Newsletter – 17th
March 2023
Negative Space: using research gaps to
grow your family tree GUEST EXPERT
Last chance to save at
The Genealogist ENDS SUNDAY
Ancestry wins contract
to digitise WW2 service records
1931 Canada census to
be released in June
Clergy of the Church
of England database
A tangled web – can you
help solve the mystery?
Save up to 50% at
Ancestry.com ENDS TODAY
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Negative Space: using research gaps to grow your family
tree GUEST EXPERT
This
guest article has been contributed by Dr. Sophie Kay who
recently spoke to the Society of Genealogists on this important topic.(Website:
www.khronicle.co.uk Blog: www.parchmentrustler.com)
Ah,
jigsaw puzzles. The frustration of attempting to piece them together gives way
to the joy of seeing the completed image resolve before you. This scenario sounds all too familiar to
the keen family historian... who, after all, is simply working with a different
kind of jigsaw puzzle.
Which
brings me on to the issue of gaps.
Why
should we pay attention to research gaps?
When
you’re working with a jigsaw, you acknowledge the holes in the picture from the
very start. Just because you’ve pieced together a single cat at the edge of the
frame, you don’t assume that the entire picture is full of cats. So why, in our
family history research, do we sometimes assume too much about an ancestor’s
life based only on a small number of evidence points?
Gaps
matter, because the ancestral story we see is the result of the evidence and
the gaps taken together. Ignoring our research gaps can seriously alter how we
interpret the evidence. So let’s introduce my Negative
Space method, which harnesses the power of your research gaps to shape your
onward searches for an ancestor.
What
is Negative Space?
I
use the term “negative space” to describe any part of your ancestor’s timeline
where you lack documentary evidence for where they were or what they were
doing. That absence of evidence can seem daunting, but it also holds a wealth
of possibilities for us to explore.
When
confronted with a gap in your jigsaw, you don’t just grab pieces at random and
try them to see if they fit. Instead, you use clues from the edges of each gap:
colours, shapes, details, to suggest what kind of pieces you need to look for
next. Apply this same principle to the negative space in your ancestral research.
Characterising your gaps will give clues as to which record sets to pursue.
Let’s
see how you can go about identifying and using negative space for a single
individual in your family tree.
First:
visualise your research
You need
to see where the negative space is to make use of it, so always start by
visualising the evidence you have in chronological order. Timelines are
great for this, but they’re not the only way. You might use a spreadsheet
padded out with extra rows to reflect the gaps.
Second:
ask what’s happening at the edge of your research gaps
Examine
the start (A) and end (B) of each piece of negative space and revisit the
documentary evidence you have for your ancestor at these points. Where are
they, and what’s happening in their wider family?
Every
gap for your ancestor falls into one of three types:
If
they’re in a different place at A and B they’re a voyager,
because they’ve definitely travelled. Search for evidence of
migration: this could mean exploring passenger manifests, settlement
and removal records – perhaps even institutional records.
If
your ancestor is in the same place at A and B, then they might be a rester who’s stayed put – or they could be a boomerang
that’s moved away and then returned, possibly more than once.
You can’t tell resters and boomerangs apart without actually
doing the research, so keep an open mind. If you suspect a rester, then search for evidence of continuous residence
using taxation records, electoral rolls or parish
registers. If these don’t bear fruit, a boomerang may be more likely and you should explore similar migration sources to
those for a voyager.
You
can see an example in the timeline picture – what approach would you take to
the negative space in this case?
Third:
context is vital
Compare
your negative space with your ancestor’s overall timeline. How old are they and
what phase of their life are they in during the gap? A young man might be a
prime candidate for military service; an elderly pauper might be at risk of
ending up in the workhouse. These ideas stimulate searches in specific record
sets.
Also
set your ancestor’s timeline against local, national
and global events, such as conflicts, workers’ strikes and urbanisation. How
might these influence where they would go or what they might be doing?
Reap
the benefits!
Confronting
that negative space prompts you to explore a wider range of records and keep an
open mind about your brick walls – so it helps your tree to grow rich with new
stories and collateral lines. Embrace the gaps in your research and you’ll open
your eyes to the wealth of narratives you have yet to discover!
If
you’re keen to learn more about this approach, you might enjoy my articles Negative Space and Mind the Gap. I’ll be speaking
about Negative Space at the Society
of Genealogists in July 2023, and the method also forms part of the
syllabus for my brand-new Critical Thinking for Methodology course at Pharos Tutors,
launching in June 2023.
