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#1
22-07-18, 09:22
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Browsing v indexes
Spelling is idiosyncratic in early parish registers, so I decided to browse Totnes between 1560 and 1600. I was getting along fine, until I hit 1590, when I ground to a halt. Page after page after page of burials - when plague hit the town. None of the people I was researching died, so had I simply used the indexes, I would never have spotted so important event in the history of the town.
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The chestnuts cast their flambeaux 
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#2
22-07-18, 10:50
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Phoenix
I completely agree with this method! Nothing beats browsing the originals and many things fall into place which would never come together if you didn't browse because you don't know what you don't know till you see it! Three cases in point. A marriage in 1700s, two very common names in my tree, could have been several couples. The original showed not only other couples to eliminate, but the marriage itself was witnessed by no less than 15 people, all family, which enabled me to pin down the correct couple.I A note in the register to say the roof had caved in on the village chapel of ease and that services would take place in another chapel of ease five miles awy, thus explaining a gap in the records and what my relatives were doing out of area. A burial register which, by browsing chronologically, explained that John Green had married three times in 49 years and had produced 29 children! As two of the wives had identical names, merely looking at indexes produced an unfathomable problem. OC
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#3
22-07-18, 18:32
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I always, always use the originals. I'm actually doing a spreadsheet of an entire village - births/marriages/deaths via the original pages. Up to page 21 out of 82. A way to go then. Fascinating though, seeing how the village and its families evolved.
On Ancestry, even among the later parish records, there are so many events that have simply been missed from the indexes.
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#4
22-07-18, 19:53
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Terri
I have several village trees which evolved because there was so much intermarriage before about 1880 and it was actually easier to do a whole village tree than try to pick my way along just my stems. Another thing you rarely see transcribed is the marginal notes made by some spiteful vicar or clerk. One of my favourites is "a great and incontinent whore" haha! OC
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#5
22-07-18, 21:47
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It depends on the size of the parish, though. Easy to browse small parishes, but easy to miss the name you're looking for when browsing a large one.
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#6
22-07-18, 22:22
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Having done all of Norwich and most of North Norfolk for the early census years, Norwich being six reels of microfilm, it is extremely time consuming, but it is sometimes the only way when the spelling is so very different from what you might expect.
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The chestnuts cast their flambeaux
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#7
23-07-18, 16:35
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......and if I hadn't browsed, I probably would still be looking for John Green, whose name was transcribed as John GUBBIN, haha!
OC
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#8
23-07-18, 16:56
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I'll re-issue my challenge to find Linda Lanning in the 1901 census. She is there: we found her. To make things easier, she does appear on the 1891 and 1911 censuses. B circa 1890.
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The chestnuts cast their flambeaux
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#9
23-07-18, 18:24
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Someone's put in Lanning as an alternative surname for her family on ancestry, so she's fairly easy to find now.
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#10
23-07-18, 19:31
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Quote:
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"Something has been filled in that I didn't know was blank" Matthew Broderick WDYTYA? March 2010
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