Citing your sources

Posted on 11th Aug 2026 by English Ancestors

My last post was about the Genealogical Proof Standard. It focused on four of the five elements of the Standards:

Reasonably exhaustive research;
Analysis and correlation of the collected information;
Resolution of any conflicting evidence; and
A soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion.

The remaining element, left for consideration in today’s post is this:

Complete and accurate source citations.

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What do we mean by ‘citation’?
A citation states the source of information used in a piece of writing or research. It typically includes the author’s name, title of the work, publication date and publisher. However, genealogical citations differ from this standard, in that they must pinpoint the exact physical location of a unique, handwritten record.

Why are citations so important in genealogy?
A family tree with no supporting evidence could be built on castles in the air. Indeed, some family stories do turn out to be castles in the air. What we need is to prove the facts of an ancestor’s life one way or the other; and for that we need evidence. My last post focused on using various sources in conjunction to build a reasoned argument and conclusion. However, before these various documents can be transformed into the evidence we need, we need to be sure that every single document is traceable. Citations are how we do that.

Citing your sources therefore provides:

Essential information giving you a way of finding the same documents/ evidence again quickly
Proof of your conclusions
Essential information for someone else looking at our work and deciding whether they can trust our conclusions. This might be another family historian now, or in the future. If they can see what we looked at, they can also see what we didn’t look at. Perhaps something we missed, or didn’t know about. Possibly something that has come online since we did our research, or maybe something that’s available only at the local County Record Office that we were not able to visit.

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The Art and Mystery of Citations!
But how do we create a citation. How do we know what to put in it?
For a long time citations puzzled me. I understood entirely why they were necessary but had no idea how to construct one. They seemed to be some sort of magic spell. You had to have all the right words, and all in the right order, but it seemed you had to be a member of the Magic Circle to be in on what the words or the order were.

With more understanding and experience, eventually it dawned on me. The precise order of the words is not what’s important. To a certain extent even absolutely specific words are not always important. What is important is the information we provide. But how do we know what information is important? And when is a citation ‘complete and accurate’?

What a citation needs to include

the precise identifying details of the document (points 1-4 below)
where the original of that record is kept, and their reference for it (5-6 below)
where you saw it (7-8 below)

Breaking that down, it looks like this:

The name of the person to whom the record relates
The purpose of the record, e.g. baptism or probate and the date
The body/organisation that created the record, e.g. church (which one and where), school, the General Register Office
What, precisely, it was that you saw, e.g. the original papers, a microfilm copy, a transcript
Where the original record is kept, e.g. The National Archives, the local County Record Office, the town’s Local History Library
The title given to the record set in that repository, and the reference they use for it
Where you saw it, e.g. at the County Record Office in person, online at FindMyPast. In other words, your Source
If online – the date you accessed it.

Based on that, a citation for a baptism record would look something like this:

John Robert Payne, Baptism Register entry, 17 February 1791, Bloomsbury, St George. Original located at: The London Archives: London Church of England Parish Registers, Reference P82/GEO1/002. Source: www.ancestry.co.uk Accessed 14 July 2026

Note that if you’re studying a recognised genealogy programme, or if you provide work for a publishing house, or if you work for a larger organisation dealing with genealogy, they will have their own precise way of creating citations, and you will have to comply with that. If you’re not, you’re at liberty to create citations that make sense to you. You may find your own word order that you like better than mine. What matters is what’s included, and being consistent and understandable to anyone else in the future.

Where does the information about the archive and their reference details come from?
If you’re working online, there should be details of the original data along with the version of the record that you’re looking at. You may need to look around the transcript information linked to the record to gather all the information you need.

On Ancestry, if you key in the name, year and location for the John Robert Payne baptism, that record will be close to the top of those returned. Click on the ‘Record’ (not the image) and scroll down. You’ll see ‘Source Citation’, and that’s the information I’ve used for the ‘Original located at’ part of my citation. I have changed the words ‘London Metropolitan Archives’ to ‘The London Archives’ because the name of that archives has recently changed.

On FindMyPast the information is to be found when you click to view the Transcript of the record, but it’s not presented in such a way that you can just copy and paste. You have to gather the required information from several lines.

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If you are working at the archives this information will be on their own catalogue. You will need the reference number to request the documents, and the document itself or the box in which it’s stored will show the reference number.

Example:

Charles Burden Baptism Register entry, 31 January 1813, St Helens. Source: original parish register at Isle of Wight County Record Office: ST.H/REG/BAP/1A

Why do we need to include ‘precisely what we saw’ in the citation?
Below are three records. They are presented here in the order I found them. That was more than a decade ago, but it was some years between locating the first and the last of the three.

Apologies for the poor quality of the first document, which has faded terribly over the last 200-plus years. The first column says “bap 15th; born 13th”. Then we have “James Sword son of Tho[ma]s & Sophia Mann of this parish, Weaver, and the signature of the officiating priest.

Thomas is my 3x great grandfather, but my 3x great grandmother is Lucy, not Sophia. When I found this I assumed Sophia had died, perhaps shortly after son James was born. I looked for a death for Sophia but couldn’t find one. Some time later I bought the civil Birth record for my 2x great grandfather, son of Thomas and Lucy and was surprised to find that Lucy’s maiden name was Sword – the same as James’s middle name. So was Lucy the sister of the Sophia in this record? (A second marriage to the sister of his deceased first wife would not have been legal at that time.)

At around the same time I found this:

James Sword Mann, Baptism Record entry (Index transcript), 15 August 1819, Norwich. Source: “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975”, database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/) Accessed 14 July 2026

This is from FamilySearch’s record set England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. On their website they now refer to this as a ‘Legacy Collection’, meaning no more records will be added to this set. It was intended as an index of records, rather than a full transcription of the records themselves. However, since FamilySearch is a free-to-use website, it offers easy access to records that may be unavailable to anyone without a subscription to a commercial genealogy site; and indeed, if your locality of interest does not have a licence arrangement with one of the commercial websites for digitising and offering their parish registers online, it may be the only means of gathering information about your ancestors.

It’s difficult to give a full citation including the original data location unless you already know it because that information is not included on the citation FamilySearch ask you to include, which is this:

“England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N1MZ-5HW : 4 February 2023), James Mann, 1819.

This doesn’t fit with my own preferred citation layout. It doesn’t give the actual source of the original information (Norfolk Record Office). Also, since the volunteers creating this Index were required to fit all information into prescribed boxes (fields), a very important piece of information has been omitted. A map dating from the exact year of the baptism of James Sword Mann shows that there were 36 parish churches in the historic city in that year – in an area a little over one square mile – and in earlier times there had been as many as 63 parishes. At the Norfolk Record Office, all of these records are arranged by parish, and we really do need to have that additional information if we are to locate the original record.

Moving on…
The final record was first brought to my attention by a distant cousin working on the same line. I had the first of these three records in my collection; he had the final one, below. What I had was the Bishop’s Transcript, a contemporary copy of the original entry on the parish register, sent to the Bishop at the end of the year. What he had found was the original entry on the parish register.

We can see that the information sent to the Bishop was absolutely correct. It is identical to the original. However, seventeen years later, the parish clerk added the following text to the original:
“This [Chris]t[ia]n name sh[oul]d be Lucy as appears to me from street enquiry Geo[rge] Pearce 14 Aug 1836]”

This solves the original mystery about who Sophia is. ‘Sophia’ is Lucy! It was a mistake. It does of course create another mystery: why on earth was the parish clerk cross-referencing the 1819 Baptism Register in the year 1836?!

The point of all this is that each of these records purports to provide information about the same event, and yet all have different information. The original has a mistake. This mistake was faithfully copied over on to the Bishop’s Transcript in 1819. It was also copied onto the modern Index created by FamilySearch. Seventeen years later the error was corrected on the original, but not on the Bishop’s Transcript; and even though the indexer may have been looking at the original record with the correction, they did not include the additional words which really do change the significance of this record. They were also not able to include the actual parish. This is why we need to cite exactly what we saw. Was it the original? Was it the BT? Was it a transcript? Was it a full transcription or an Index? Did we see the actual original document or were we looking online, or perhaps we viewed a microfilm image of it. Any one of these variations may be significant; and in future years a better version coming to light may change our conclusions.