Last chance to save at The Genealogist ENDS SUNDAY
You’ve
got just 5 days to take advantage of the exclusive offer I’ve arranged with The
Genealogist: you can get their top subscription, a Diamond subscription, for
less than £100 – not just in the first year, but every year! Plus, in the first
year you’ll also get a bundle of digital resources that will take your savings to
over £100.
The
Genealogist is not just another place to search the England & Wales censuses
– though if you’re struggling to find someone it’s well worth a try, not only because
they have a different transcription and a different search engine, but also because
their keyword search makes it possible to find records that you might never
spot at other sites.
For
example, let’s suppose I’d had difficulty finding my ancestor Edward Noakes and
his son George in the 1841 Census. They were both wheelwrights, born in the
village of Fyfield, Essex but by 1841 they had moved to
London. In that census birthplaces aren’t shown, but at The Genealogist I can
search using the keyword ‘wheelwright’ , which makes
it much easier to find them. In this case their surname had been correctly
transcribed, and of the four wheelwrights called Noakes in that census, two of
them are my relatives. But had their name been misread, or illegible, as so
often happens in 1841 (since it was completed in pencil), being able to search
on their occupation could have been vital.
However
the main attractions of The Genealogist are the record sets that you won’t find
at the major genealogy websites, such as Tithe Records and Tithe Maps, and the
1910 Valuation (usually referred to as the ‘Lloyd George Domesday’), and the ongoing
project to connect census records to Map Explorer, which you can see demonstrated
here.
To
see what you will get for £99.95 just follow this link
– but don’t delay, otherwise you could miss out!
Ancestry
wins contract to digitise MoD records
Thr National Archives have announced that the
contract for digitising the military records that are in the process of being
transferred from the Ministry of Defence has been awarded to Ancestry. Three million
records for personnel who served after 1920 will be made available exclusively
at Ancestry between 2024-2029.
1931 Canada census to be released in June
Library
and Archives Canada will be releasing the 1931 Census, which enumerated 10,376,786
people, on 1st June this year. Initially the images will be
available to browse, but Ancestry will use their handwriting recognition
technology to transcribe the data, with help from FamilySearch volunteers who
will check the transcriptions.
How
good is Ancestry’s handwriting recognition software, and how long will it take?
When the 1940 US Census was released it took 9 months to produce a transcription
using conventional methods, but the 1950 US Census was, amazingly, transcribed
in just 9 days. I don’t know what Ancestry’s target will be, but I’ll be
surprised if I’m not able to search the census by name during June.
Take a look at the 1732 marriage entry for John Pegler
and Ann Thomas, taken from the register of St Martin’s church in the parish of
Horsley, Gloucestershire:
© Image provided by Gloucestershire
Archives. All Rights Reserved. Used by kind permission of Ancestry
You
will see that it reads John Pegler &
Ann Thomas were half married Augt 11th
and that the curate later wrote I proceed no further,
because they paid me but one half viz: 2s-6d
In
relation to income, five shillings in 1732 is the equivalent of more than £500
today, so I’m not surprised that the unhappy couple struggled to come up with
the full amount.
It
seems there was no happy ending to this story: two years later John Pegler
married Lydia Prout in the same parish.
Note:
many thanks to Anita for sending me this example.
It’s
not unusual to find that a couple married twice – usually this is because the
first marriage was clandestine. In my experience the most common situation involves
soldiers, who required the permission of their commanding officer to marry – the
second marriage would have taken place after that permission was given (which
may have been some years later).
In
the past few weeks two examples of double marriages have been discussed on the
LostCousins forum – you can read the discussion here,
even if you’re not yet a member of the forum.
Clergy of the Church of England database
You
don’t need to have clergymen in the family to make use of the Clergy of the Church of England
database. For example, when I was researching the “half marriage” mentioned
earlier in this newsletter I was not only able to find the name of the curate
whose insistence on being paid in full prevented two of his parishioners from
being joined in Holy Matrimony, but also establish that he died the following
year from natural causes.
Funded
by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Clergy of the Church of
England website covers the period 1540-1835, and is completely free. For more
recent records the best source is Crockford’s
Clerical Directory, and you can search editions from 1868, 1874, 1885,
1898, 1908 and 1932 at Ancestry.
A tangled web – can you help solve the mystery?
