Genealogy Chat

on how to make best use of my time when I visit Taunton R O. When I went to my local one I didn't know what I was doing and wasted the precious few hours.

I am looking for ancestors in Milverton and Exford. I am pretty sure of my facts back to 1851 census with Robert Hayes, wife Mary(Waygood) & family living in Milverton. Last holiday I spent hours looking for the grave of Robert and some of his children in the cemetry in Milverton but found nothing.

I have their marriage cert. 12 Oct 1846 in Wellington. Father's names John Hayes & Robert Waygood.

Found John Hayes married to Anne Rugg 1812 in Milverton.

Found Robert and his sister Anne both baptised on same day
1823 Stogumber. Only mother's name Anne on register. Where was daddy John?

1841 census found Robert living with Ann Parker and son James in Houndsmoor where Robert lived all his life..

Found marriages of John Hayes to Mary Shapland 1827
and Ann Hayes to James Parker 1827.

Could John and Ann be Robert's parents and both remarried with or without a divorce.

Also found John Hayes born 1895 to William Hayes and Mary Vickery. Other children William b 1792, Mary b 1796 and Elizabeth b 1802. All in Exford.
All dates fit but I have to find evidence. So could someone please advise me on what to look for first to unravel all this.

Thank you

~Miss Ellie~

My first reaction would be to check on the baptisms you mention for Robert and Anne - with no father being named it is worth checking what the baptism record says (if you haven't already) because it could be a completely different mother named Ann Hayes who has had illegitimate children (that is usually what an unnamed father points to).

Alternatively, with you saying that Robert is living with Ann Parker and her son James in 1841, it could be that Ann Hayes had an illegitimate child (Robert) and then married James Parker and had a further son named James.

The John Hayes/Anne Rugg marriage could just turn out to be a coincidence - often on the actual baptism records it will say if a child is illegitimate or not

What I tend to do (if I can't find the names I am after straight away) is to write down all incidences of a name cropping up in the records I am looking for - I might not need them at the time but they often come in handy later on.

Thanks Kate for replying.

Yes I will check what the baptism record says for Robert and Anne. The trouble is I have convinced myself that all the dates fit, which they do.

Just looking at my notes and I have also got other children born to John and Ann.
James 1913, Sarah 1815, and Ann 1820.

I don't know if that is the same Ann that was baptised for a 2nd time in 1823 or the first one died and the one baptised with Robert is a 2nd child named Ann.

Iv'e got a headache going through again and again so I think I will have to leave it till I check with the parish records.

Thank again

~Miss Ellie~

Hi Miss Ellie,

Don't expect too much from your visit to the RO - that was my mistake. Concentrate on one or two things you want to find. Contact them in advance about what you want so you know what to ask for, e.g. marriage of John Hayes and Ann Rugg in Milverton in 1812. The staff can then be prepared to help when you arrive, or at least tell you what records to ask for.

Some ROs will do searches for you, sometimes free, sometimes £10 for one hour or similar. It is not a bad price cos they are probably faster at it than you. Though there is no better fun than finding the evidence for yourself - not that I have ever found any, so you might as well ignore my advice.

Margaret

I always think it's essential to check burial records too.
This might give definite clues, eg. Mary buried on (date),infant daughter of John and Mary ( Whoever)

or posiblities...
Mary ( Whoever) an infant,buried on ( date)
Sometimes ages are given, more often in later records, and this helps too.
It is no use relentlessly searching a marriage of someone, who died aged 2 years.

Parish registers , ...even early ones, ..often give vital clues. Earlier this week I was looking at burial registers for mid 1750s. Most had just the names and dates of burials for the adults, but the vicar? had added notes for some, telling that one person was the miller, another was the clerk etc.
Baptism records might even have margin notes, eg alleged father is John Smith.

Enjoy searching.

Gwyn

Hi Margaret,

Yes it is great when you find a birth or marriage entry. My trouble is I don't think I am organised enough to get the most out of my visit. You are right to only concentrate on a couple of things at a time I will have to write a list of the most important and stick to it.

Now, what are the most important things????
My list is going to be long I think.

~Miss Ellie~

Hi Gwyn,

Thats encouraging to know there maybe notes in the margin of the originals. I hope there was a vicar who liked writing them in the parishes I am interested in.

As long as I get a few more pieces of the jigaw I'll be happy.

~Miss Ellie~

Meant to add, I have found it useful to make a chart in advance to fill in when I am at the records office.

What I do is split an A4 sheet (landscape way round) into various sized columns. For searching baptisms, I then head these "Birth Date", "Bapt. Date", "Name of child", "Parents" and "Address/Godparents" (Catholic church records seem to note godparents, Anglican ones note addresses).

Then when I get to the records office I find a space on the top of the sheet, write the date and the name of the church I'm searching the records off. It is surprising how much time you can save by writing a word or two under each column instead of having to write (for instance) "John Hurst b. 14/11/1814, bapt. 17/11/1814 to Joseph and Margery of Ormskirk, godparents - John Smith and Mary Bloggs" out every time you find something.

Miss Ellie,

Sorry to be disappointing, but either I am useless at searching these records, or I am useless at searching these records. I found the whole experience to be totally disppointing, and I have asked for people on this site to tell me what I did wrong, but have had either no response or a response that I did not understand

I hope you have better luck than me. I was thwarted by the fact that I did not know how to use the machinery, and how to find the records. I think you will fare better if you go in there and say "I want to find Mary Smit, born 1821 in Ashburton", and let them do the leg work for you.

Regards

Margaret

Just thinking, they might also have - which can be very useful - an indexing system within the records office for the church records that you want.

(These can be really good as a starting point because they generally tell you what dates the records in the office cover for each church, so if - say - you were looking for John Smith christened 1750 and thought he was christened at St. Thomas' church in Manchester, you could check the index and find that the records for St. Thomas only start at 1775, which would save having to look in that baptism record.)

In the office at Preston they have three folders - one green (non-conformist), one blue (Catholic), one yellow (Church of England) - for indexing the records. So you can go to the blue one and know you will find all the Catholic churches in Blackburn that they have records for, for instance.

If you can get hold of a map (or even look on the internet) you might be able to identify possible churches in the relevent area and find out which denomination each represents, which you can then compare with the distance each is from where your ancestors lived. Often you can find when the church was built, too.

Thanks both for replying.

I am sure there will be very helpful people there to advise me and point me in the right direction.

I will definately make a list of everything I need to find out and try and stick to it. You never know I may get lucky and everything will be straight forward.

Good idea about identifying the churches in the areas around the villages they lived. I will make a start straight away.

~Miss Ellie~