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For other types of document, this basic layout of the details + what/ where the original is + where you saw it can be adapted, sometimes in reduced format. For example, a family bible with lists of births and baptisms could be cited as:

‘Joe Brown, baptised (date), (location). Information transcribed from family bible in the possession of his 2x great granddaughter Margaret Jones.’

If creating your own citations is new to you, try piecing one together using the elements I set out above, and looking online for the additional information.

The Genealogical Proof Standard

Posted on 11th Jul 2026 by English Ancestors

The Genealogical Proof Standard is an internationally accepted guide for establishing the reliability of a conclusion reached in genealogical research. It’s a vital concept for professional genealogists, but all family historians should be aiming for this standard. After all, our goal should always be to ensure the people we’re researching are actually our ancestors.

There are five elements to the Genealogical Proof Standard:

Reasonably exhaustive research
Complete and accurate source citations
Analysis and correlation of the collected information
Resolution of any conflicting evidence
A soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion.

In today’s post I’m going to work through an example to illustrate the first, third, fourth and fifth elements. Discussion of citations will follow in my next post.

My research objective here is to answer this question:

What happened to Mary Ann Ingham after the death of her parents?

Mary Ann is my 2x great aunt. I first came across her about twenty years ago, in the relatively early years of online genealogy records. I lost track of her following the death of her parents. I do like to follow through on siblings of my direct line, but back then, Death Certificates were available only as paper copies, and the cost of buying speculative certificates for siblings of my ancestors was prohibitive. Today, a digital download of the same information costs just £3. So it’s time to take another look…

What I already know about Mary Ann

Mary Ann is the older sister of one of my great grandmothers, the second of six children born to my 2x great grandparents. Her entry on the GRO online Birth Index indicates that her birth was registered in the December quarter of 1850 in Hunslet. This means it was registered between 1st September and 31st December, but the birth could have been up to six weeks before that.
1851 Census. Mary Ann’s age is recorded as 5 months. The date of the 1851 Census was Sunday, 30 March 1851, suggesting she was probably born in October 1850. It may be a couple of weeks out, but it’s good enough for my needs.
1861 Census. Mary Ann is ten years old. In the final column, where information is requested regarding whether any person is ‘Blind, or Deaf-and-Dumb’, we learn that Mary Ann has been ‘Deaf from Birth’.
1871 Census. The family have moved from Hunslet to New Wortley. Oldest sister Maria has married, and two younger siblings have died since the last census. Mary Ann, aged twenty, is listed without an occupation. Possibly this is because of her deafness. Her mother is listed with an occupation outside the house, suggesting that it is Mary Ann who takes care of the house.
1881 Census. Only Mary Ann and the youngest sister are now living at home with their parents. Both daughters are employed as Cloth Finishers.
1991 Census. The youngest sister has married and moved away. Mary Ann, now forty years old, is living at home with both parents. She has no occupation outside the home, and once more the final column includes the information that she has been ‘Deaf from childhood’.
Mary Ann’s father died in October 1892, and her mother in July 1894.

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My ‘Reasonably Exhaustive Research’

First, what are the possibilities?

Mary Ann might have married after 1894. She was only 43 years old when her mother died, and first marriages at this age, perhaps to a widower, were not uncommon. If she did marry she would be recorded on the 1901 Census with a different surname. However, Mary Ann’s deafness does seem to have been a significant disability for her.
She might have died before the next census, 1911.
She could still be single in 1911, recorded on the census with the same name, and living alone or with another person or family.

Her immediate whereabouts was soon established when a search on Ancestry found her living in 1901 with her older sister Maria, plus Maria’s husband and family. She had been there all along, of course, and I had that record linked to Maria and her family. However, because Mary Ann was recorded on that document as ‘Sister-in-Law’ to the head of household she wasn’t included when the record attached automatically to family members. Twenty years ago I missed this; and of course after all this time I had forgotten.

Perhaps this living arrangement might have continued, but in January 1903 sister Maria died. What happened next?

Q. Did Mary Ann move in with either of her surviving sisters and their families?
A quick check on the 1911 Census for both of these indicates that, certainly by 1911, she was not living with either of her sisters.

Q. Is Mary Ann on the 1911 Census elsewhere – alone or with someone else?
No. Searches on Ancestry and FindMyPast for Mary Ann Ingham, born 1850 +/- 2 years in the Leeds area returned no searches.

Q. Did Mary Ann marry?
Searches on Ancestry, FindMyPast and FreeBMD for a marriage for Mary Ann Ingham, between 1901 and 1921 and in the Leeds area (using several local Registration District names for FreeBMD) returned two records:

A Mary Ann Ingham married either John Bradshaw Mann or Charles Watson April-June 1903. The other man married Annie McCaragher
A Mary Ingham married John Hardaker January-March 1904

Digital images of these marriages are not available online, nor as digital downloads. Therefore without buying the civil records (which I did not want to do, as each would cost £12.50) I needed to identify these people using other online records, and find a way to discount some or all of these marriages.

A search on Ancestry for Charles Watson, location Hunslet, and filtering for any record between 1901-1911 returned the following birth record:
Charles Hilary Watson’s birth was registered October 1906 in Hunslet. Keying these details in at the GRO online Birth Register index, I found that the mother’s maiden name was McCaragher. I now know that Charles Watson married Annie McCaragher, therefore it was John Bradshaw Mann who married Mary Ann Ingham in 1903.

A search on Ancestry for John Bradshaw Mann, location Hunslet, and filtering for any record between 1901-1911 indicated that this couple too had named their firstborn child after the father, and the GRO website confirmed that the mother’s maiden name was Ingham. I now had a birth year for a family member: 1906, and could use this additional information to locate the family. Although it was extremely unlikely (to say the least) that my now 55 year-old 2x great aunt Mary Ann would have given birth, finding the actual age of the Mary Ann that married John Bradshaw Mann would enable me to discount this marriage. A search of the 1911 Census for John Bradshaw Mann, location Hunslet and birth year 1906, proved fruitless. However, by removing the ‘Bradshaw’, 5 year-old John Mann was located, along with his father John Mann and his mother Mary née Ingham. Mary was born in Hunslet but was only 31 years old. This is not my Mary Ann.

A search for John Hardaker, also for Mary Hardaker after the marriage, proved more difficult:

Since the birth of children had proved to be a fast-track method of discounting the marriages so far, a search was carried out on the GRO online Births index for a child with the surname Hardaker and mother’s maiden name Ingham, any location, for the years 1904 to 1920. This search was carried out for females and males. There were no births.
Next a search on Ancestry and FindMyPast for Mary Ann Hardaker, born 1850 +/- 5 years. This search filtered first for the 1911 Census and then on Deaths 1904-1914. There were no records.
Then a search on Ancestry and FindMyPast for John Hardaker. With no year of birth for John, the birth year search parameters were set for 1830 to 1870. There were some John Hardakers on the 1911 Census but none had a wife named Mary.

This search was inconclusive. A John Hardaker had married a Mary Ingham in 1904 but they seem to have disappeared. That said, my Mary Ann has consistently been referred to in all records located to date as ‘Mary Ann’, rather than simply ‘Mary’. On this basis it seems likely that this is not my Mary Ann, but that does not amount to evidence either way.

Q. Did Mary Ann die before the 1911 Census?
A search for Mary Ann Ingham on the GRO online Death Index for the years 1903 +/- 2 years and 1907 +/- 2 years signposted the following record. The details were generally a good fit for Mary Ann, although the age is two years out. I paid my £3 and downloaded the image. If the informant – the person reporting the death to the Registrar – was a family member whose name I recognised, I would know for sure that this is my Mary Ann. Unfortunately this was not the case. Mary Ann died at a local infirmary after a fall, and the informant was the Coroner for the City of Leeds. (Click for BIG)

Residences
Can we ascertain anything from the usual address of the late Mary Ann Ingham on this Death record? She was living at 22 Oswald Place in New Wortley. We can compare this to other records for herself and the two Ingham sisters, Maria and Jane:

In 1901 Mary Ann was living with her sister Maria and family at 22 Oswald Terrace.
In 1901 sister Jane and her family were living at 12 Oswald Place. They would be at the same house in 1911 and 1921. This is a close family!
After Maria’s death, her husband is recorded as living in 1904 at Danube Terrace.
Therefore the usual residence of Mary Ann in 1909, as given on her Death Certificate, is just a few doors from her sister Jane.

This is not ‘proof’ that this Mary Ann and my Mary Ann are the same person. However, it does add weight to the likelihood.

