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ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO WRITING IT ALL DOWN
The rest of this book is about how to trace your ancestry, but this chapter focuses on how to record your findings, from getting all your notes written down on computer or paper and moving onto understanding the family tree conventions.
Your Family Tree and Family History Monthly genealogical magazines.
Some people can get bogged down in choosing computer packages, filing systems and so on. Frankly, if you enjoy computer programs, then you’ll love family history, as there is a vast array to chose from, reviewed and advertised in the genealogical magazines like Your Family Tree and Family History Monthly, with an excellent comparative chart at www.Myhistory.co.uk. Everyone has a preference. Personally, I don’t rate very highly the packages that invite you to fill in forms about all your ancestors. I feel it de-humanises them and encourages some people to become obsessed simply with the act of form filling with completing forms that can’t be. Me? I keep a cardboard file for each family I am tracing, containing photographs, documents, notes and so on, and a rough family tree on paper, and then maintain a narrative pedigree on my word processor. Once I feel satisfied with what I have done, I may also write up a summarised version of the family story, including the best pictures and documents, either to circulate among the family or to submit to a relevant family history journal (see here).
GETTING IT ON PAPER
The main point at this stage is to write everything down. Be they oral or written, quote your sources precisly. Later, you can interpret the sources, but if you do this initially and discard the original information, and then find that your interpretation of the sources had been wrong, you (or someone else trying to help you – and, believe me, I’ve been there!) may have a terrible time disentangling what is correct from what is not. This applies just as much to interviewing people as to record-based research. In addition, always write down exactly what records you were searching, for what periods and for what you searched. If you do, and later you find that you are stuck, you may rely on your notes to tell you, say, that you looked under Thompson and also Thomson, thus potentially saving yourself a repeat journey to a record office to perform a search you had, in fact, already carried out but forgotten about.
THE BASIC FAMILY TREE
CRANE PRINTS
OLD FAMILY TREES were drawn with the names of parents in circles and their children radiating out below them. This arrangement was thought to resemble the footprints of Cranes in the soft mud of river banks, hence their name ‘Crane’s foot’ – ‘pied de Cru’ – pedigree!
There are several different types of family tree. These are:
‘Family trees’ and ‘pedigrees’, sometimes prefixed with the term ‘dropline’ (a chart with the earliest ancestor at the top and each subsequent generation connected by dropping lines), are one and the same – charts depicting a line or lines of ancestry.
‘Narrative pedigrees’, which are family trees written down in paragraphs, a style that is used by Burke’s Peerage and which is a highly effective way of recording a lot of information in a small space, but which isn’t so good for easily seeing who’s related to who. It is not much use for conducting original research, when only a family tree will make everything clear.
Seize quartiers, which spread out either like trees or in concentric circles, to show both parents, all four grandparents, the eight great-grandparents and – if you can manage it – all 16 great-greats. The original purpose of seize quartiers was snobbish, as you had to prove that all 16 were noble if you wanted to join foreign orders of knighthood like the Golden Fleece. Now, however, they are a good way of showing you have traced your family exhaustively. But don’t feel obliged and become exhausted, this is supposed to be fun and you can aim to trace as much or as little as you want.
Part of my mother’s family tree, showing how Germans Printed pedigrees in the 1930s.
CHARTING CONVENTIONS
= Indicates a marriage, accompanied by ‘m.’ and the date and place
— Solid lines indicate definite connections
… Dotted lines indicate probable but unproven ones
Wiggly lines are for illegitimacy and ‘x’ for a union out of wedlock important on old pedigrees but less relevant today
– – Loops are used if two unconnected lines need to cross over
Wives usually go on the right of husbands, though only if that doesn’t interfere with the overall layout of the chart
Conventionally, surnames are put after men’s but not women’s names, but again this is becoming a bit old fashioned
Equally, there are no rules about what you can or can’t include on a family tree. Put in as much or as little as you want and include as many families as you want, though beware of cluttering. I would recommend a minimum of full names, dates of birth or baptism, marriage and death or burial, where those events took place, and occupations. If your chart lacks any of these, it will be of little use to other researchers and, more importantly, it will be boring. If you know someone was crushed to death by a bear or invented the casserole dish, for goodness sake put it on the chart!
There are some sensible conventions and abbreviations, which you’ll need to know both for compiling your own charts and understanding other peoples’. These have been outlined above.
Marriage bond for John Nursey, surgeon of Coddenham, Suffolk.
EXPANDING ON THE BASICS
When it comes to writing up the family history, you can, again, decide what to say and how to say it, and you can get ideas from the examples in this book and the many published family histories and articles in family history journals and magazines.
