Christopher Eccles (MFFFFF)

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Originally Posted by kiterunner

I have some low matches like that on ThruLines where I know the connection shown by Ancestry is completely wrong.

Yes, I have some others as well. But at 18 and 13 cM, the match is surely not a false positive like the smaller ones can be. Now, all the ThruLines have been removed, but matches remain.

Over the last several weeks, I have been collecting all the references I can from Ancestry, familysearch and the Lancashire Parish Records, for all Christopher Eccles.

I have not found many baptisms between 1787 and 1794, so I spread the net a little wider, thinking that the person who registered his death may not have known his real age.

Christopher as a name seems especially prevalent around Darwen (Over and Lower) and Blackburn, so I concentrated there first.

I found six baptisms from 1783 to 1790 but also 4 burials of infants/children. So that left two - Christopher baptised to John and Catherine in 1783, and Christopher baptised to Margaret in 1786. The age is a little out to the death cert and even the census but both old enough to marry in 1826.

Then there were two Peggy Eccles baptised in 1761, and but only one John (in that generation) and he was the brother of one of the Peggys!. John and Peggy were the children of Christopher and Esther, so either could have named their son after their father. Or was Christopher (Margaret's illegit son) named after his father, who was not an Eccles? The other Peggy was baptised to John and Ann.

I looked at the naming patterns in my family - throughout the 19th century, they seem to have followed the traditional pattern of 1st son named after maternal grandfather, 2nd son named after paternal grandfather. Right up down to my grandfather. Not that that really helps.

Now I have started on trying to put together all the different Eccles families in Darwen and Blackburn - it's going to take a while.