OS 25-inch England and Wales: Yorkshire CCXVIII.5: Revised: 1906, Published: 1908. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland. National Library of Scotland Maps.

Mary Ann’s burial
Finally, a search on the FindAGrave index gave me the definite proof I was looking for. It revealed that this Mary Ann Ingham, who died on 11th December 1909, was buried on 17th December 1909 at New Wortley Cemetery. This is the same cemetery where my 2x great grandparents had been buried in 1892 and 1894. The records reveal that Mary Ann was buried in the same plot as her parents.

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Analysis and correlation of the collected information

It was important to start by establishing all of the possibilities, and then to work through them until such time as one established the certainty I was looking for. It was almost certain that Mary did not marry after 1901, yet she was not located on the 1911 Census as Mary Ann Ingham. We must always be aware of faulty transcriptions and missing entries, therefore the absence of a record is not in itself proof.

Moving on to the Death record, this was generally a reasonable fit for Mary Ann. However, the age is wrong: Mary was 59 in December 1909, not 61. This, together with the absence of a family member on the record meant it too did not provide certainty, although combined with the information about addresses it pointed to a ‘strong likelihood’ that this was my Mary Ann.

Although I could say the research carried out to get to this point had been reasonably exhaustive, there would have remained the possibility that my conclusion was not correct. In such cases we must always be receptive to any new information, and be prepared to review and change our interim conclusions. I could, for example, have accepted this as the likely death for Mary Ann, but could have reviewed newspaper archives for any news items about the death, or about the Coroner’s Inquest. I could also have explored whether the Coroner’s notes were available at West Yorkshire Archives. The truth is that, for a 2x great aunt, I would probably not have ever got around to doing this, but there might have been other circumstances where having absolute proof was important.

In the event, none of this was necessary. The final piece of evidence is that the Mary Ann who died on 11th December 1909 was buried one week later in the same plot as my 2x great grandparents, Mary Ann’s parents. This is certainly my Mary Ann.

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Resolution of any conflicting evidence

The only part of the evidence that is actually conflicting is Mary Ann’s age at death. It can be explained by the fact that the information was given by a family member – perhaps sister Jane, or perhaps one of Mary Ann’s brothers in law, or the younger sister who lived a short distance away, also in New Wortley. The person giving this information made a mistake. As a piece of conflicting evidence it no longer matters, since we have found our actual proof via other documentation.

That said, there was a lot of conflicting information in the hints showing up on Ancestry.co.uk. These hints formed two completely different ‘stories’. First, another Mary Ann Ingham of almost exactly the same age, living in an area that ‘made sense’ in the context of the Ingham family’s movements, and with the same father’s name, was married at Leeds parish church in 1867. It would have been easy to fall into the trap of accepting this as my Mary Ann, and giving her a completely false life, were it not for the fact that (a) records showed that my Mary Ann was still living with her parents, and (b) there was just one detail on the marriage record indicating that this was a different family: the father’s occupation was different.

The second lot of hints consistently confused Mary Ann with her older sister, Maria. In fact none of the hints actually related to the correct Mary Ann Ingham.

This illustrates and emphasises an important point:
Information on hints and on other people’s online trees is never ‘reasonably exhaustive research’.
People make mistakes. Hints are, at best, just ‘hints’: suggestions. They are there for you to explore and see if you agree, but they are based on what other people with the same family names have added to their trees. Unfortunately, the more people who accept this often false information and add it to their trees, the more determined the algorithms will be to persuade us that the records on offer are the right ones.

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A soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion

The analysis above supports the conclusion that Mary Ann Ingham died on 11th December 1909. After the death of her mother in 1894 Mary Ann lived with her sister Maria and family, and afterwards seems to have lived very close by her sister Jane, but not in the same house. Reading between the lines, Mary Ann’s deafness seems to have prevented her from living life to the full outside the family, to the extent that she seems, at some point, to have taken on the main household duties while her mother earned a little money away from the home. Mary Ann’s sisters seem to have looked out for her, and it is touching that they had her buried with their parents. It would be interesting to explore what deafness from birth meant for a person in the second half of the nineteenth century. What assistance and education would have been available? Was Mary Ann able to attend a school offering facilities for deaf children? Or perhaps she had no education at all.

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The final point to make here is that this was necessarily a fairly straightforward example of ‘Reasonably Exhaustive Research’. The wealth of records we have after the introduction of Civil Births, Marriages and Deaths in 1837, and with the advent of the decennial Census, alongside the parish records and other documents such as Coroners’ Inquests, newspaper accounts and so on, means we can generally be sure when our search has been reasonably exhaustive. Earlier than this, it gets harder. ‘Reasonably Exhaustive’ may run into scores of hours, and in the end may not find an answer, or may result in a ‘likelihood’ rather than proof. Nevertheless, the principles are the same: Set your objective; Define your questions; Search, Analyse, consider any Conflicting Information, and be prepared to Revise your Conclusions if new information comes to light.

Finding John Mann’s family: a case study

Posted on 11th Jun 2026 by English Ancestors

John Mann was born 26th December 1792 and baptised four days later at Norwich St Michael at Thorn. He is my 4x great uncle, but for years I knew nothing more about him. He seemed simply to have disappeared. Eventually, a set of military discharge papers came online via FindMyPast.¹ Through them I learned something really exciting: My 4x great uncle John was at the Battle of Waterloo!

A close reading of the nine pages of his discharge papers provided the following information:

He enlisted with the Royal Horse Artillery in 1807, when he was fourteen (…so that’s where he went!)
He served at the Battle of Waterloo as a Driver (meaning he rode a horse, working as part of a team that pulled cannon, ammunition limbers, and wagons), after which he served in France as part of the Army of Occupation
All other service was in England and Ireland; no dates or locations were given
On 1st July 1820 he was promoted to the rank of Trumpeter
He was discharged on 30th September 1832 after treatment in the Royal Ordnance Hospital following a fit of palsy fourteen months earlier, in Dublin.
There were testimonies from several high-ranking officers: John was held in high regard.
One tantalising piece of information was a comment from Lieutenant Colonel Whinyates, who stated that John had a large family and had ‘brought them up in a most creditable manner’.

Tantalising, of course, because I had absolutely no idea of any of their names, nor where they were born, nor even how many children there were. Since the discharge papers are dated 1832, these children were clearly all born before the introduction of Civil Births, Marriages and Deaths, and before the first name-rich decennial census in 1841. Clearly, the marriage, too would have taken place before these changes.

My research objective was to use all these clues to find John, his wife, and all his children

But where to start?
John Mann is a common Norfolk name. The only search parameters I had were “John Mann” + “born Norwich 1792” with effectively a nationwide search. The search was further compromised by a tendency for modern transcribers to get this surname wildly wrong. e.g. Although original spellings are always Mann or Man, I have seen it indexed as ‘Cooke’.

One more document was on my radar. There was a John Mann of the right age with the right birthplace living in Leeds at the time of the 1851 Census. There was no evidence at all to confirm that this was my John Mann, and in fact my assumption was that it was not. John was the brother of my 3x great grandfather who had been a silk weaver in Norwich, migrated to Blubberhouses in Yorkshire for work, and eventually moved to the Leeds area for work at a large mill in Holbeck. It seemed too tidy that his brother John, having led quite a different life, would coincidentally have ended up living just a mile away in the same large northern industrial town, for no apparent reason. If I were to be able to accept this as my John Mann, definite corroborative evidence would be needed.

A stroke of luck: locating the 1841 Census entry
The eventual location of the 1841 Census entry for a John Mann and family in Leeds permitted further research. It had not previously been identified because it had been indexed on Ancestry.co.uk as “Marson”. This document was key: all later discoveries about John and his family flow from it.

John Mann (age 45, occupation: ‘M[ale] S[ervant] & Army P[ensioner]’) was living at Brick Street, Leeds, with Mary (45), Emma (15), William (15) and John (10). William and Eliza Hallawell (both 20) were at the same property. Birthplaces are significant: John senior’s birthplace was England or Wales but not Yorkshire, while John junior was born in Ireland: his age and birthplace fit with information on John senior’s Discharge Papers which indicate he was in Ireland prior to and until July 1831. Everyone else was born in Yorkshire.²

This was almost certainly the same couple previously identified in the 1851 Census: John Mann (58, occupation ‘Groom Pensioner’) and wife Mary (54), residing 21 Brick Street. Therefore John, born Norwich, c.1793, now receiving a pension, had worked with horses in a military capacity. Mary’s birthplace was Pontefract. Age discrepancies are explained by the 1841 census instruction to enumerators to round down the ages of people over fifteen years to the nearest five.

