2010 to do list – some actual research goals

Between now and the new year I will be writing about some of the things I want to achieve with my family history in 2010.

So far most of what I have written is about the actual research process and organisation of my family history information, so now it is time to look at some of the people and stories I want to actually find out more about in 2010.

John GASSON – I already know quite a bit about John GASSON my 5x great-grandfather, but there are still a lot of pieces to put together, including sorting out his will and his three wives. Ideally I would also like to find his baptism (around 1715 in Surrey) and identify his parents. Ultimately I want to pursue the GASSON surname as far back as possible to find out where it comes from.

Mercy TROWER – I wrote about my 3x great-aunt before, but haven’t really done any more about finding the missing marriages. Even though see is not a direct ancestor I think it is time I got this troublesome character sorted out once and for all. I going to have to hand over some money for a death certificate and a copy of her will. The death certificate will hopefully give me her deceased husband’s name and that will give me further clues.

William Joseph Henry BATEMAN – This is my 2x great-uncle, who joined the navy and ended up in Australia, getting married and starting a family. I would really like to find out more about him and his family, and hopefully trace some distant cousins down under.

The ALLCORN and EADE families – These two families left Brighton, Sussex for America in the mid to late 1800s, Mary EADE and Hope ALLCORN were sisters, both the daughters of William and Mary TROWER of Henfield, Sussex. Whilst it would be nice to trace some relations in the US, what really interests me is why and how they left England and why did they settle where they did, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Thomas KINGHORN – My 3x great-grandfather, the tailor from London (although born in Scotland). I still want to piece together more of his life, especially find out where he is buried (I suspect Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey) and what happened to all his children, and why did the family seem so attracted to Brighton.

Thomas KINGHORN – My 4x great-grandfather, the mail coach guard from Carlisle, Cumberland. There is so much I would like to find out about his life, but really I need to try and establish where he was born. I suspect he was originally from down south, probably London, and was only up north because of his job. Proving that is not going to be easy to say the least.

Wybrants KINGHORN – There is so much about this man that intrigues me, firstly his own crime and punishment, and then his subsequent murder. I have feeling that his life story would make a good book, if only I could find enough evidence.

Luther TROWER, Henrietta KING and Charles BRINTON – Talking of good stories, this story is rather tragic and quite complicated. I don’t think I have mentioned them before, only in passing perhaps. Luther TROWER was my 3x great-uncle. One of these was a bigamist, there were two marriages, one divorce, two suicides (although seemingly unrelated) and quite a bit of alcohol and blood. I have a few more pieces of evidence to try and gather, but I would like to get this story told, in one form or another.

Thomas NICHOLLS – Another of my 4x great-grandfathers, about whom I know very little. He appears to have come from Chiddingstone, Kent and died quite young. It looks like he was a navvy working on building the railway, and I have a gut feeling that he died as a result of an accident at work. I would love to be able to prove that, and also find out what happened to his widow and children.

It looks like I am going to have my plate full in 2010, what with this little lot, plus all the other families that I will no doubt end up chasing, and the 5x great-grandparents I want to find and all the re-organising I want to do.

I can guarantee that within a week or two of the new year I will have found something else that seems much more exciting will be heading off somewhere totally different, notebook in hand and camera at the ready.

2010 to do list – create a proper to-do list

Between now and the new year I will be writing about some of the things I want to achieve with my family history in 2010.

I have attempted in the past to create an all encompassing to-do list, most of these attempts have either been far too simplistic or far too complicated.

The simple ones don’t hold enough detail, so for example they don’t make it easy for me to find all the things I have to find at a particular archive. The complex ones just take too long to update, so they generally don’t get updated often enough. What I need is something that is going to capture everything, quickly and easily.

I did have the idea of borrowing some ideas from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, where I would set a goal for each individual in my database, and deciding what the next step would be on the road to achieving that, and where I would need to be to carry out that step.

