Oops. I jumped in without looking
 

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking to a lady named Josy who is a descendant of Amy Beechey (Amy lost 5 sons in WWI).

Josy and I have common ancestors and I dabbled a little on her paternal side and traced them back to a Lincs village where they were grocers and drapers with a shop in the village. Her father and grandfather both have the forename of Edward so when an indenture popped up on ebay bearing the name, occupation and location I bought it. I jumped in thinking it was her direct line but it seems it's a step across in her grandfather's generation, back one and step across again, back again and step across........

It's still a nice thing to have, and joins about half a dozen other indentures/mortgage documents that litter branches just off centre in my tree but I'm cursing FMP as they consistently transcribe two of her male ancestors with female names in the census and it's really slowing me down proving the connection.

The auction ended soon after I found the item hence me jumping in. I wish I had saved the search and contacted the seller after the auction ended as there were no other bidders.

Sounds like you had a bit of fun with it anyway, Glen, and that's nothing to sneeze at these days!

The surname, occupation and address has to be the same family, just not as close as I thought it was initially. The big nightmare is that a common forename in the family is Audley but the FMP transcribers can't fathom that, they use every possible variation but never get it right.

I'm struggling to work out if "Aubrey" in one census is "Dudley" in the next then "Audrey" in the two that follow. I've submitted a dozen corrections so far just by glancing at the images.

You would not be the first to jump onto something that looks promising, but turns out not to be what you thought. But keep it for the future, you never know what might turn up in further research.

Those tricky first names can be so frustrating when transcribed - especially when you look at the image and can see it clearly. I found Bilby transcribed as Bailey and all sorts of other odd things and Exton as Emma. The wrong sex ascribed does not help.

I guess fore-knowledge of the name also helps. I have also put in lots of corrections recently but I dont know of anyone else researching the family at the moment.

It's frustrating me now.

A village that's barely more than a crossroads, three families with the same surname, a village shop that seems to move from one lot to another. In the census they swap kids with each other (niece, nephew, cousin as relationships), but the baptism records for the crucial period suggest they are three yarns from different jumpers but all the same shade of black.

I've just downloaded a will, most wills I've got are one page typed things leaving very little to one person, of course this one is five pages long and appears to be written by a spider with pencil lead tied to each leg and a passion for running in random patterns.