Information flowing from death records
Neither John nor Mary being located on the 1861 Census, both were found on the General Register Office (GRO) Death Index and local cemetery register (Beckett Street), and also a photograph of the headstone. John, 58, died 17 September 1851, and was buried 21 September. Still resident at Brick Street, the occupation recorded was ‘servant’. Mary, dying 30 August 1857, was buried 2 September. She was 62/63 and widowed. Both were buried as Nonconformists.

The headstone image³ provided further useful information:

Son John died 17 June 1849, aged 18. This ties in with the 1830-31 birth in Ireland.
Grandson Arthur William Cudbartson died 4 September 1855
Walter Ernest Hallewell died 6 March 1857, aged 17 months.
Hallewell being the second surname at the family home in 1841, this suggests the Eliza Hallewell on that record is the oldest child of John and Mary, and that William Ernest is her son. It also suggests Cudbartson as the married name of daughter Emma. All new information from the headstone was verified by GRO Birth and Death Indexes. Both birth records indicate mothers’ maiden name of Mann.

These suspected marriages were then confirmed by parish register entries (online digital images of original documents).

Eliza married William Hallewell 18 July 1840 at Leeds
Emma married Charles Frederick Cudbartson 8 April 1849 at Leeds
Son William married Elizabeth Taylor 15 March 1847 at Rothwell

Pontefract: baptisms
Armed with marriage details we can now identify Eliza, Emma and William in the 1851 Census. (Online digital images of original documents.) This provides us with the actual birthplace for each, which of course is not available on the 1841 Census. The various entries indicate the birthplace for all as Pontefract, Yorkshire.

This new information regarding specific birthplaces facilitated location of baptisms:

Eliza: Eliza, 25 June 1820
Emma: 10 Nov 1822
William: 11 April 1824

All three baptisms took place at Pontefract St Giles/ St Mary. The marriage of John Mann and Mary Dawson is recorded at the same church on 6 September 1819. As noted above, Pontefract is also Mary’s birthplace.

Apart from son John who died 17 June 1849, aged 18, and is known to have been born in Ireland, only one more son has been identified as the child of John and Mary. A birth record for Alfred Robert Mann was located on the GRO Index. The mother’s maiden name of Dawson is correct. Alfred Robert died in August 1840, aged fourteen months. The ‘abode’ recorded on the burial record is Brick Street, which matches the 1841 and 1851 Censuses. The baptism and burial services at St Peter’s Wesleyan Chapel, are consistent with the move to Nonconformity, suggesting John and Mary’s own religious burial records may also be found here.

Detailed examination of the Pontefract registers reveals no further children for John and Mary there. This might point to miscarriage, stillbirth, simply no pregnancy, or removal to Ireland, where son John was born, 1830-31. Without a precise location, no attempt has yet been made to locate John’s or any other baptism/burial in Irish parish records. Indeed, any such records may not have survived. If there were other children, their births would have predated the introduction of Civil Births, Marriages and Deaths; and given that the movements of John and his family are not fully known, finding all additional children could not be guaranteed. Certainly, no other children survived to adulthood.

Using the same records to develop John’s military timeline
The Pontefract baptism and marriage records outlined above also provide information about John’s Royal Horse Artillery career. Not only do they suggest he was stationed there for the years the children were born; the register entries themselves record details of his progress within the Royal Horse Artillery. Only Emily’s and William’s baptisms record John as Trumpeter. This supports evidence on the Discharge Papers of his promotion on 1 July 1820, and that was six days after Eliza’s baptism.

These records evidence that John was stationed in Pontefract from before September 1819 to some time after April 1824. Wider examination of Pontefract baptism registers from 1818 to 1830 shows that between 1820-1825 forty-eight babies of fathers serving with the RHA were baptised. After this, baptisms reduce to just four in 1826-27, and then none. This could point to mobilisation to Ireland circa 1827.

Ongoing research
It is interesting that this research into John started with a little information on his military Discharge Papers – just enough clues to permit corroboration of, and following through on, the information on the Leeds Census documentation. That information, followed up with newspaper reports, military records and wider reading, then enabled the placement of John within a specific Troop during the years after Waterloo and before his discharge in 1832. What has not yet been possible is locating him within a definite Troop at Waterloo, although this has been narrowed down to two. Within the next year I plan to do more research focused on the Royal Horse Artillery troops to try to locate him at a specific place in Ireland, and also to try to find out more about the two troops at Waterloo. After that I would like to visit Waterloo. The circle would be completed if this information also helped me to locate a baptism for son John in Ireland and perhaps any other births of children at the same location.

However, for now, I’m happy to have achieved something that, initially, I didn’t think would be achievable. I have followed up on a single phrase on John’s discharge papers: that John had a large family and had ‘brought them up in a most creditable manner’, and I have tracked down him and all those children. One thing I wish I knew, and never will: did John and his brother Thomas (my 3x great grandfather) each know the other was in Leeds? I like to think they might, but both arrived there by complete coincidence and it’s entirely possible that they lived a mile or so apart for eight years without ever knowing the other was there.

This is the resulting family tree. Click for a better view.

John Mann, Royal Hospital Chelsea: Soldiers Service Documents 1760-1854, Original data: The National Archives WO 97/1249/78. Source: www.findmypast.co.uk ↩︎
John Marson [Mann], 1841 England Census. Original data: The National Archives, Class: HO107; Piece: 1347; Book: 2; Civil Parish: Leeds Town; Enumeration District: 24; Folio: 20; Page: 2. Source: www.ancestry.co.uk ↩︎
John Mann, Family burial plot, UK and Ireland Find A Grace Index entry with headstone photograph, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/234824558/john-mann ↩︎

John Wintrip: A History of Parish Registers in England & Wales

Posted on 16th May 2026 by English Ancestors

I first met John Wintrip when I applied to become an Associate of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA). John was at that time Chair of the Board of Assessors. We met again several months later when I progressed to Member. I was struck by his encouraging manner and passion for genealogy, and was delighted when he asked me to review his latest book. In the interests of full disclosure, I received this copy of the book when I agreed to do the review. However, all views expressed below are my own.

The book is very readable. Indeed, the parish registers of England and Wales have been a personal passion for John for some time, being also the topic of original research culminating in his dissertation submitted for Licentiateship of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, awarded in 2019.

This is not a ‘How To’ manual. Rather it is an overview and account of the history and development of parish registers, the goal being to encourage readers to recognise changes in their format, and to understand what’s behind those changes and the references or symbols we sometimes come across alongside our ancestors’ entries in baptism, marriage and burial registers.

The focus of the book is the period 1660 to 1837. Nevertheless, a short summary chapter of the key issues of the earlier years (1538-1660) is included, as is a summary of the post-1837 era, when civil birth, marriage and death registration came into operation and the secular role of parish registers ended. Having set the direction of the book, the chapters are set out largely with a chronological account of the changes in three main periods: 1660 to 1753; 1754 to 1812; and 1813 to 1837. Each of these periods is recognisable to family historians as commencing with an important change impacting the keeping of parish registers. The Restoration in 1660 overturned the Commonwealth period rules for the maintenance of the registers as a civil matter and restored the diocesan structure of the Church; Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, implemented in 1754, brought in new strict rules for the administration of marriages; and 1813 saw the implementation of George Rose’s Act of 1812, which applied primarily to baptism and burial registers.

Taken as a whole, the period witnessed the transformation of a society ordered by the Church to a more diverse one, where secular and governmental matters gradually took precedence. The rules relating to parish registers were set down in 1604 by canon 70 of the Church of England. Yet parish registers were not simply a record of who had undergone the sacramental rites. Prior to the introduction of civil births, marriages and deaths in 1837, it was the local parish church that kept track of the population. Baptism entries evidenced paternity, while marriage enabled the presumption of paternity; and entries on marriage registers sealed the legal contract that placed the property and inheritance of the bride into the hands of her new husband. However, the decades following 1660 were characterised by a gradual acceptance of the right to religious freedom. This necessitated a recognition that, since it was the Church of England parish registers that evidenced paternity, property and inheritance rights, somehow the Dissenters needed to be accommodated within them.

