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Archiver > LANCSGEN > 2005-04 > 1113514652
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Subject: Marriage Searching "In the Negative" - Helpful Tip
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:37:32 -0400
Forwarded from the Manchester list with permission of the author.
This is the kind of tip that is perfect for me, who frequently overlooks
the obvious! ;-)
Best wishes,
Lynne
-------- Original Message --------
Dear Friends,
I realise that this small tip might be very obvious to some, but it took
me quite a time to work it out and it might help someone else.
OK...Let's say we're trying to track down who our ancestor John WOMBAT
married (for example).
We're pretty sure it was between about 1867 and 1869 in Chorlton and,
sure enough, the great FreeBMD site throws up only one possibility
looking on the page like:
John WOMBAT
Arthur GLASS
Ellen ELLSGATE
Mary MUFFIN
The trouble is, of course, we don't know who married who because there
are four names on the page...(except, in those days, we can be pretty
sure that John didn't marry Arthur).
So, how do we sort the two couples out?
Of course, if we could find John and his wife in a following census,
it'd be easy.
But often you can't.
Either because you don't know where they are, you don't have access to
the "next" census or because one of the pair is dead by the time you get
to the "easily on-line searchable" censuses, like the 1881.
So, here's the Tip:
Don't forget that you can search "in the negative".
For example, even if the 1881 census shows that John WOMBAT is now a
widower, we can still search in that census for a either:
Arthur & Ellen GLASS
or
Arthur & Mary GLASS
And, whichever one we find, we'll know that the OTHER woman married John!
OK...is it perfect? Does it always work? Well, no...as usual in Family
History, something might go wrong.
But I've found this tip comes up with a useful answer more often than
not and I hope it's of some help to you great Mancuiphiles out there.
Cheers from Tassie
Alan
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