellings. To complicate matters, the mother had been registered at birth (when I uncovered it) as Mary but called herself Mary Ann as an adult and her mother's maiden name was given as HORTON at birth. Mary Ann's own younger children had ORTON listed as their mother's maiden name. To have tried to explain this on a tree alone, would have been very difficult. However, anyone checking the indexes against the tree would have said I had connected the children to the wrong parents.

The problem with women giving their maiden name in birth registrations is that then becomes difficult, especially with common surnames, to find the correct marriage for the parents in marriage indexes, because the mother's maiden name given at a child's birth will not will not tally with those on the parents' index entry. Here I am talking of the days before divorce became prevalent in particular. That means you don't have an "audit" trail to follow, because you cannot find the correct marriage for the parents without knowing the surname the mother married under. Also you cannot necessarily find an earlier marriage for her either as you have no reference to her previous husband's surname. Obviously this is made worse in cases of common names. Whereas you say without her maiden name you cannot move to the previous generation for her it is equally true to say without the "maiden" name being given at the children's birth registration being in reality the name she married under, you cannot move back necessarily to correct marriage for the children's parents, or find the mother's previous marriage. Nor then may you be able to locate the father's past either, with any certainty.

To complicate the issue what we have in reality is that either maiden name or previous married name can occur in birth registration indexes depending on what the person registering gives, without any indication which is being given. It is perfectly possible that a man registering his child doesn't even know his wife's maiden name. Less likely that he doesn't know the surname she gave at marriage. The one thing I think we can agree upon is that certainly there are few certainties in genealogy!

[Guy]

Hardwork,
You misunderstood what I meant regards evidence of mothers maiden name.

I was talking about a typical tree that shows parents as John Smith and Mary Brown, which is not supported by the listed sources :-

1. GRO clearly shows mothers maiden name is Green for all their children!
2. Baptism clearly shows parents as Fred and Jane rather than John and Mary.
3. Census shows parents as Fred and Jane.
I.e. The tree owner has ignored their own sources and still insist the parents are John Smith and Mary Brown.

NB it is the accepted custom to record women by their maiden rather than married name because
1. They may have married 2 or 3 times, so which married name should one use?
2. To move to the previous generation, her maiden name is needed to find her correct baptisn or birth registration or even census entries and thus her parents.
3. To move to next generation, it is used to find all her children, some of whom may not appear on the censuses.

I will ignore the first part of Mick's post as it seems to be a hypothetical case and concentrate on the second part only.
I am not sure what he means by accepted custom, by whom?
The first rule is to understand registration requirements have changed over time and what is required today may have been completely ignore at the start of registration.
In day to day transactions a woman is recorded by the name she uses at the time, official records such as voters lists use the name she used at the time or recording. The name on a death index (for example) is her married name, not her maiden name or her previously married name, though the certificate may show all surnames she has officially registered under, but that depends what information the person registering the event knows or indeed gives (my sister's death certificate does not give her mothers first marriage surname as the informant did not know she had been married more than once.

1. In many countries women are recorded under their married name or a conjunction of their married name and maiden name or previous married name rather than their maiden name alone.
2. Whilst I would not disagree with Mick's general point it may not be as simple as what he sets out as one may have to search for a previous married name before proceeding to look for the maiden name, not all marriage records record all maiden names and even when they do they may not be transcribed to the certificate correctly. An example of this is a marriage certificate I required after my mother's death (I did not want to send off her original marriage certificate) so I applied for a copy from GRO Scotland, her maiden name was shown as Imy rather than Guy.
3. I would suggest a woman's married name is used to find all her children, with the exception of any illegitimate children she may have had, her maiden name is of little use to find all the children of married women and was only recorded on birth indexes from September quarter 1911 onwards.
4. I would also suggest that the order of any forenames used is also important when searching indexes, it is better to ignore forenames rather than put them in the wrong order.

Cheers
Guy

[meekhcs]

Interesting discussion, and when you add in the fact that people also lied on BMD Registration documents it is a wonder we ever find the trail at all!

Behind every Family Historian is a budding Detective!

[pinefamily]

Interesting discussion, and when you add in the fact that people also lied on BMD Registration documents it is a wonder we ever find the trail at all!

Behind every Family Historian is a budding Detective!

And if there are errors or falsehoods in the official records, why do we bother at all?
Because we are addicted.
Seriously though, this is why we need to look at as much documentation as we can find.