Within this context, John outlines the gradual development from the early years in which often, baptism entries might simply have included the child’s name, to an understanding that the descent from one generation to the next also needed to be recorded. Although the rules governing the content and layout of parish registers, the writing surface used and even requirements for their safe keeping, were set down by canon 70, gradually accommodations were reached whereby births of the children of Dissenters/ Nonconformists could be included in registers and in burial arrangements.

John outlines the introduction of various requirements over time, such as ‘burial in wool’ and taxes on entries in parish registers – and how these might be identified in the parish registers. They are, of course, governmental intrusions into the parish registers, and further evidence of the secular aspect of the Church’s record-keeping. However, it was not until 1754 that the secular imperatives took precedence. In that year, with the implementation of Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, specifically ‘An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriages’, marriage became subject to statute law. Although the circumstances in which marriages could take place had been set down by the Church in 1604, over time they had often been ignored, sometimes with serious consquences for respectable yet unwitting bigamous wives and their children, as well as ruined heiresses. Hardwicke’s Act set down new strict requirements for the administration and recording of marriages, alongside significant penalties for clergy who failed to comply. In a chapter entirely devoted to the paperwork created by this Act, John explains the administrative changes, the statutory requirements, the role of private printing companies in their interpretation and practice and many other aspects. This was also the first time the subjects of an entry in a parish register were required to sign. John covers reasons why the absence of a signature might be a choice, rather than evidence of our ancestor’s illiteracy or limited literacy skills. (It clarified an anomaly relating to one of my own 3x great grandfathers.)

Something all family historians come to realise is that the records we use for our research were never intended to be for our benefit; rather we are accidental beneficiaries. I was surprised, then, to learn that our pains were shared by antiquarians as long ago as the late seventeenth century. Prominent Leeds historian Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725) seems to have been the originator of the first published proposals for more detailed baptism and burial entries in 1715, but he was influenced in this by the fabulous register entries devised by Thomas Kirke in the nearby parish of Adel. (If you have access to Ancestry, they start here, in 1685, on page 2) Thoresby’s needs when searching the registers in the course of constructing pedigrees of prominent local families and for local history research led him, like us, to desire more information about the parentage or other family connections of the individuals recorded.

Over the course of the following decades, the developments we see when consulting parish registers, came about as a result of many men of the cloth improving the arrangement of their entries in the registers of their own parishes and sharing their ideas with fellow ministers; others publishing pamphlets with their ideas for improving the system; and in several dioceses after around 1770, the issuing of directives by bishops or archdeacons for the adoption of fuller register entries. There are chapters in the book devoted to initiatives in the dioceses of Carlisle, St Asaph and Norwich, the wonderful William Dade system recommended in the dioceses of York and Chester, and in Salisbury and Durham, where Shute Barrington’s recommendations were widely followed. (I previously wrote about the Dade Registers here.)

To reiterate my previous point, it is fortunate for us as genealogists that our passion for ancestor-hunting correlates so closely to more practical matters of wealth and inheritance. As Shute Barrington wrote in 1789:

“Real and extensive benefits would […] result from the introduction of a better form of register than that at present in common use. Ascertaining claims of property, especially maternal property, and the investigation of lineal and collateral descents, would be among those benefits.”

[Shute, Lord Bishop of Sarum, extract from A Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Sarum (Salisbury: Printed by B.C.Collins, 1789) In: John Wintrip: A History of Parish Registers in England and Wales from the Restoration to Civil Registration. Appendix 10]

Indeed, so good were the entries in some parts of the country that when, following the Rose Act of the previous year, standard printed papers for baptisms and burials were introduced in 1813, the absence of dedicated spaces for the actual date of birth and for the mother’s maiden name was viewed by some as an extremely retrograde step. Some ministers continued to include the same information as they had done previously, fitting the extra notes into the tabulated forms now required.

Who will benefit from this book?
It will be useful for anyone starting to work with earlier parish registers. The combination of the chronological layout, broken into identifiable topics via chapter headings and more focused searching in the index when you come across some inexplicable symbol or abbreviation in a parish register, should cover all bases. (I will certainly be doing this from time to time!) All of that is reinforced by a useful timeline of major changes and proposals for change at Appendix 1. When we know about diocesan-wide changes in register entries, but our ancestor falls just outside the operative dates, it’s sometimes useful to switch to older or younger siblings to get the extra information from their baptisms.

However, there is likely to be new information even for more advanced genealogists. Amongst the new finds for me was that, although the terms ‘baptism’ and ‘christening’ are largely interchangeable in the Church of England, a practical distinction has sometimes been made between them in connection with arrangements for private baptisms.

Discussion of ‘Day Books’ also provided food for thought. Although the rules set down in 1604 required that the registers be completed on a weekly basis by the vicar in the presence of at least one of his churchwardens, in practice many kept a Day Book to record baptisms and burials as they happened, writing the notes into the parchment registers at a later date – often much later. The whole issue of ‘originals’ and ‘transcriptions’ is of much importance to genealogists: the original or a digital image of it is always to be preferred; and that means the parish register. But what if the parish register is not, in fact, the ‘original’? What if, in copying over information from the Day Book to the official register, mistakes were made, or entries left out, or worse still – if the entire Day Book goes missing before they are copied across?

With an interest in social history, alongside the detailed focus upon parish registers, I found myself thinking of the impact on society, what was happening in the country to bring about these changes when they happened, and how did they affect the ordinary person.

Whilst reading, knowing that some of the information related to parishes with which I’m well acquainted, I found myself going back to my own and other family trees I’ve worked on, to check if the wording on these specific entries complied with the new rules. I confess I hadn’t realised that some of the more modest ‘enhanced’ entries were the result of directions from the bishop; I had assumed them to be personal preferences of the parish incumbent.

In conclusion, I found John’s book to be readable, authoritative and meticulously researched. While his focus here is on the parish registers themselves, when the point under discussion encompasses a broader question, footnotes point to other texts where that issue is more fully discussed. Other key texts are reprinted in the appendices, and the various changes in registers are illustrated throughout.

John Wintrip: A History of Parish Registers in England and Wales from the Restoration to Civil Registration is published by The Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, 2026.
ISBN 978 0 718 89848 9

Shackleton’s Fold: Exploring the area

Posted on 30th Apr 2026 by English Ancestors

This is the second video post in my Shackleton’s Fold One Place Study series.

A One Place Study brings together aspects of family history, local history and even house history. They are often carried out by family historians looking to learn more about their ancestors. A One Place Study might add new records, broaden out the focus or just bring a new perspective to our research.

Shackleton’s Fold was a small ‘street’ of just nineteen houses that stood in the New Wortley area of Leeds for more than ninety years. It was demolished by the end of the 1930s. In the video linked below I use maps and old photos to try to explore the area where it once stood.

I found this process so useful in helping me to imagine what Shackleton’s Fold was like. Poring over old maps and finding photographs of buildings all around the Fold – alas none of Shackleton’s Fold itself – really helped me to focus.

I hope this video will be of interest to family historians, local historians and people doing or thinking of doing a One Place Study. In addition, people with a general interest in Leeds history, specifically the history of New Wortley may find it interesting.

I’m particularly keen to attract other family historians whose research has taken them back to Shackleton’s Fold between the mid 1840s and 1938. Alongside this visual exploration, I’m in the process of creating a database of every person on the censuses and every voter listed on the electoral registers. I’m looking for stories and photographs and would be very grateful if anyone could help out in that regard. I’ve already found some interesting stories.

If you fall into any of these categories, or know someone who does, please do share a link to this post and/or the YouTube link – and please ‘Like’ the video if you have a YouTube account. I hope you’ll find it useful.

Information and Links for photos and maps used

All photographs from Leodis: https://Leodis.net
Go to Advanced search and key in the ID given.

