Genealogy Chat

I've found these as extracted baptism records on IGI in same batch with parents specified as George Parnham and Alice. But are they all the children of the same couple? (details below) There seem to be a few too many big gaps and a long time between the eldest and the youngest. I'd appreciate a second opinion from anyone. Barbara.

The baptism dates are John 17/01/1747 William 02/07/1749 Ann 19/11/1751 George 02/02/1754 Alice 11/06/1757 Jane 02/02/1764 Mary 13/02/1770 Many thanks Barbara

Well, children born over a 23 period is quite common in my tree - but have you looked for deaths in the gaps? And have you tried a neighbouring Parish for other children? I found one family who bounced backwards and forwards between two Churches, for unknown reasons. Finally - they just may not have been very fertile. OC

Is that a 22 year spread? Quite normal,My children were born 17 years apart.

Thanks Jim. I was hoping someone would say something like that to stop me panicking. Barbara

Thank you to OC as well. I haven't found any deaths in the interim, and hadn't thought about the neighbouring parishes angle either. Any suggestions are always appreciated, as I'm too new to this to think of everything myself! Barbara

This isn't the case here, but I have found that when looking for other children of a couple back in the years when the vicar wasn't interested in the mother and therefore only put the father's name in the baptism register, it's a good idea to try a search with a full stop in the mum's first name box and the dad's name in the father's box as normal. This will show you any children entered with this format. Conversely, you can look for births to unmarried mums with a full stop in the dad's first name box. Merry

Merry Thank you - I'll remember that for future reference. Barbara

Good point Merry, I had forgotten that - also look for misspellings of the name, although soundex should pick them up. OC

OC I had remembered the bit about mis-spellings. I've just been sent a copy of a will relating to this lot by another member of GR which has the testator down as 'Parman' alias Parnham! They just had to keep us on our toes didn't they. Barbara

Are the parents recorded exactly the same ie eliza ,elizabeth,bett mixed as mothers name for example?......and what I lookf or is births in the same time of year-look at how many are born in february in yours.......fertile patterns do exist,especially in the first batch of kids.

Generally speaking, the further back you go, the larger the number of children in a family. I'm sure we all have examples of people on censuses with their younger children, whilst the older ones have left home and have kids of their own, often older than their aunts/uncles. Gaps can be accounted for by miscarriages, stillbirths etc which wouldn't be recorded, or because of illness/absence of husband/wife. Men sometimes travelled away to work. I've got some chaps who only came home to impregnate their wives and then go away again. It could also be possible that there were two couples with the same names. This often happened in villages where various grandchildren were named after grandparents, so there might be two Georges who were cousins who both married Alices. nell

TEHL - yes all the names were identical on the parents. Helen - I had wondered about more than one marriage to someone of the same name. As usual - Thanks to everyone forthere thoughts and comments. Barbara