Genealogy Database Cleansing

Instead of actually getting on with any proper research last night I got sidetracked into some genealogy database cleansing.

There are two issues with my family tree that had been bugging me for a while, they are individuals in my tree with incomplete names and individuals who are not related to me and my ancestors.

The first category contained 15 individuals, the majority (nine) with no surname (mostly wives whose maiden names have so far eluded me), five individuals had no name at all (mostly fathers of illegitimate children) and one individual with just a surname (the husband of a relation who married, where I know her married name but no other details about the marriage).

There are a number of ways I can tackle these, for instance the fathers of illegitimate children can probably be deleted for now if I have no information about them. None of them are my direct ancestors so I probably won’t be investing much (if any) time and money into finding them. So long as I make a note of the children’s names I can always add them back in at a later date.

The wives’ surnames will probably need researching because some of them are ancestors. That will mean birth or marriage certificates need ordering unless I can find the information elsewhere.

The second category of unlinked individuals contains 15 individuals, or more correctly three individuals, one family of seven and one of five. These are mostly people with the same surname as my ancestors and in the same parish as my ancestors, so probably related in some way. This also includes at least one grandchild living with (or visiting) grandparents in the census and whose parents are not yet clear.

I could remove these individuals until I know for certain how they fit in, but I think I will try and make an effort to find out how they fit in first. As a rule I don’t normally add individuals until I know how they are related, but these must have slipped through in the early days!

Chances are I am not going to be able to resolve all these problems straight away, but I still need to make sure that they are all captured on a to-do list and are all recorded in a standard format.

Following the female line for a challenge

I got a bit distracted yesterday while I was supposed to have been doing some work on John FAIRS. I strayed over to his wife’s family and attempted to head back on that line.

I guess I am not the only one that seems to spend a disproportionate amount of time on my male lines and neglecting my female lines. Every so often I have to have a purge to keep the right balance in my tree.

John FAIRS married Mary Ann WELLER at St. Peter’s Church, Henfield, Sussex on the 2nd March 1862. Mary Ann’s father was Thomas WELLER, a labourer.

Armed with her marriage entry and later census returns it was pretty easy to find Mary Ann in earlier census returns with her parents Thomas and Mary WELLER.

The family were living in Twineham, Sussex and it is here that Mary Ann was born, probably in the first couple of months of 1841. Her father gave his place of birth as Bersted (or North Bersted), Sussex and her mother was from West Grinstead, Sussex.

The problem is that I have been unable to find a marriage entry for Thomas and Mary. Their eldest child appears to have been John, born in 1817, so I would have expected to find a marriage entry some time just before that.

The Sussex Marriage Index from the Sussex Family History Group has one likely entry, Thomas WELLER and Mary NEWNHAM married in Bolney, Sussex on the 31st December 1816. Whilst this looks quite a reasonable match, Bolney is pretty close to Twineham, I am still not satisfied that this is the right marriage.

So I have inadvertently picked up another challenge, which is going to take a little bit more work for me to be 100% happy with the marriage. I think a birth certificate will probably prove matters once and for all, but finding Mary Ann’s certificate may not be quite so easy.

Another day spent walking

This Saturday I spent most of the day walking again, but this time there were no genealogical connections. Also for a change it was Surrey not Sussex where I was walking, it wasn’t a route of my choice and I wasn’t on my own.

My good friend Chris had picked the route and was my walking partner for the day. The weather was perhaps a little too warm, although there was some cloud, but it stayed dry, which it has been more or less for several weeks.

The walk began at Dorking railway station, we followed the A24 north for short while before heading east out onto the hills. Before climbing Box Hill we had to cross the river, there is a footbridge but I never miss the opportunity to cross the river by the stepping stones. It occurred to me that these were the only stepping stones in Sussex or Surrey that I was aware of, but I am sure there must be other examples.

Stepping stones at the foot of Box Hill, Surrey

The climb up Box Hill is quite a challenge, it is not as high as Wolstonbury Hill which I climbed nearly two weeks ago, but the ascent is a lot steeper. Most of the path up the hill consists of steps, otherwise it would seem almost impossible to reach the top.

The views from the top of Box Hill are quite spectacular, and well worth the effort. Unfortunately there was still some mist in the distance, but closer to the hill places like Dorking were clearly visible.

Dorking from Box Hill, with a trig point as well

From Box Hill the walk continued eastwards and eventually southwards down off the North Downs, towards the village of Brockham. From here we walked east again, to Betchworth (where we stopped at the pub from a drink and a bite to eat).

I was quite impressed by the church at Betchworth, such a beautiful building, I hope I can find an excuse to come back and spend some more time here.

