Genealogy

chico8

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Daverock said:
I have come across more than one household in my lines where the youngest of the children on the census records are probably Grandchildren of the Householders being passed off as their own children. This was quite common in the past as a way of saving face for unmarried daughters. Of course they could be perfectly accurate records as menopause pregnancies were common too. There is no earthly way of knowing the truth.

My nature is such that I don't like dealing with uncertainty and knowing that I may have some of the lines wrong in my tree through these possible inaccuracies bugs me.

Has anyone else come across similar in their searches and how did you draw conclusions from what you found?

The only way to do this is include your suspicions in the genealogical record. I have made a few guesses about various aspects of my family, a couple of them aren't very flattering to the people involved. I don't know if I'll ever be able to verify them but I've included them nonetheless in case someone 40 years down the road would like to continue the research.

DNA testing may become very cheap in the future and additional information may be found. Genealogical research is less a science and more of an art and other people may come up with different conclusions.
 

DaveyR

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chico8 said:
The only way to do this is include your suspicions in the genealogical record. I have made a few guesses about various aspects of my family, a couple of them aren't very flattering to the people involved. I don't know if I'll ever be able to verify them but I've included them nonetheless in case someone 40 years down the road would like to continue the research.

DNA testing may become very cheap in the future and additional information may be found. Genealogical research is less a science and more of an art and other people may come up with different conclusions.

Thanks for that Chico - good point. I will do an update with further notes on my conclusions.
 

B_Stronzo

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Oh just retire Dave to that "stately home" you own in the North of England and be done with it!:cool:

The ancestral portraits lining the stairway all have name plates for goodness sake.
 

DaveyR

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Stronzo said:
Oh just retire Dave to that "stately home" you own in the North of England and be done with it!:cool:

The ancestral portraits lining the stairway all have name plates for goodness sake.

I told you already I lost it in a poker game last week.
 

D_Claude Hopper

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This was an interesting read.

Geneology has been something I worked on quite diligently for 10 years before I was through with my fathers side ( a damn burned courthouse in illinois was a dead end for the longest time). My mother's side is the difficult one for me, especially her father, and adoptee, and Kansas law won't allow me to go after records. The irony is that I even have his mothers name, know his lineage, have pictures of relatives of his from Canada in a tee-pee, and so on, but paperwork is a bummer. Damn it can be frustrating!
 

oldman9x7

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Anyone here know of an old firm that did searches - the name was Rix and they published many of their works in book form.

My father owned two volumes on our family name of Eastman. I never read all of them but I did find some wonderful stories about some of my supposed ancestors. According to Rix there was originally only one, Roger Eastman, who came to these shores from England although he was of Scottish birth. He arrived on these shores in the year 1640 and the thought for a number of centuries was that everyone of that name was related. I feel sure that that would not be true today.

Gramps