LANCSGEN-L Archives

From: "Frances Lee" <>
Subject: Re: [LAN] Marriage Searching "In the Negative" - Helpful Tip
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:53:00 +0100
References: <425EE29C.5070209@mindspring.com>

Lovely Tip! Thank you!

Frances
----- Original Message -----
From: <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 10:37 PM
Subject: [LAN] Marriage Searching "In the Negative" - Helpful Tip


> 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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