Matching the Pairs [or finding who out who married who]

Do you remember the childhood games using either cards or a manufactured game where you had to match the pairs? Well I think I'd rather play that then try and match the marriages in the family tree.


All right, they've all got to be verified but I have quite a few people who are married to ??,?? as in no Christian name, no surname, only a marriage quarter date from the pre 1912 BMD Indices.


This is the POA {Plan of Action}


1. Find the couple on the next census [Only works if the date is before 1911]


2.Try and match the Christian names plus the known surname {not always Dennell}.


Enter this information as 'questionable' in my software until I verify it.


OK in theory but in reality:-


1 Find the couple in the next census = Oh if it were only that easy. What with Misspellings and Mistranscripts it can take days of searching. I will one day list how many John and Thomas Dennells I have references for on the census dates and how many I have actually found on the census. Anyway eventually I have found quite a few that way.


2 Look for the match on a website = Works fine until there are more than one spouse with the relevant Christian name on the same page as the originating person, e.g. 1 John Dennell but 3 Sarah's of various surnames.


Which Sarah to choose? I'll leave them to stew a bit longer.


3 Entering them into my software is the easy part, sometimes I put Sarah as Whatever-Whomever etc.,giving her a faux double barrelled name hoping the choice of surnames will one day spring out at me. Possibly finding one of the choices being the family name of a set of neighbours or working in the same industry.


Then there is the problem of people's memories. Being told by elderly relatives that their parents' names were Nellie and Harry only to discover, EVENTUALLY, that they were Eleanor and Henry but he did have a brother called Harry. One person filled in a questionnaire for me with completely the wrong maiden name for his mother, and he wasn't that old!! Looking at the BMD Index for his birth showed a completely different mother's maiden name from the one he gave me.


Just goes to show NEVER trust people's minds, least of all your own!


The Next project is making sure I have all the Census entries and have entered them into my software - I'll let you know


P.S. If someone IS reading these outpourings please let me know


Anyone who has looked at my other blogs [MSNewby & Birth of Website] will know that I am disabled and therefore unable to do anything sometimes, even for a considerable amount of time - there said it! - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to that.
Well, no joy finding John Dennell [born c.1703] through my inability to travel lately.
However, a Dennell census entry that has been eluding me has been found. Although I haven't yet connected this family to mine, the fact that they are around in the 1861 Census and 1881 Census but nowhere to be found on the 1871 Census was really bugging me.


Lateral thinking was needed so I searched for one of the children on a different website. YES!! found the widow named Amelia listed as a widow living with her married daughter. Now I like to keep copies of the Census images as BMP files but this particular website would allow DJVu copies so what to do next? I took all the reference details and went back to my [at that time] favoured site, loaded in the complete reference and looked for Amelia but still no match!!??
Next move = still using the complete reference enter no names but anyone of the correct age or thereabouts and there it was - Smeila Darwell! So now I have the census image and I can move on to others. Mostly researching my Mother's side of the family of Peat, Weston [Wesson], Bagshawe [Bradshaw] and Wakefield.


One day there WILL BE a Denne[i]ll website that will show the entire family tree but as yet it is still my 'baby' and I don't want people 'stealing' the information and not giving me the credit, so keep your eyes peeled for that.


Happy hunting