Other than records and memories kept by a family, the best way to begin any research is with a family history research website. There are a number available and one or two are even free. However if your research is going to be serious and if your hobby is time restricted, then a paid for research site is the best way forward. Would it be surprising if I was to say that Ancestry is probably the most popular and also the most effective? However it can also be a very frustrating search engine.
Think about the most popular first names of the 19th Century and then attach them to surnames that are not too complicated. Then start searching. The hundreds if not thousands of names that can be thrown up can be bewildering. You may be lucky if the search puts your ancestor to the top of the list. But that does not always happen.
Then you think you have found your Great Great Grandfather but can you always prove it from one record? It is necessary to search for other records to confirm the information that you have. One method is to use the Census returns to gather very specific information about your ancestors family. This enables a comparison with information in birth and marriage records. In many cases this is not too difficult. However, it can be easy to ‘claim’ a result as being yours when it has not been confirmed by the rest of your research.
And then there is the short cut. After years of operation and fine tuning, most research sites will have the means of also telling you about other people’s research. Ancestry.com is particularly clever with this, always keeping you in touch with additional information that might be of help. Or not.
And so to Thomas Wilcox. He was my Great Great Grandfather and I am almost absolutely sure that he was born in 1825. Am I ?
This is Thomas’s Baptism Register entry dated 4 April 1825. This is not his date of birth but other researchers searching this family may have decided to record it as such. It tells us the names of his parents, my Great Great Great Grandparents, William and Sarah Wilcox. William was a Coach Proprietor in Park Lane, Towcester. This is a leafy lane that comes out of the High Street and leads South from the town. I am describing this as a result of looking at a Google map and realise that one of the challenges of family history research is the need to actually visit these places that are discovered from records.
Remember that I said that a popular or common name can confuse the search? Another Thomas Wilcox was born in the same month in the South West of England.
The 1851 Census Show both my Gr Gr Gr Grandparents, William and Sarah, who are described as Ostler and Ostlers wife. This makes sense if, when their son Thomas was born, William was described as a Coach Proprietor. They had six children still living at home as well as a married daughter and her two year old son. The Census returns recorded all those people actually staying in the house on the day of the count and so the last two may have been visiting.
At the bottom of the Census return are Thomas and Elizabeth, my Gr Gr Grandparents. They are both described as Farm Labourers and they have yet to have a family.
So far I have discovered that the Wilcox family came from Northamptonshire. Towcester is less than sixty miles North of London. Initially a Coach Proprietor, then an Ostler, William and Sarah had eight children. Their son Thomas and his wife Elizabeth were starting out. They were married in May 1850 at the Parish Church of Towcester.
I am fascinated by other entries in the registries and census returns that I find. The Vicar has recorded the ages of my Great Grandparents as ‘Full Age’ meaning that they were adults over the age of 21. Above their entry is a couple where the bride is described as a ‘Minor’. In the 19th Century it was possible for a girl to marry at the age of 12 and a boy at the age of 14, under ecclesiastical law. Although minor could also mean under the age of 21.
However, the plot thickens. I don’t have any evidence of William and Sarah’s marriage, nor do I have evidence of William’s Birth. I dig deeper and discover that my Wilcox relatives did not start their lives in Towcester. William was born in 1796 in the little village of Sulgrave, about twelve kilometres from Towcester. His parents were John and Elizabeth.
And this leads me to William and Sarah’s marriage. They were both Sulgrave residents and they were definitely of full age. John was 34 in 1830 when they married.
Have you spotted the same problem that I have ?
I started this post by saying how frustrating it is to search a family history using a search engine such as Ancestry. It throws up all sorts of suggestions from other peoples searches. In this instance was my Great Great Grandfather really 34 when he got married ? And did he and Sarah have their first born five years earlier ? Not out of wedlock, because William’s Baptism record states who his parents were. Now have a look at Sarah and where she is from. Nowhere near Towcester. It may be the right couple and it may be the wrong couple.
I shall be researching this again and will come back to this story, hopefully with better information and confirmation about these interesting ancestors of mine.