JR Holmes and Star Maltings on Wortley Road, 1965. ID: 2003729_72382754
Star Maltings and Shackleton’s Fold on Wortley Road, 1965. ID: 2003729_99482364
View from St John’s Street to side view of Star Maltings and former Shackleton’s Fold, 1965. ID: 2003729_88186282
107-109 Whitehall Road, with view of St John’s Street, 1965. ID: 2003729_31147402
Whitehall Road School and Kildare Terrace, 1948. ID: 5624
Whitehall Road School, 1948. ID: 2818
Whitehall Road at the junction with Gelderd Road, Trolley and Tram Junction, undated but possibly 1911. ID: 2011127_173010
St John’s Sunday School (bombed 24th/25th August 1940). ID: 200828_166072
St John’s Street, from L to R: 11 to 15, 1965. ID: 2003729_52465457

Tithe apportionment of Wortley (township in the parish of Leeds)
1846. The National Archives, Kew. Reference: IR 29/43/444

Ordnance Survey Maps located at National Library of Scotland Maps: https://maps.nls.uk
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

OS: Leeds Sheet 13: Surveyed: 1847, Published: 1850. (Railway revision to c. 1862)
https://maps.nls.uk/view/229947003

OS: Leeds Sheet 17: Surveyed: 1847, Published: 1850. (Railway revision to c. 1854)
https://maps.nls.uk/view/229947015

OS 25-inch England and Wales: Leeds – Yorkshire CCXVIII.5.13: Surveyed: 1888, Revised: 1910, Published: 1911
https://maps.nls.uk/view/229947306

OS 25-inch England and Wales: Yorkshire CCXVIII.5: Revised: 1906, Published: 1908
https://maps.nls.uk/view/125642449

O.S: Yorkshire CCXVIII.5: Revised: 1932 to 1933, Published: 1934
https://maps.nls.uk/view/125642455

In search of Shackleton’s Fold (and other lost places)

Posted on 26th Mar 2026 by English Ancestors

Ordnance Survey: Leeds Sheet 13: Surveyed: 1847. Published: 1850.
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
https://maps.nls.uk/view/229947003

The last post I published in my ‘Ancestral Tourism’ series focused on preparing for visiting former ancestral homes and business premises that are still standing. I said I would cover trying to locate buildings no longer in existence in a future post.

This is that future post. It finishes my Ancestral Tourism theme, and also forms part of my One Place Study on Shackleton’s Fold.

In this video linked below I provide two examples from my own family history of using maps, censuses, technology and sheer determination to work out where a property used to be. The first example is in Birmingham’s Deritend and Bordesley; the second is Shackleton’s Fold. If you have ‘disappeared’ houses in your ancestry, I hope you’ll find it helpful.

Please do ‘like’ it if you have a YouTube account. You could even ‘Subscribe’ to the channel if you want. It’s free. 🙂

As far as the Shackleton’s Fold theme is concerned, there will be at least two follow-on videos (currently in preparation). The first of these will use maps and old photos to focus on the area where it stood. In the second I turn detective and try to gather as many clues as possible about what Shackleton’s Fold looked like.

If you have ancestry in Shackleton’s Fold, New Wortley, Leeds (1840s-c.1938) and have an interesting family story about it, or a photograph of the street, I would love to hear from you. If you don’t have ancestry there but have access to a photograph of the street, again, please do contact me.

*****

The maps used in this video came from the National Libraries of Scotland Maps website, and as part of their permission to use I’m required to provide a link to each of the maps. Although I did put this information at the end of the video, these were not usable as hyperlinks to the original map online. I therefore provide all map information and links below.

Borough of Birmingham by J. Pigott-Smith: Sheet 190, Published: 1855
Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons)
This map is also available at the National Library of Scotland:
https://maps.nls.uk/view/260803014

Side by Side Map: Google Maps, 2025:
Part of New Wortley, Leeds

The following maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland:

OS: Leeds Sheet 13
Surveyed: 1847, Published: 1850. (Railway revision to c.1862)
https://maps.nls.uk/view/229947003

OS: OS 25-inch England and Wales: Yorkshire CCXVIII.5
Surveyed: 1888 to 1890, Published: 1893
https://maps.nls.uk/view/125642446

Half relationships in genetic genealogy

Posted on 19th Feb 2026 by English Ancestors

Getting your head around ‘Half’ relationships can be tricky. In regular life we probably wouldn’t make a distinction between a half cousin and a full cousin. Yet when we’re working with DNA, and indeed if we’re looking for a missing parent or grandparent, ‘Half’ relationships are important. The Shared centiMorgan Project chart shows that we are likely to share different amounts of DNA with full and half cousins. On average, we share 866 centiMorgans (cM) with a full cousin – although because of the random nature of DNA inheritance it could be as low as 396 and as high as 1397cM. By contrast, we share, on average, 449cM with a half cousin, although it could be as little as 156 and as much as 979cM. Similarly, with a second cousin twice removed the average is 71cM, but it could be as little as zero and as much as 244cM. For a half second cousin twice removed the average is 48, but the range is from zero to 144cM.

(If you’re having trouble working out what relationship a person is to you, I shared a Cousin Calculator a few years back which should help with that… but doesn’t include Half relationships.)

Half relationships, then, are important in genetic genealogy. The amount of DNA we share with someone is a clue as to how far back we connect, that is, where we should be looking for our Most Recent Common Ancestor. In fact, if you go back to the Shared centiMorgan chart, there’s a little box at the top where you can type in the amount of DNA you share with someone and it will provide you with a range of possibilities, and the likelihood of each.

What is it that makes someone a half cousin, a half aunt, or a half sibling?
It’s all about our direct line ancestry

We all have:
2 biological parents
4 biological grandparents
8 biological great grandparents
16 biological great great grandparents
and so on.

If, instead, we think of them as ‘pairs’, we all have:
1 pair of biological parents
2 pairs of biological grandparents
4 pairs of biological great grandparents
8 pairs of biological great great grandparents
and so on.

It doesn’t matter if these people were married, having a clandestine relationship or any variation on that. The fact is that any individual (let’s say person ‘A’) is born of two specific people. If one of these people – these biological parents – has another child (we’ll call that child person ‘B’) with a different partner, then biologically A and B are Half siblings, and anyone descended from each of them will also have the Half DNA relationship in relation to the other ‘branch’ of descendants..

The point to emphasise here is that whether someone is your Half sibling, your Half aunt, your Half cousin or your Half 3rd cousin twice removed depends on what happened in your direct line at the point where you and your DNA match’s lines intersect. If your Most Recent Common Ancestors are a pair, your relationship will be a full sibling/ aunt/ cousin or 3rd cousin twice removed, etc. If your Most Recent Common Ancestor is just one person, your relationship will be ‘Half’.

Cousins and Half Cousins
All of the above may be obvious, but it’s an essential foundation for what I think may be the bit most people have trouble with: first cousins.

If my uncle has children, my cousins, and then remarries and has more children, those younger children are half siblings to his older offspring. So are they my half cousins?
No, they are not. The reason for this is that for a Half relationship to exist between you and another person, there must have been a change of partner in YOUR direct line. The remarriage of an aunt, uncle, great aunt, great uncle, and so on, has no impact on YOUR direct line.

In the above scenario, the reason my uncle’s two sets of children are half siblings is because there is a difference in the biological partnering in their own direct line, that is: at the level of their own parents. However, the reason my cousins are my cousins is because their father is my parent’s brother. Our Most Recent Common Ancestor is our grandparent couple. The mother of my uncle’s children is linked to me only through that marriage/ relationship, and not through biology. Therefore his children may be half siblings to each other, but they are all full cousins to me.

How about if my uncle died and his wife – my ‘aunt’ only by marriage to him – remarried and had more children with her second husband. We may all get on like a house on fire. My aunt by marriage may be as much a part of our family as I am; and we may welcome her new husband and consider their children, alongside the children my ‘aunt’ had with my uncle, as our cousins. But in the true biological/ DNA sense, whereas her older children are my full first cousins, the second tier of her family has no connection to me whatsoever.

Whichever way you look at it, all of my uncle’s children are my full first cousins, regardless of how many partners he has had, because we are all descended from one Most Recent Common Ancestor couple: our grandparents.

Searching for an unknown father
Let’s suppose I’m searching for an unknown biological father. If he has other children, they and their descendants would share only one Most Recent Common Ancestor with me: that would be our father. We would have different mothers and would therefore be Half siblings. Children of the half siblings would be my half nieces and nephews, and they would be Half cousins to my children. Their descendants would always retain the ‘Half’ biological relationship.

But something changes when you start to work back from the biological father. Beyond him, right back into the past, all relationships are ‘Full’, not ‘Half’.

The biological father’s sister would be my full aunt, because our Most Recent Common Ancestor is a couple – her parents/ my biological grandparents; and her children would be my full cousins.

