Genealogy Chat

I have made yet another visit to E. Sussex records office in a failed attempt to extricate two families in the same parish at the same time with the same names. Can anyone bring a fresh approach to my attempt to unravel which children belonged to whom. Couple 1 Thomas Waterhouse (b1855) and Mary Eastwood, married Burwash 1776. Couple 2 Thomas Waterhouse (1768-1803) and Mary Wood, married Burwash 1790. Between them they have (at least) 19 children. Eight can be attributed to couple 1 as they are born before 1790. Two can be attributed to couple 2 as they repeat earlier names, (with no sign of the younger children having already died). No children are born later than 1801, before known death date of the younger Thos. Waterhouse. One further child can be attributed to couple 1 as he was born same year as one of the 'repeat' name children born to couple 2. That leaves eight 'non-aligned' kids that are really messing up my tree. I've exhausted the parish CMB records Including searches for the two Marys birth dates) and tracing names further down the line using census returns reveals no clues as to their parentage - it needs someone else to think about another route. All tips gratefully received (apart from giving it up as a bad job!). Darryl

My own ancestors lived in a little village and named their first son William, he died and then they named their next son William. Both sons showed up in the baptisms parish records. It makes it very hard when researching. The only way I could confirm this fact was to purchase copies of the three certiticates, 2 birth and 1 death for the 2 Williams showing the parents names. Good Luck Irene

the only things that springs to mind are: 1. Wills - have you looked for any? Either of the fathers or the children. 2. Parish records - do either of them appear in settlement disputes? Are any records of this nature available for the particular parish? netti

Marriages of the unidentified children - can you tell from the names of the witnesses? And I agree about wills. Kate.

Darryl I really feel for you. I too have a Thomas and Mary in Sussex, with no idea as to which is the right family. It would be worth looking to see if they get any poor relief or appear in settlement examinations. I don't think your family appear in this database, which doesn't cover all of Sussex, but you might find it useful for other branches: http://was.westsussex.gov.uk/poorLaw/poorlaw.jsp Good luck!

Thanks everyone for all the sound advice - I have some new avenues to pursue. Darryl

This isn't infallible, and depends a lot on the data that you do have - but have you tried plotting out timelines for each couple, to see when the most likely gaps are for when they could have had children? What I mean is - allow at least 6 months between one birth and the next pregnancy, or in other words 15 months between births for each Mary. Do any of the ''undecided'' births fit neatly into these gaps? Can you rule any of them out as being too close to another birth for one Mary, hence by process of elimination you can assign them to the other? Remember too that the gap between births generally increases as the woman gets older - from around 18 months or less in her early 20's to three years or more as she approaches menopause. Because you have a difference of 14 years or so between the two Marys, this might also help. You also have to be wary of the fact that you are dealing with baptism dates, not birth dates. Generally speaking, most children were baptised within a couple of months of birth but there were of course exceptions! Another method (which again is by no means 100% reliable!) is that there was often a naming pattern adhered to, such that each child born was named after a specific relative. The following is an example from http://www.usgenweb.org/research/names.shtml : Naming Patterns in England, 1700-1875 1st son -- father's father 2nd son -- mother's father 3rd son -- father 4th son -- father's eldest brother 1st daughter -- mother's mother 2nd daughter -- father's mother 3rd daughter -- mother 4th daughter -- mother's eldest sister To use this method, you would have course need to have taken the trees for both couples back a further generation! Obviously it would be much better to have firm evidence in the form of wills, settlement orders etc as suggested above - but if all else fails, the methods here may at least enable you to ''pencil in'' the problem names to either of the two families. Richard

I am an old hand at this, it recurs time and time again in my tree. The most successful way of sorting this out has been, for me, Monumental Inscriptions. In one case I had FOUR couples, that is, four Thomases, two married to Mary and two to Maragaret. 27 children between them, no impossibly overlapping births etc. When I finally found the Monumental Inscription, all was revealed - and it was the most UNlikely scenario that I had considered - it was one Thomas, married FOUR times, first two to Mary, second two to Margaret. All 29 children were his, born over 40 years!!! His final wife was 20 years younger than his oldest child, dirty old... I had been slightly confused anyway, as he adopted a middle name later in life. The other way is to go backwards, as others have said. This is tedious but sometimes throws up surprising results. I take it you HAVE looked at the original Parish Registers, and not a transcription? Olde Crone

My dear Old Crone, thanks for sharing this information on my thread. Yes, I moved from transcripts to the original documents and initially thought that a second marriage might be an answer, but each Thomas was listed as a bachelor on the wedding register - and the local clergy were punctillious about details. I am interested in the monumental inscription, but doubt whether my folk were of the right social class to have been able to afford an elaborate tombstone... As a sideline, my younger Thomas Waterhouse was noted in the death register as being a smuggler, so I am now wondering if records of local assizes or petty sessions might be able to shed some light on his family status. And thanks again to all those who have contributed to this puzzle. Darryl

Darryl Re lines of your thread 'couple 1 Thomas Waterhouse ( b1855) and Mary Eastwood married Burwash 1790' Have I read this correctly? If I have then how can a person b 1855 have married in 1790?? I have many a William Noble b of william Noble but a prolonged study of the parish registers usually reveals all eventually with some marriages in a nearby village or town and a return to the 'home' village for children. Re possibility of second marriage or even 3 or 4 marriage. This happened all the time as so many women died in childbirth back then. In many villages a sister would often help with looking after children and might then end up marrying the person concerned. This was not legal then so if Thomas wanted to marry a sister of his deceased wife then he may go to another village or town where he was not well known and pass himself off as a batchelor rather than a widower and this sort of thing happened more often than we may realise. Janet

Two points: My man was a Day Labourer for most of his life, but still managed a tombstone - well, several actually. His daughter paid for the last one, and for all I know, someone else paid for them all. Dont be TOO sure about the Vicar 'getting it right' - one of my four marriages as described above, had my man desribed as a bachelor, when he was in fact a widower. I take this to be a slip of the pen on the Vicar's part. Go backwards and come forwards - you may finish up knowing that both your Thomas's were the grandsons of the same man, and while this wont help you to sort out the children, you can put them all in a box and proceed backwards from the Grandfather, while you wait more information to take the children out of their holding pen! Olde Crone