I am doing a lot of "painting by numbers" fh at the moment, to the detriment of house and garden.
I tend to say pompously "Oh it was proper research in the old days, when you trawled through parish registers/censuses etc" This hasn't stopped me stamp collecting best mate's ancestors. I've been diving in and out, getting very irritated at parish clerks who insist on witnessing weddings, so I was really chuffed with Hannah Nockolds. Distinctive signature that I remembered seeing somewhere.
Spent an hour or so looking for her in censuses, found her marriage and guess what, it was witnessed by family members!
Thought I ought to find out who she was, so I worked through all the marriages WRITING DOWN THE DATES.
Whoops.
There was only one marriage she witnessed: it took place on the same day as her own:
