Genealogy Chat

Am I alone in happily tracing most of my branches back to the mid/late 1770s, only to find that EVERY male ancestor of that period seems to have the christian name JOHN? How on earth can we untangle them from all the others with the same name, when they were pre-1837? I haven't ever accessed a proper parish record yet - do they have info about families & occupations etc? Do the ones you get hold of through LDS centres have that sort of detail, or are they really just indexes(indices) too? From Sue (in NZ) who is getting rapidly fed-up with John.

A Parish Register contains very little information. Usually less the further back you go. Baptisms: Name of the child. Sometimes son or daughter of and the father's name. Occasionally the mother's first name and home. Marriages: Names of bride and groom. Sometimes the names of the b & gs fathers. Occasionally the parish they come from. Burials: The name of the deceased. Sometimes the name of a parent and occasionally the place they lived if it was a child's burial. And, of course, the date of the event. Parish registers were not always written up at the time so some may have been missed out & some mistranscribed.

I have only found occupation listed on one set of parish registers (baptisms) but as the father was a schoolmaster and church warden, he was probably quite pally with the vicar. If you had an ancestor who was a bit naughty, some vicars wrote really quite scathing notes ('John, bastard son of that whore Mary Smith') because they never expected anyone to ever read them!

In the parishes that I've searched the baptism registers (from the 1790s to 1830s) had a printed column for fathers occupation - very handy in one village which seemed to be populated entirely by my Evered relatives, 50% of whom were called Edmund, and also in London where the family had moved between 3 parishes but could be traced because of fathers relatively unusual occupation. Afraid the earlier registers weren't quite so helpful though one had added occupations and even crossreferenced burials back to earlier marriages and baptisms. Judith

Just reading about two men sentenced to Transportation in the late 1700s, for attempting to 'fraudulently insert a baptismal record into a Parish Register' I didnt know whether to laugh or cry! They were fiddling the books even then. To know what you might find in a Parish Register, you really have to look at it. Some are, as others have said, a bare list of names. Others I have seen have been practically a life history of the people involved. You just dont know until you look. I always ask, when ordering at the LDS, for a 'primary source' document, that is, the filming of the ORIGINAL register, not a Bishop's Transcript and certainly not a computer print-out. Hope this helps Marjorie

Thanks, everyone, that's more food for thought! So none of you are specifically beset by Johns too? LOL! Sue (in NZ)

Susan, I'm not beset by Johns - mine are Josephs. Not only are they Josephs, they insisted in marrying Mary's!! Seven generations of them in the same parish!!! And their cousins were called Joseph!! I'm saving that side of the family until I feel really strong and bored!! lol maggie

Mine are all Thomas, James and Henry. They all married an Esther, Mary or Ann. And they all had children called the above 6 names, occasionally with a 2nd one thrown in as a middle name. They then proceeded to either use the middle name or a shortened version of either name (Thos, Jas and Hy) or just for added fun, neither of the 'names' for the girls and referred to them all as Dolly!

I'd understand it more if they were all related, but they're from different branches! There's John Clifford (b.~ 1750), John Skinner (m. 1772), John Myers (b.~ 1799) ....! Have fun with yours! Sue (in NZ)

They're a nightmare so I've filed them in the 'Come back to later' pile and moved onto just as big a headache! A gggrandfather who had the cheek to die before the 1861 census, can't be located on the 1851 so I can't find a birthplace for him, got married no-where near where any of the children were born or where the bride was from and has no actual address on his marriage cert, just an area! Remind me again why we do this!

If you can find any wills they are often very helpful in untangling people with common names. For example, my g-g-g-grandfather was Joseph Brown in London, and I have managed to find his will and his father's otherwise I would have no chance of finding out much about them.

I know how you feel, except that all mine are Thomases and Williams. The further back you go, the less information there seems to be on the parish registers. Burials may only say 'wife of', 'widow of' or 'son or daughter of' without giving the poor soul's christian name, and births may only give the father's name and not the mother's, even though she was the one who did all the work!! A sign of the times, I suppose. The men seem to be the only ones who were worth much!