Well, it’s February since I last posted. That’s why I’ve got the guilty conscience! To be fair, this is a genealogy/family history blog, and in that time I don’t seem to have done very much in the way of research – where has the time gone?
One thing I’ve been looking at is the family tree of a friend. He is descended from the Howsams of Haggworthingham, Lincolnshire. Apart from the Michaelwaites, Lincolnshire is new territory for me. Google Maps was a great help until they “improved” it – I now use Bing. From Haggworthingham, my friend’s branch migrated into Grimsby. There were far more people who married twice than in my own tree, so it was much harder work. I also made some classic errors and went up completely the wrong branch at one point.
I’ve also been looking again at some of the brickwalls in my own tree, and this business of the wrong branch rears its ugly head again. Whilst I found some useful public trees on Ancestry for the Howsams, some were, dare I say, a little fictional. This was also true for one or two of the trees I looked at on my side. For example, I have a Thomas Malpass born about 1790. Several trees show him married to a Mary Wade. The reason is straightforward – FamilySearch has only one marriage for Thomas – to Mary Wade. The real marriage however, backed by certificates, is to Mary Ash, but FamilySearch has mis-transcribed this and he is shown there as Thomas Walpass. You do have to be very, very careful at times. This hobby is not as easy to get right as the adverts would have you believe.
Andy Micklethwaite's Family History Blog 