Where can I find a detailed map of Chapelries and respective Parishes in Lancashire, England?
Much of my ancestor's on my father's side come from Lancashire, England. I recognize that that area is highly populated and of course everyone had very common names. I have one couple that have 32 children. Some of the children are born with 2 or 3 months of each other which is biologically impossible. Other relatives in Lancashire have the same problem, (common names with far too many children). In looking further I can see that the children are all Christened in various chapelries even the same parish. My theory is that the parents probably did not go to various chapelries to have their children christened. So I am thinking if I can find a detailed map that shows the chapelries and the parishes I can remove the children that are christened in a chapelry that is not in walking distance of the parents abode.
The names in England, especially at that time, are very common (John, Thomas,Joseph, Betty (Elizabeth, Lizzie, Bessie, Eliza and all the various forms of Elizabeth) etc. And with the commonality of the names in a highly populated area I just have to get the correct children with the correct parents in a normal biological birth order. I can only think of the Chapelry factor to figure out how to get the family members correct.
I would appreciate any ideas on this as I am sure other people have this same issue.
Respostas
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I generally use Google maps for this kind of exercise. Just enter the names of the two chapelries in question (or even multiple placenames) and you will quickly see how far apart they are, and the feasibility of different families of the same name being closely related.
Of course, this only works if a placename has remained unchanged over the years. And, of course, there is always the situation whereby the event that took place at the other end of the county turns out to be the relevant one, whereas the one that took place in the next chapelry / parish did not relate to your family at all!
Here is an example of how I would look for "likely" relatives in the Burnley area:
If I find one of my relatives might have married at Lancaster, I can assess whether that was likely, given the distance from Burnley - compared to the events at Nelson, Accrington, etc., which I have found to be connected:
Other than that, if you have access to publications like "The Phillimore Atlas & Index of Parish Registers" you can find excellent parish maps for around the 1812-37 period, although some of these are likely to be online, too.
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Other options include
- Interactive map in 1851 at https://www.familysearch.org/mapp/
- Parish locator - a free program - great for finding distances between parishes and listing parishes within a given radius of a parish http://www.benynet.me.uk/ (note this is not a secure site so your anti-virus software may not approve).
As you have noted, families with the same surname and parents' first names in similar time periods can be quite common and the temptation to merge such families seems to overwhelm some users even when they are many miles apart. I dealt with one where someone had merged a family from Devon with one from Yorkshire. You need to exercise care and patience when splitting them as it is not a simple process and you need to ensure that any attached sources end up attached to the right families
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And if you're short of a means to list off chapelries, or chapelries in specific parishes, start with the FS Wiki for Lancashire Parishes on https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Lancashire_Parishes The links to the parishes should show what chapelries were in that parish (be prepared to be drowned in detail if you choose Blackburn, say!) while further down that page is the way to the individual chapelries marked up with their parish.
There's a lot of work that's gone into those pages - thanks to the Wiki authors.
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