Terri generously donated
an Ancestry DNA kit for my recent competition – she asked for nothing in return.
But one good turn deserves another (as Enid Blyton once wrote) so I offered Terri the opportunity to ask members for
assistance with a mystery in her family tree.
Hello,
Lost Cousins members! Peter has graciously allowed me to present one of my ‘brick
walls’ to you in the hopes that someone (or several someones)
will be able to help bring down that wall. This is a 2-part mystery: my
great-grandmother and her mother, my great-great-grandmother seem to have been
abducted by aliens in the first part of the 20th century.
My
grandfather Edward Albert Thompson was born 2 February 1915 in Cleveland,
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to Helen Elvira , wife of Albert
Edward Thompson. He had an older sister named Alice Jean who was born 3
September 1912, also in Cleveland. He claimed to have not known much about his
mother. He had always believed her maiden name was SCHRADER, and his birth
certificate issued by the City of Cleveland seemed to support this “fact”. He
believed she had left the family when he was about 3 years old and took Alice
to live in Florida. He claimed to have not had any contact with either Helen or
Alice until many decades later when he “ran into” Alice in Florida. They argued
and never spoke again. (I firmly believe they argued and never spoke again – he
had that effect on people, as he was lacking in some basic people skills. It’s
his time frame I question.)
Eventually
I obtained the marriage record for Albert and Helen. Lo and behold, Helen’s
maiden name was STREETER not SCHRADER. A closer look at Grandpa’s birth
certificate confirmed this. Albert and Helen were married on 12 December 1911
in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Albert was 21, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to
parents Samuel Thompson and Emma Pearce. Helen was 18, born in Elyria, Lorain
County, Ohio, parents were unknown. According to the marriage record, Helen
would have been born say 1893. This age/date combination conflicts with
Grandpa’s birth certificate which states Helen was age 20 in 1915, so born say
1895.
Albert
Thompson remarried on 31 December 1918 to Rose Pertz/Perz in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. It took me a while to actually pay attention to the marriage record as the
marriage was recorded under the name Robert E. Thompson. All other personal
information for “Robert” matches the known personal information of Albert
including parent’s names and residence. This marriage record indicates that
Robert/Albert was divorced in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1916. No divorce record was
found in Cuyahoga County nor in adjacent Lorain County. Was this second
marriage intentionally recorded under a false name? Was Albert committing
bigamy? The answers are unknown, but it sure seems that way.
Helen
and Alice were likely still living with Albert in 1917. Albert was claiming
exemption from the draft for a wife and 2 children on 5 June 1917. I also have
a portrait of Grandpa and Alice that was probably taken 1917-1918. Grandpa
appears to be about 3 years old.
With
the help of a DNA cousin, we figured out that Helen was the only daughter and
youngest child of George W. Streeter and Maud Harding; according to the 1900
census, she was born July 1895.
©
National Archives and Records Administration
Her
birthplace is unknown but possibly Sandusky County or Erie County, Ohio. She
may have been born in Lorain County, but I doubt it. I think they were trying
to cover for the fact that she was only 16 and they did not have parental
consent. I have not been able to locate her in the 1910 or later censuses. She may
be the Helen Thompson who is aged 25 and a boarder in the household of Charles
F. Ortman in Cleveland in 1920.
Grandpa
wasn’t entirely honest about his knowledge of the whereabouts of his sister
Alice. Alice and her husband Joseph Adam were witnesses to the marriage of my
grandparents in Westfield, Chautauqua County, New York, on 12 October 1935. She
may be the Alice Thompson, age 8, a boarder in the household of Captain and
Alberta MacLachlan in Cleveland in the 1920 census. She was still in the
household of Alberta MacLachlan in Lakewood, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1930.
This time the relationship is given as “ward”. I do not know of any
relationship between the MacLachlans and the Streeter
or Thompson families. It appears that the MacLachlans
were running a children’s home. (Grandpa said he spent some time in a “home”
but never elaborated.)
I’ve
been able to trace the life of Alice (Thompson) Adam through to her death on 2
March 1980 in Palatka, Putnam County, Florida. I was hoping she would lead me
to Helen but no such luck. There are trees on Ancestry.com that attribute a
death date of 1 February 1912 to Helen (Streeter) Thompson. This is obviously not
correct. The Helen Streeter who died 1 February 1912 was only 6 months old when
she died. Some of the “geniuses” on Ancestry have Helen dying on 1 February
1912 and giving birth to Alice that September! Really?!?! Sometimes I really
dislike those little green, shaky leaves!