St. Michael's Church, Betchworth, Surrey

From Betchworth we continued east again, across the tip of Reigate Heath and the golf course (past the windmill) and onto a seemingly tiny place called Skimmington (with a busy pub).

The windmill on Reigate Heath

From here we continued, yes you guessed it, eastwards again. Up onto Reigate Park and then down through the streets (of Reigate I guess) towards Earlswood railway station, where we spent a rather dull hour waiting, having just missed the train. To keep myself amused I ending up taking photos of the clouds overhead.

Clouds over Earlswood

All in all it was a very satisfying walk. From Dorking to Earlswood was about 11½ miles, the majority of which was flat after coming down off the hills. Perhaps the best part for me however was the fact that it was all pretty much new territory to me (after coming down of the hills) so I actually had to use my map reading skills on occasion!

How planning applications can help family historians

Recently I have been doing quite a bit of searching for ancestral homes, and to do this I have had the need to access some quite detailed maps.

Google Maps (or Multimap etc) is good for finding streets and roads, but if I want to find a particular house number then it is not much help. The Ordnance Survey Get-a-map facility is good for exploring rural areas, but even at the most detailed level it very rarely names streets or roads and individual properties are very rarely named especially in built-up areas.

Highly detailed maps are usually only available at a price from Ordnance Survey Mapping and Data Centres and of course the best place to find historic maps is at County Record Offices or public libraries for the area concerned.

There is however one source online of detailed maps which identify individual properties, even in built up areas, which is free of charge and perhaps more helpful than the Ordnance Survey. I have not seen it mentioned elsewhere, so I am guessing it is not widely known about.

If you know an address (and it still exists under that name) and can find out which local council is responsible for approving planning applications, then there is a good chance you will find details and a precise location on that council’s website.

In a nutshell, the English and Welsh (not sure about Scotland or Northern Ireland) planning system means that if someone wants to make a structural alteration to their property, then they need to submit a planning application to the local council for approval. The council will give interested parties (such as neighbours) a chance to have their say before approving or rejecting the application. More and more councils seem to be making applications available to view online, and this means having a database of all the properties in their area marked on a map, thereby linking the whole thing together.

If you go to the relevant council’s website and find their planning pages you will probably find a link to the database (many council’s seem to use an application called “Public Access”). It is fairly self-explanatory to use, but I will put together and post a little working example to show how to use it. The application is not very pretty to look at, such that the map display is probably not something you will want to add to your family tree, but it should provide you enough information to locate the property on Google Maps or elsewhere. It should also be noted that the map display part of the application does not work in Firefox (unless you use the IE tab add-on) only Internet Explorer, although I haven’t tried any other browsers.

Of course you might strike it lucky and find that your ancestors property has had a planning application submitted, in which case you might find all manner of information, including detailed plans or even photos (although these probably won’t be of a very good quality after being scanned) and all manner of correspondence relating to the application. Bear in mind that most of the information online is going to be from the last few years, so it is not going to be a good source of historical material.

I will leave you with a screenshot of what I am talking about, and example from my own family tree taken from the Horsham District Council website: 6 Park Road, Henfield, Sussex (where John FAIRS was living in 1911). The green dots represent individual properties, the hatched areas are planning applications.

6 Park Road, Henfield on the Horsham District Council website

Sussex Day 2009: Part 10 – Wolstonbury Hill to Hassocks

Having reached the top of Wolstonbury Hill the rest of my Sussex Day walk could only be downhill.

I considered the best way home, I could go west and down to Newtimber and Poynings and catch the bus. However that would have meant crossing the busy A23 which I wasn’t keen to do.

So instead I headed east, a path lead south a short way from the top of the hill and joined an east-west path which slowly descended towards Clayton. About half a mile along the path, another path lead north, into some shade and continued downhill and eventually out onto New Way Lane.

About a quarter of a mile east was the village of Clayton, there were only two things I knew about Clayton, the railway tunnel and the twin windmills of Jack and Jill. I discovered there was also a lovely little church with some quite stunning wall paintings, and a splendid graveyard with wonderful views of the South Downs, in fact it was almost on the Downs.

A path lead north from Clayton along the side of the railway line for about a mile, straight to Hassocks railway station, not surprising really considering it was following the railway line. It was just after four o’clock when I arrived at Hassocks railway station, just enough time to visit the local newsagents to buy some more drink, before catching a train to Brighton and a bus home.

Descending Wolstonbury Hill

Looking down the path towards Clayton

Jack and Jill windmills, Clayton

The entrance to Clayton Tunnel

Clayton Church

The wall paintings inside Clayton Church

Clayton churchyard with the South Downs beyond