Too many possible children
Many of my ancestors come from England, specifically from the Lancashire area. I have run into a wall where there are people with the similar names in the same area and it makes it look like they had over 30 children. The wife's name is Betty (Betsey, Elizabeth, Lizzie etc) Betty Elizabeth Rawstorn LHD7-YLL And I know they can't be all the same person because the children are born 3 months apart in some cases. Her husband's name is very common too. I am hoping to get some ideas on how to separate these children and parents correctly. I am guessing I will need to go to the Parish level to glean them out and get the correct families in order. Everything appears to be in or near Blackburn area. There appears to be a ton of Robinson's in this same area as well.
Any ideas from this England research group would be helpful
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As you suggest, you will need to look carefully at each record to determine which family a child belongs to. Unfortunately the period is too long before census records which normally help a lot in these situations.
A few thoughts
- Look carefully at the locations of baptisms. It is unusual for children to be baptised in different places. Sometimes the first child is baptised in a different location but after that it is uncommon. Just looking at the first four children - they are all baptised in different locations - highly unlikely.
- Look for marriages of a John Robinson to an Elizabeth (plus variants) in the area. List locations and dates. Marriages will not necessarily be in the same location as baptisms but more likely than not. I see the marriage to Elizabeth Rawstorm was in 1787. The first two children were baptised before that date - highly unlikely. A first child being baptised less than 9 months after marriage is quite common.
- Look for duplicate children's names. It is quite common to re-use a name if the first child died but not otherwise. You will thus need to check for burial records of infant children.
Have fun!
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Further to Graham's excellent summary of the checks you will need to make, I would warn that this exercise will need a good deal of your time and patience. Unless you have a few, solid days clear, I would decide that it is best to spread the necessary work over an unspecified period of time, otherwise the mess could easily cause you some stress.
Remember, you will need not only to detach relationships, but also to remove many of the attached sources, as well. All those Alternate Names look rather messy and usually there are Custom Events to be removed and Collaborate notes to be added, too. You might also wish to find the correct parents for many of the children listed here, which might prove to be the most difficult part of the task in tidying up Betty's profile.
Having worked on similar projects (though probably with not quite so many "children") I don't envy you in this task. However, I recently needed to deal with Lancashire records and found FamilySearch, Find My Past and Ancestry have between them a good set of parish records, compared with the case with many other English counties.
In evaluating the likelihood of some of these children belonging to this family, I would probably keep a (Google) map open and keep examining the distances between the different parishes of baptism, etc., whereby you might find you can be fairly confident in ruling out some of those alleged to be related, due to the pure impracticality of a family constantly moving many miles in a short period of time during the eighteenth century.
I'm sure Graham or I would be willing to offer advice on any specific queries you might encounter, but best wishes for now in any attempt to get these records in a more realistic / accurate state than is currently presented here.
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Having a brief period of free time I decided to have a quick look at this family. Taking just one example - Mary Robinson MLZ4-7GT. Firstly, the christening being about three years before the parents' marriage raises some doubt as to her belonging in this family. Then there is the fact that the place of christening is some 15 miles from the "parents' marriage took place. Not out of the question, but worth thinking about. Also, there is a second christening source added to her ID - one for a 1796 event at Great Sankey, about 19 miles from Bolton. Finally, her burial (in 1804) is recorded at Deane (about 2 miles from the marriage place), so a possible match, although only the father (John Robinson of Gt. Bolton) is named and no age given for the child. (Update - I just noted an 1803 christening source for a Rochdale event added, too!)
So, the records of three or four (possibly five) individuals named Mary Robinson (a very common name in Lancashire) could be mixed-up here. This might give you some idea of the task on your hands in correctly identifying the correctly listed children of this couple, as well as detaching those who are not connected and detaching the many wrongly added sources, too.
I would set myself a few, solid days - possibly longer - in attempting to sort out the facts. Even then, you will still probably be left with doubts. Later on in time (as Graham says) you would have had census records to confirm names, ages and places of birth. But dealing with the Robinson surname in Lancashire in the eighteenth century is going to require a lot of effort, even judging by that one ID I checked-out.
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@Graham Buckell thank you I know it will take some time and patience. I appreciate your input.
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Hello Charlene
One recommendation I would make for sorting a possibly misconstrued collection of family members in FamilySearch, is to construct what you consider to be the correct family in a third party Family History programme, or even just by using a few Pedigree Charts and Family Group sheets. This will allow some clarity of structure as you work through the information you have and attempt to piece the family together.
Cheerio for now!
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@DavidBeck1 Thank you for that idea. I am going to map it all out on paper family group records and a pedigree chart so I don't end up tearing my hair out on separating 34 children.
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Do you know of a good map for Lancashire England that shows both the parishes and the Chapelries?
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Not sure about chapelries but a good map to show parishes and other boundaries is
Use the layers tab
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Thank you for helping on this.