On
to Part 2. Maud Streeter (née Harding) was born 16 May 1874 in New Haven, Huron
County, Ohio to Hewitt Harding and Alvira/Elvira
Weldon. She married George W. Streeter on 25 September 1890 in Norwalk, Huron
County, Ohio. She married under the name Lillie Maud Harding at age 16 with
parental consent. George and Maud had 4 children: Charles “Jay” Streeter born
23 February 1891 in Fremont, Sandusky County, Ohio (birth record located); Ray
Arthur Streeter born probably July 1892 (some records I’ve found indicated 1891
but that cannot be correct as Charles J. was born in February 1891); Henry Cordlind born about September 1893; and Helen Elvira,
discussed above. No birth records were found in Sandusky County for Ray, Henry or Helen.
The
family was in Sandusky, Erie County, Ohio, in the 1900 census. Maud filed for
divorce in September 1902 in Lorain County, Ohio. The divorce was granted
December 1902. She was granted custody of the children and $1500 alimony.
George was not to have any contact with the children. A lien was supposed to be
attached to any real property which he may have owned. It is believed that Maud
never collected the alimony. My DNA cousin believes Maud had to give up custody
of the children and that Cordlind may have been
adopted by a Smith family; Maud seems to have disappeared after 1902.
Ancestry
gives me a hint for Charles J. Streeter in the 1910 census. Charles and a
woman, likely his mother, named May E. Streeter are boarders in the household
of Frank G. Rose in Manhattan, New York. It’s a close fit but not quite right.
But there is no way to know who gave the information. If Mr. Rose gave the
information, he may not know how many children May Streeter had. He may have
assumed 1 child because he only knew of Charles. Or, most likely, May is not my Maud and this is just a close coincidence.
In
the meantime, George Streeter moved to Indiana. He remarried on 25 September
1913 to Cora B. Stewart. I’m able to trace his life through to his death in
Huntington, Huntington County, Indiana, on 12 August 1931.
I
am attempting to locate the Civil War Pension file of Hewitt Harding, father of
Maud. I am on my 4th attempt. Every repository I contact tells me
they do not have the file and to contact a different repository. My hope is
that Maud supplied an affidavit or is otherwise mentioned in the file. I just
need to figure out which agency has the file. If this attempt doesn’t produce
the needed file, I will have to hire a researcher to locate it.
There
was a Maud Streeter remarried in Cleveland, Ohio, 1939-1941. She is not the
correct Maud. That particular Maud Streeter’s maiden
name was Copelin. There was Maude Harding married Gale V. Smith who is also NOT
the correct Maud.
Sometime,
when life slows down on the curveballs she keeps throwing
to my DNA cousin and me, we want to investigate the life of Harry Cordlind/Courtland Streeter who may have been adopted by a
Smith family. We are not 100% certain that Henry C. Streeter and Henry C. Smith
are one and the same. My DNA cousin has been in contact with one of Henry’s
descendants who agrees this is a possibility. My cousin has not been able to
convince this person to do an Ancestry DNA test even though my cousin will pay
for the test; unfortunately not everyone is on board
with the whole DNA “thing”, as we all know only too well.
I
have tried to locate second marriages for Maud and Helen in Ohio but without a
state-wide database it is next to impossible. I’ve also tried searching for
death certificates but, lacking a state-wide database without gaps it is next
to impossible (with 88 counties in Ohio, it is very time-consuming to search
records in Ohio county-by-county). And then there is the real possibility that
Maud and Helen moved out of state. Only 49 other states to choose from!
I
would really like to know what happened to Helen and Maud. I hope they found
their Happily Ever After.
I
thank all of you for your time. Below are links to Helen and Maud in both my
Ancestry tree and the tree of my DNA cousin. The first two links are to my
Ancestry tree; the second set of links are to his Ancestry tree. He is a
descendant of Maud’s sister Nellie.
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/30718/person/-2143611138/facts
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/30718/person/262370514368
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/153613360/person/102030070352
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/153613360/person/102030069956
You
can message me through Ancestry.com or, better yet, post to the Lost
Cousins forum so that others can see what you’ve
found.
Thank
you for your time.