I thought this may be too complicated to track, but I did wonder if I might actually be able to create custom tags in my database which would hold the information within Family Historian itself. With a few reports I might be able to create a report of what to do at various archives or for a specific family name. It may however be simpler to keep this data in a separate spreadsheet, which could be filtered in many different ways.

At the moment I have gone back to a simple text file to capture everything (rather than risk losing the thing I have to do), which is much more portable than a spreadsheet or database, but not so easy to search. It is clearly something I am going to have to think about carefully before implementing any major changes.

Sign the ePetition to save Brighton History Centre

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the threat of closure to the Brighton History Centre.

The closure of this valuable facility would be a great loss to local and family history researchers with an interest in the city.

An ePetition has now appeared on the Brighton and Hove City Council website, and I would urge anyone who qualifies (according to the website “a person of any age who lives, works or studies in Brighton and Hove”) to sign the petition to try an save this wonderful resource.

2010 to do list – what to do with wills?

Between now and the new year I will be writing about some of the things I want to achieve with my family history in 2010.

There is one source type that causes me no end of confusion, and that is probate records, which in practicality means copy of wills.

I have copies of several wills in my collection, of varying lengths and ages. I have transcribed most of them, but I know there are one or two that still need so work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love wills and the relationship details that they sometimes contain. In fact some of the wills in my collection have solved some tricky relationship issues (see my post about William HOLMAN’s will)

The reason they cause me such problem is knowing what information to enter into my database and where to enter it. I think the problem is that there is usually so much information contained in a will that it is hard to know how and where to record it.

There are so many different facts that could possibly be contained in even a straight-forward will:

• the address and occupation of the testator
• the names, addresses and occupations of the beneficiaries
• the bequests made to the various beneficiaries
• the relationship of the beneficiaries to the testator
• the names, addresses and occupations of the executors
• the relationship of the executors to the testator
• where, when, to whom and by whom probate was granted

I am sure there are many more possible facts that can be extracted from a particular will, but the problem I have is knowing what to do with them.

I think there are only two GEDCOM tags associated with probate records PROB and WILL, so really I am going to have to add at least one more to record that an individual was a beneficiary (and what the bequest was) and another to record that someone was named as an executor.

Ideally I would record that fact that an individual was a beneficiary or executor on both the individual’s record and that of the testator. Most of the other information can probably recorded using the other standard tags for addresses and occupations citing the will as a source.

So in 2010 I am going to get to grips with my wills, making sure they are transcribed and making sure I have captured all the information contained therein and recorded it against the relevant individuals.

2010 to do list – spring clean my database

Between now and the new year I will be writing about some of the things I want to achieve with my family history in 2010.

I did go through my database (Family Historian) earlier this year and clear up some loose ends, but as a result of the rush to get my family tree chart printed I have messed things up again.

It is not really messed up, just that I have a lot of loose ends that need further research which I didn’t have time to do.

Wives with no maiden names: Currently there are 21 women whose maiden names I do not know. A fair few of these are my 5x great-grandmothers, so it would be really good to find them. Along the same lines I also have a husband with no first name.

Orphans: I have a number of individuals and families who are not connected to the rest of my family tree, or rather where the connection is not known. These are mostly grandchildren of one of my ancestors, but the parents of the child is not known. There are a couple of families that are almost certainly related, they come from the same village and have the same surname as my ancestors, but again their exact connection is not known.

Missing parents: I have several individuals where the identity of one of the parents is not known. In many cases this is due to illegitimacy, and the identity may never be known, but in some cases it is just because one or other of the parents died early and doesn’t appear on a census return.

Living individuals: Now would be a good time to run through my database and make sure that all my ancestors and relations that are living are flagged as such, so their data is not shared.

Sanity checks: It would also be a good time to perform some sanity checks on my data, such as: age at marriage, age at death, duplicate children of the same name, correct gender based on first name. Of course there will be anomalies in the data, but once highlighted they can be checked on an individual basis.

Birth and death dates: As if that is not enough to keep me busy for the whole of 2010, I would also like to make sure everyone in my database has a birth date (estimated if needed) and any individual that is not marked as living should have a death date (again estimated if needed).