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Just looking at the recent changes will maybe help. There have been around 30 merges made to Elizabeth. If any came with children as well, they may possibly be separated out by undoing some merges. Many have merged various Bettys with widely different birth years. This is usually a sign that they may be different people. As you can see from the sources, there are none with a double name. Choose Betty or Elizabeth and put the other under alternate name. Since the first record for her states Betty, you may want to start with that. You can look at the first family that was entered in 2012 and begin there. You may also notice that some of the children that were merged in, were indexed records that once stood on their own. They had sources attached and their ordinances were done. Be careful when you separate them out Maybe you could attach them to their original parents? If any of these families have been submitted before 2012, you may be able to find them in Genealogies under Search and use that to separate out some. Making sure you look at the actual images of sources will help. Many show place of birth (residence in some village or street) and maybe occupation of the father. That will be crucial to your task.
It is sad that many think a couple of names in Lancashire is all it takes to make a conglomerate of many different John Robinsons married to a Betty.
Good luck.
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Further to Carole's comments, I just spent two whole days sorting out the different William Davison and wife "Margaret" records that users had identified as relating to the same couple when, in fact, records attached to one couple applied to several different families. Apart from the names, the other things they had in common were living in the north east of England (Northumberland & Durham) during the same time period, and having children with similar identities, too. However, in spite of a clear difference in the identity of one of the daughters of each (both named Margaret, but of different counties and born five years apart), a user had added all sources and relationships (including spouse and children) to the "wrong" Margaret Davison.
Just to illustrate how everything needs close investigation (and the unlikely should never be ruled out) I found the Margaret Davison who had had a whole family added died unmarried, aged 80, in a town over 300 miles from her home town. Over the years (census records showed) she had lived in different parts of England with her two sisters (one also a spinster), who also died in Sussex, within a few years of Margaret.
Okay, none of this is of direct relevance to your example, but does show (and I have found this in other examples) that the family of the same name (Robinson, in your case) usually, but not necessarily is the one who is connected to one area (of, say, Lancashire). So whilst I would not discourage your use of maps to make the most likely links, I would not rule out any alternatives.
Sorry this does not sound like encouraging advice, but the upside of these types of unclear / tangled relationships is the great satisfaction when you (finally) can slot everyone into the correct position in their respective Family Tree branches. Very hard work, but well worth the effort when there is a final, positive outcome. I hope you share a similar outcome to mine.
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A very very good source of detailed information about people in Lancashire is the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk website. This contains a very extensive set of transcriptions of Parish Registers.
Have a look at https://www.lan-opc.org.uk. The navigation is a bit odd. Best start is: left menu "Parishes in Lancashire"; pick the parish and search. In the search window you can widen the search out to the whole county if need be ("location").
Julian
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To all who have commented on this conundrum I looked yesterday in the find function in FamilySearch and found 4900 instances of a John Robinson married to a Betty, Elizabeth, Betsey etc. Some of these may need to be merged but 4900 is huge. Removing children from my John Robinson and Betty and trying to add those displaced children to their correct John Robinson and Betty as parents is going to be very difficult. I am using maps and the Parishes in Lancashire to figure out at least where the child is born, then try and find the respective parents by the christening place and add them to that family. I just do not want the child that I remove to show up in research hints again for my John and Betty. I am going to watch for that possible reoccurrence of research hints and dismiss those after I get the correct family together. I hope by dismissing those research hints I do not completely mess up the algorithms for research hints but I have to remove the incorrect children. I am just going to tackle one child at a time and put details for their removal in collaboration notes so that if they get added again I will know where they belong. I would like to ask the community if you think that a 5 mile range is about the correct thinking of where they would go to have a child christened. That is my assumption right now but I would like your feed back. I know that my John Robinson was a Weaver in the textile area and am guessing that they would not be moving much or going great distances to have a child christened.
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The idea of dismissing those baptised outside of a five mile radius does seem perfectly reasonable, especially for that time period. However, census records show my coal miner relatives with children born at very long distances apart (say within a ten year period) as they evidently did move long distances to find work. Perhaps textile weaving employment was inclined to be more localised, however.
Yes, you probably would benefit from a variety of opinions on this matter - but they wouldn't necessarily concur, of course!
I have had "similar" problems, but on nothing like the scale as you seem to be experiencing here.
Best wishes!
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I would echo the comments about a five mile radius being perfectly reasonable. Also if somebody is from out of the immediate area there will sometimes be a note on the record to that effect.
You should try to capture all the information available on the original record. Lancashire Online Parish Clerks is good for this because they do a full transcription. For example you may be able to group by father's occupation. I also suggest trying to identify and focussing on the wife's maiden name, as the distinguishing factor.
I have found that putting the information on a table (see below) can be helpful. You can then play around moving children between couples simply by cut and paste until you come up with a plausible pattern.
You will probably be able to exclude groups of children who are clearly part of a specific family, leaving fewer to be slotted in elsewhere.
Also consider the pattern of children. A couple is unlikely to have no children for five years after marriage and then one a year for the next five.
Another clue when, as in this case, the individuals just precede civil registration may be to pick up their children in the England censuses particularly 1851.
Hope this is helpful
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