It’s a good idea to try to relate the events in the family to the world around them:
Who was on the throne
What wars and plagues would have concerned or affected them
What the places where they lived were like at the time
What their occupations entailed.
This is a valuable exercise, which might actually help you find out more about them, or highlight inaccuracies or even mistakes in the family tree. It is also a good reminder that these were real, breathing people who existed in the world, not as pale shadows on old, dusty records. Indeed, if you think your ancestors only existed within the confines of parish register entries and, now, the forms generated by genealogical computer programs, it’s unlikely you will gain very much from family history, or that other people will enjoy and benefit from your hard work. The more you can think of and convey the idea of your ancestors as real human beings, the more fun – and success – you’re likely to have.
PRESENTING YOUR RESULTS
HERE IS THE SAME information about the Fairfax family, presented as a narrative pedigree, a prose account and a traditional family tree.
NARRATIVE PEDIGREE
John Fairfax, born about 1710, married Mary Hayward on 16 September 1735 at Framlingham, Suffolk. He was a draper and grocer of Coddenham and wrote his will in 1751, naming his executors as his wife Mary and brother-in-law John Hayward. It was proved 2 June 1758 (Suffolk Record Office IC/AA1/184/49). His children (details of which are recorded in the family bible) included:
1. Frances, born 24 May 1736, baptised 25 May and died 31 May, Stowmarket.
2. Mary, born 9 June 1738, baptised 26 June at Stowmarket.
3. John Fairfax, born 30 June 1739, died 15 weeks old, buried at Stowmarket.
4. John Fairfax, born 30 August 1741. Left a watch by his father. Married Penelope Wright at St James’s, Bury St Edmund’s, on 5 May 1770. Elected freeman of Bury St Edmunds, 1802. Death recorded in Gentleman’s Magazine as being in a fit on 12 February 1805 while visiting ‘a friend [sic], Mr P. Nursey, at Little Bealings’. He had two children:
1. Penelope, born on 17 April and baptised on 31 May 1771 at St James’s, buried on 30 June 1787 at Bury St Edmunds.
2. Catherine, born on 6 November 1772 and baptised on 3 December 1790 at Bury St Edmunds by Rev. Mr Sharp, as is recorded in the family bible.
5. Catherine Fairfax, born 7 September 1742 and baptised by Mr Meadows. Inherited share of a messuage in Kettleburgh from cousin Katherine Fairfax in 1747/50. Married John Nursey by licence on 4 April 1764 at Coddenham, before witnesses John and Mary Fairfax; he was described as a surgeon of Coddenham and she as daughter of John Fairfax of Coddenham, a draper. Died at Wickham Market on 13 April 1827, aged 85. No will has been found in Suffolk. They had children, including the landscape artist Perry Nursey (baptised on 25 June 1771 at Stonham Aspall).
Catherine Nursey, née Fairfax, mother of the Suffolk landscape painter Perry Nursey. Picture owned by her descendant Mrs Nancy Bedwell.
PROSE ACCOUNT
THE LIFE OF JOHN FAIRFAX
JOHN FAIRFAX was born in 1710, four years before the death of Queen Anne ushered in the reign of George I and the start of the Hanoverian period. Growing up in rural Suffolk, he was variously described as a grocer and draper in the village of Coddenham, indicating either an enterprising mind or (less likely in view of the relative prosperity of his children) an inability to find the right niche in life. He married Mary Hayward on 16 September 1735 at Framlingham, a market town some ten miles from Coddenham, and, indeed, going to market there may have been how he met her. He wrote his will in 1751, making her and her brother John his executors, and it was proved, indicating he had died by then, in 1758, two years before the death of King George II.
John’s children included Frances, Mary, two Johns and Catherine, of whom Frances and the first John died young. To his surviving son JOHN FAIRFAX he left his watch ‘that was my cousin Smith’s’ and £63 to apprentice him ‘to some proper business at a fit age’. This younger John married Penelope Wright at St James’s, Bury St Edmund’s, on 5 May 1770 and obviously benefited from his apprenticeship, as he became a freeman of Bury St Edmunds in 1802. He died in a fit on 12 February 1805 while visiting his nephew, the artist Perry Nursey, at Little Bealings. He had two children, Penelope and Catherine.
John senior’s daughter Catherine, born 7 September 1742, received a bequest of land from her father’s cousin Catherine Fairfax in 1750 and, perhaps as a result of this, made a good marriage to the local surgeon, John Nursey of Coddenham. They married there by licence on 4 April 1764. She was mother of the artist Perry Nursey (baptised on 25 June 1771 at Stonham Aspall), at whose house her brother died in 1805.
FAMILY TREE