This applies at whatever position in your family tree you have an unknown ancestor: father, grandfather, a grandmother who ‘disappeared’ and turns out to have had a second family, and so on. Everyone descending from that SINGLE Most Recent Common Ancestor is a ‘Half’ relationship; all ancestors further back beyond that person is ‘Full’ – a full aunt, cousin, great uncle, and so on.

To conclude, here’s a family tree chart from one line of my own family tree. Right at the bottom in the centre you see me, my parent and my grandparent.

My great grandmother, Jane, was married to Edward and they had several children, including my grandparent and Maggie. When Edward died Jane married Thomas and they had one child, Alice.
Alice is half sibling to my grandparent and great aunt Maggie, although within the family she was simply their sister.
Maggie’s children are my parent’s full cousins. Biologically, because the Most Recent Common Ancestor is just one person – their grandmother Jane – Alice’s children are half cousins to Maggie’s children and my parent. Within the family no such distinction was ever made, but in DNA terms there is a distinction.

My great grandfather Edward’s mother, Harriet, also married twice. She was married to Marcus, and had several children, including Edward and Joe. Before marrying Harriet, Marcus had been married to Ann and they had a daughter, Amelia, who was brought up by Harriet after Ann died very young. After eight years of marriage to Harriet, Marcus also died. Harriet then married John and had more children, including Robert.
Joe and Edward are full siblings. Amelia is their half sister, because they share the one Most Recent Common Ancestor: their father, Marcus.
Robert is also half sibling to Joe and Edward, because they share the one Most Recent Common Ancestor: their mother, Harriet.
Amelia and Robert may well have considered each other as siblings, but biologically there is no connection whatsoever between them.
The children of Edward and Joe (including Maggie and my grandparent) are full cousins. Amelia’s children are their half cousins.
Alice, and Robert’s children, have no DNA connection to Amelia’s children, nor do they have a DNA connection to each other, although they may have thought of each other as cousins.

However, further back than Marcus and Harriet, all ‘Half’ relationships cease. If Marcus is the Most Recent Common Ancestor of Amelia, Joe and Edward, then Marcus’s parents are also common ancestors. Therefore any brothers or sisters of Marcus will be full uncles or aunts to all of Marcus’s children. Similarly, if Harriet is the Most Recent Common Ancestor of Joe, Edward and Robert, then her parents will also be their common ancestors, and as such any full brother or sisters of Harriet will be full uncles and aunts to all of Harriet’s children, regardless of who the father is.

The reason for including that chart and explanation was to illustrate some of the points raised above. It turns out also to illustrate how complicated this can be! So if you’ve been scratching your head trying to understand full and half relationships, and why the ‘Half’ has come about, I hope the first half of this post will help. If, after that, you can interpret the chart and work out who is ‘Half’, who is ‘Full’, who has no biological connection, how this impacts on previous generations, and how this affects DNA, then you have nothing to worry about. 😀

Family photos as a focus for mini histories

Posted on 24th Jan 2026 by English Ancestors

The military band (marching band) of the 1st Battalion of the Green Howards. Location and precise year not known. ‘X’ marks my Granddad.

About three years ago I set myself the challenge of creating a digital library of every old family photo my brother and I inherited. The plan was to photograph the originals, using a good digital SLR camera. This is done with the soft natural light from a typically British all-over white sky, the sort of sky that manages to be bright whilst casting no shadow. The photos are then cleaned up digitally to remove scratches, perhaps enhance colour, and so on, and saved with an appropriate title. Sometimes an image takes five minutes to process, sometimes much, much longer. I still have a long way to go.

It’s a sad reality we family historians often have to come to terms with, that not everyone in our family is as interested in our ancestors as we are… My plan is to share these digital images with every family member, but I realise that no matter how much work I put into them, they’re unlikely to ignite the interest of the rest of the family, much less transport them back to the time the photo was taken and make them wonder what was going on in the subject’s world, as I would, and I suspect everyone reading this would too. Because of this, my grand plan has always been to present them in chronological order and meaningful ‘categories’, like photos of my parents before they knew each other, photos of my brother and me as children, and so on.

As I work with these photos I spend so much time looking at them that I spot details others would likely miss. I work out which photos were taken on the same day, spot the ‘stories’ in them, and assign dates – some deduced with forensic certainty, while others are estimates based on the clues. I then give each image a title with dates, names, and location or event.

I know that this is probably not enough to keep the attention of someone who hasn’t been bitten with the genealogy bug, so the plan is to provide each family member with not only the individual images, but also the same images in a digital booklet, creating the focus for a short history about that person or those people. I hope that in the context of their wider story the photos will make more sense.

My plan was disrupted when I borrowed all my brother’s photos and had to prioritise photographing them so I could get them back to him. In consequence, although I have around 400 processed old family images in my digital photo library (and about the same number photographed and awaiting processing), I haven’t produced even one ‘complete’ batch/story of photos for family members. I feel the need to achieve some sort of milestone.

Just before Christmas I went to the Christmas concert of our town’s brass band. As I listened to the beautiful arrangements of many of my favourite carols, my mind turned to my Granddad who, from 1906 until 1920, was a musician in the Green Howards, or Yorkshire Regiment.

He seems to have had that role from the outset. Certainly by the time he sent a Christmas card from South Africa to his parents in 1907, his title was ‘Drummer’. How he came to be so is a mystery to me. I’m sure he couldn’t have had previous experience, and can only assume he had a very good natural sense of rhythm, expressed an interest in specialising in the military band, and somehow was given a drum, some drumsticks and a mentor, and left to practise. He did it for fourteen years, and we still have his beautifully carved drumsticks and pacing stick.

After the brass band concert I got out all my Granddad’s photos and memorabilia from his time in the Green Howards, I realised there were not that many – no more than forty or fifty – and even though I haven’t yet photographed or processed a single one of them, I decided to make this the first of my little histories. After all, I already know a fair bit about his military movements.

As is evident from the image at the top of this post, not all the photos are great. That image is just a quick photo taken on my phone to illustrate the blogpost; the one I’ll take later on my camera will be better quality. However, the original is very small (2″ x 3 1/4″ / 5cm x 9cm), and with this slight enlargement, the image of the men is blurred. I can improve on this but not much. However, it has value as the only photo I have of the band in ‘marching’ mode and will sit alongside better images of them in seated format.

So this is part of my ToDo List for the next couple of months: to photograph, digitise and, as far as possible, arrange all my Granddad’s army images in date order with locations, and to share this with family. A second stage will be to find out as much as I can about the Battalion’s reason for being in the various locations, but that will be on a future ToDo List.

Season’s Greetings

Posted on 29th Dec 2025 by English Ancestors

Getting to Christmas always feels like a marathon. So much to do to get everything ready before the arrival of family to spend a few days with us. I put a lot of time into baking Christmas cakes, cleaning and decorating the house. This takes a lot longer than most people would consider acceptable, because over the years my Christmas decorations have become my ‘thing’: my collection. It’s fair to describe this collection as sizeable. (Some might say excessive, but what do they know?!)

Unwrapping my ornaments each December is like being reunited with old friends. I read an article just before Christmas, about different approaches to tree decorating. I recognised myself as ‘the archivist’. Every piece has a story, or invokes a memory. Some were made by my children when they were little; quite a lot have been (and continue to be) made by me. Others were gifts, or bought by us on our travels. A few belonged to my parents; and even the ones that fall into none of those categories often have meaning.

I follow my mother’s tradition of leaving the decorations up until 6th January (Epithany), and my favourite time is the days between Christmas day and then, when everything looks beautiful and we can enjoy the results of all that preparation.

These ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ would have been enjoyed long ago by our ancestors who, taking advantage of the dormant winter season, followed the proclamation of the 567 Council of Tours, that the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany were to be kept as a sacred and festive season. This short video focuses on some of the traditions that may be new to overseas readers, but many of them are still present in some way in UK festivities.

For me, these are mostly quiet days, but we do like to have a gathering on Twelfth Night (5th January).

Although I consider the end of the Twelve Days as the day to take down the Christmas decorations, the tradition used to be to leave them up until the Eve of Candlemas on 2nd February. I inadvertently fell into this tradition when, in 2021, after the 2020 Christmas Covid lockdown, I needed to keep the joy going a bit longer. That year, on January 6th, I re-dressed one of my trees as a ‘January Tree’, removing all the Christmassy ornaments, but keeping bright reds and wintery decorations. Two years later I had my first little Christmas ‘Family Tree’ and ever since, I keep both of these trees throughout January every year.