Tip:
most of the LostCousins forum discussions are visible to everyone but to post a
message, start a new discussion, or view an attachment, you’ll need to be a
member of the forum. If you have qualified for membership
there will be a link and a code on your My Summary page at the main LostCousins
site. The qualification for joining the forum is a Match Potential of 1 or
more. To increase your Match Potential (shown on your My Summary page) simply
add more relatives to your My Ancestors page – it’ll be quickest by far to
enter relatives from the 1881 censuses.
Save up to 50% at Ancestry.com ENDS TODAY
Under
11.59pm ET on Friday 17th March you can save up to 50% on 6 month memberships at Ancestry’s US site, Ancestry.com
Please
use the link below so that you can support LostCousins with your purchase:
Ancestry.com
– SAVE UP TO 50% ON 6 MONTH MEMBERSHIPS ENDS 17TH
MARCH
DNA
tests are also discounted at Ancestry.com until Friday:
Ancestry.com
– SAVE $40 ON DNA ENDS 17TH MARCH
It’s
not all conspiracy theorists and chatbots on Twitter – this week I was reading an
interesting thread
posted by Martin Patience, a former BBC foreign correspondent, which explained how
a birthday gift led to him discovering an unexpected link to a famous actor.
Tip:
you don’t need to be a member of Twitter to follow the link and read the story.
To
the best of my knowledge I’ve yet to be linked to any
famous actors, but my brother recently had a match with a famous author and
journalist – though as he (the author) doesn’t currently have an online tree
the chances of finding how we’re related are pretty small.
But, interesting though such connections might be,
the real reason genealogists test their DNA isn’t to find cousins but to knock
down ‘brick walls’ – and in that respect it’s just like LostCousins. Interesting
though it might be to connect with living cousins, what we’re really interested
in is collaborating with them in order to knock down the
‘brick walls’ that we share.
Some
things are worth waiting for. It’s 7 years since I reviewed The
Death of Tommy Quick and Other Lies, the second novel to feature Lydia
Silverstream, so long that I was worried that I’d never find out how her new
career as a genealogist was progressing.
Consequently when a copy of Old Wrongs arrived in the
post it was like manna from heaven. D J Wiseman is a very fine writer, and any
book from him is worth reading (Casa
Rosa – his previous novel was an absolute delight), but the return of
one of my favourite fictional genealogists makes Old Wrongs extra
special.
Many
genealogical mysteries have two (or more) threads: one reveals the historical
events that underlie the mystery, the other follows the genealogist as he or
she attempts to piece together the evidence. But the Lydia Silverstream books
are different – we get to see things only through her eyes, so the journey of discovery
is so much more realistic.
In
Old Wrongs Lydia has a challenging task – Sir Christopher Stoppes, the 5th Baronet, has died, and there
appears to be no heir to the title. However the terms of the trust set up by the
3rd Baronet are rather unusual and, given the enormous sums of money
involved, the senior solicitor who acts as a trustee asks Lydia to make
thorough enquiries using her genealogical expertise.
I
really enjoyed this book, and you will too – but if you haven’t already read
the first two books in this fabulous series I recommend you start with A Habit of
Dying which was published in 2012 (though I didn’t discover it until 2014).
As for me – I’ll just have to wait for the fourth instalment in the series!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Those
of you who have been following the never-ending saga of my fibre broadband
connection will be pleased to hear that it was finally up and running on 7th
March, just over 11 weeks from the planned switchover date. For a brief period we had both copper and fibre connections, so I took
the opportunity to run comparative speed tests – the download speed has
increased from just under 16mbps to 507mbps, and the upload speed from less
than 1mbps to 71mbps.
The
final challenge was to get our phone working – with full fibre you have to plug your phone into the router, but initially the
phone light on the router was off. Searching the Internet I found a number of
forum posts which suggested resetting the router, so I did just that – only to
find that I lost the data connection as well! Thankfully all it needed was for
Vodafone to change the settings on the router, which they could do remotely –
and after an hour on the phone to a very helpful lady everything was working
perfectly.
The
key tip that comes out of this experience is to choose a supplier who is part
of the Ofcom compensation scheme!
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
highlighted – if you think you've spotted an error first reload the newsletter
(press Ctrl-F5) then
check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to
it......
I’ll be back soon with more news and views from the world of
genealogy – in the meantime please remember that LostCousins is so much more
than just a newsletter, it’s a site where you can connect with experienced
family historians who share your ancestors. The more cousins you can find
on the censuses we use, and enter on your My Ancestors page, the more
living cousins will appear on your My Cousins page!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2023 Peter Calver
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