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you’ve had a happy one. If you needed quiet and tranquility, I hope you had that. If parties and community are your thing, I hope you enjoyed as many as you wanted. To all of you, I wish you a happy, healthy and successful New Year in 2026. I’ll be back in January with a new post.

Ancestral Tourism 4: Houses & Business Premises

Posted on 14th Nov 2025 by English Ancestors

This is part four in my ‘Ancestral Tourism’ series. It follows on from Part 1: Churches and Churchyards, Part 2: Municipal & other Public Cemeteries and Part 3: Graves and Gravestones. The focus in this little series is on planning ahead so that you can spend the time when you’re there exploring, wandering, taking photographs and soaking up the vibes of the place.

In this post we’re looking at preparing for visiting former ancestral homes and business premises that are still standing. Trying to locate buildings no longer in existence will be covered in a future post.

Before you go

How do we know where our ancestors lived?
A range of documents may include the specific address or property name, or other clues as to the location of a former home or business of our ancestors. Examples are:

Church records, such as Baptism, Marriage, Burial and maybe wider parish records
Civil Registration: Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates
Census records
Correspondence between the person and an official body, sometimes found in archives, e.g. National Archives
Directories
Electoral Rolls
Family business records
Family documents, including letters and perhaps a family bible or other religious text
Immigration and Naturalisation documents
Military Records, including attestations and next of kin
Newspaper reports
Poll Books
Probate Records, Wills, etc
Property and Land records, including deeds, local tax, etc
Public and Municipal Cemetery registers
School records

It’s certainly easier to track our more recent ancestors.
For earlier generations, even where we find an abode in the examples above, often an exact ‘address’ was not used. A street name without house number, or for smaller places even just the name of the village or hamlet may be the closest we’ll get. During the second half of the 19th century we find more documents that include information to guide us to a specific property. Earlier this year I visited Kinver in Staffordshire, where my 2x great grandfather and some of his siblings were born. The image below shows the extent of Kinver now, as viewed from the churchyard high on a hill above the village. The main High Street, dating from medieval times, is clearly seen in the image. Most of the properties beyond that are more recent. ‘Somewhere in this photo’ is the closest I will ever get to knowing where my ancestors lived here – but I’m happy with that.

Kinver viewed from the church. © Janice Heppenstall

Beware! House names and even house numbers can change
Even when documents do bear a house number or name, these may have changed – particularly if there was much additional building in the twentieth century. I researched the history of a house built around 1837 in what is now a built-up area of the Isle of Wight. The house number is 21, and my clients had already done some research into the nineteenth century inhabitants of ‘number 21’. However, using maps and other documentation I found that the house became number 21 only in the early twentieth century. For the first eighty or so years it was number 3. The change had become necessary to accommodate new building over the previous decades.

Similarly, a few years ago, I visited York to see my family’s properties there. Census records had my 4xG grandparents at 58 Stonegate. I found the property and photographed it, but afterwards realised Stonegate had been renumbered. Eventually I worked out that their shop (and the floors above above, where they lived) had been this well-known corner plot, below, that was later taken over by Banks & Sons. I had been sitting right opposite this shop (in Betty’s tearoom, for those who know!) without knowing it was my ancestral home. It took a lot of research to work this out. But this is what happens when we don’t do our homework before we set off! Now I have to go back to York to step inside this lovely shop. Luckily, visiting York is never a chore.

An early twentieth century scene from York, showing part of Stonegate and featuring the corner shop at that time occuped by Banks and Sons Music Sellers. York Minster is visible in the background — Junction of Stonegate with St Helen’s Square, York. Image in public domain, photographer unknown.

Changes in house name can be even more difficult to work with, particularly if several houses on the street seem to have changed name, and possibly more houses may have been built between the original ones.

So how can we be sure we have the right house?
Here are some ideas.

Photographs
If you’re lucky you may have an old family photo of the house. Even photos of people standing outside a property may provide visual clues in the form of distinctive architectural features. You can then use Google Street View to ‘walk’ along the road to find the property, if it’s still there.

Family and Local History groups on Facebook are also extremely useful for identifying the exact location of a photograph. I once witnessed someone posting an ancestral holiday snap and asking if anyone knew where in the world it could be. Within fifteen minutes it was identified as beneath a specific lamp post in a named piazza in Rome!

It’s also worth exploring whether there’s a website with old photos of your area of interest. The best one I know is Leodis, a photographic archive with over 62,000 images of Leeds, managed by the Local and Family History team at Leeds Libraries. I have found many old images of houses my ancestors lived in on there – in streets that now no longer exist. If you know of such a website for any of your areas of interest, please do share in a comment.

Maps
Mention has already been made of Google Street View. Modern day maps – including Google and other online maps – can be scrutinised alongside historic maps. My go-to place for online Ordnance Survey maps is here: https://maps.nls.uk/os/ I’ve written before about their Side-by-Side maps, but there are many other features. Something you could do is find a detailed historic map (the 25 inches to one mile series if possible) on the nls site, and see if you can compare the shapes of buildings then to existing buildings on satellite view now.

‘Walking the route’ with the census enumerator
With no photos and only documents to go on, it may be possible, using modern and contemporary maps, to ‘follow the route’ of a census enumerator. Using landmarks and occurences of smaller streets, you may be able to find the house, or at the very least to work out its general whereabouts, even if it’s not possible to narrow it down to a specific property.

Getting to know the neighbours
Using census returns for the street where your ancestors lived, it might be possible to track any changes in housenames or numbers of specific families whose occupation spans two or more decades. If the Jones family live at number 42, the Smiths at 44 and the Browns at 46, and then ten years later the same three families are at 58, 60 and 62, it is more likely that the numbering has changed than that all three families relocated together further along the same street. You can do the same thing far more accurately by consulting Electoral Registers. In the example above of my clients’ house starting out as Number 3 and eventually becoming Number 21, I could see from the Electoral Registers that this change happened in 1931. However, Electoral Registers are often not accessible online, meaning this may be something you could do only when you arrive in the area. Local archives and central libraries will usually have these registers.

What if your family’s presence predates the census?
Below is part of Starbotton, in Upper Wharfedale, where my period of interest, before 1750, predates the census. Before going I ‘walked the route’ using Google ‘Map View’ on one device and ‘Street View’ on another to be sure to cover the whole village. By the time I visited, last summer, I knew this small village like the back of my hand. However, I had no idea which house had been owned by my 8x great grandparents and later their son, my 7x great grandfather. Apart from church records and similar, indicating that the family lived in ‘Starbotton’, I was very lucky to come across a collection of property reports made over the years by the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group. These, in turn, drew upon other property documentation at the County Record Office. I was able to identify several specific houses formerly owned by my wider ancestral family in Starbotton, and to pay special attention to them when I visited. I never did find out where my 7x and 8x grandparents lived, though, and it’s possible their house may no longer be standing. However, I can name the late seventeenth century inhabitants of around half of the properties, and I know that most of mine lived in the part of the village pictured below.

A rural village scene with seventeenth century stone houses surrounded by hills and trees — Part of Starbotton, Upper Wharfedale, Yorkshire. © Janice Heppenstall

When you arrive

If the occupants were in the garden I would probably chat to them, tell them about my connection and ask permission to photograph the house from the street. If they wanted to know more about who lived there I would tell them. If they were not there I’d take the photos anyway. Just taking a few photos, wandering up and down the street, touching the wall… I find all these things bring me closer to my ancestors who lived there.

If your ancestors had a shop or public house, if the school they attended is now a business centre, or if for some other reason their former home or premises are open to the public, it would be lovely to step inside and spend a little time there.

I also enjoy seeing historic buildings and landmarks that my ancestors would have known, and just getting a feel for the area and the local history. You can do this even if the house they lived in is no longer there.

Depending on the size of the place you’re visiting, and its historic importance or embracing of tourism, you might be able to pre-book a tour with an accredited guide.

If you can’t get there

It really does make a difference going there, but if that’s not possible, just doing the research outlined above will leave you knowing a great deal more about your ancestral homes and the localities they lived in. You can also take a screen shot of your ancestral properties using Google Street View, and of course connect with online and local groups to find out more and see if anyone has any photos.

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If you have other ideas please do leave a comment.