'Do you spell it with a 'V' or a 'W'?' inquired the judge. 'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord,' replied Sam.' Dickens

Deciphering your Ancestor's Old Writing

Paleography - Greek; noun; the study and interpretation of old and ancient writing

Here are some simple rules to help you interpret old documents

1. Read documents slowly and carefully.

2. Read documents several times.

3. Use a magnifying glass to help read faded writing.

4. Find websites that offer help deciphering old script.

5. Keep in mind that original documents may contain spelling mistakes!


Recently I acquired a document written in 1760, which relates to the use of a property named Marwell Woodlocks (a manor estate later known as Marwell Hall, that my great uncle owned in the 1930's and 40's and which King Henry VIII had earlier presented to the Seymour family). The antique parchment paper and the flourishes and swirls of mid 18th century English handwriting undoubtedly added artistic charm to this document, but made it extremely difficult to read, as the style and form of penmanship was very different from any writing that we are used to reading today.

One of the most difficult tasks for the family historian, is to decipher old handwriting. Who of us, researching the lives of our ancestors, hasn't received a much anticipated marriage certificate, only to find, that we remain in ignorance of a further generation of forebears' names, because we can't understand the writing. Old writing is frustrating and impossible to avoid. Birth, death and marriage certificates, wills, parish and passenger records, were all handwritten (no word processors in the 'old' days). Generally, handwriting from the 18th century onward is not as difficult to interpret as it is on older documents where many of the lettering styles and forms differ significantly from those of today. To read and interpret old penmanship, (when 'writing' was an artform), you may require help. If your forebears happen to be of German or other European origins, the task of interpreting the handwriting may be even more arduous, as letters such as double s (ss) were written as ß or as a letter F. So if you have been searching in vain for your German or Swiss family of Bebers or Befers, you might like to reconsider that the name might be Besser, which in old German script would have been Beßer.

This doesn't mean that all budding genealogists need to rush off to enrol in paleography classes to learn to interpret ancient script, however, there are a number of excellent websites which offer free advice about deciphering old handwriting. The British National Archives offer an excellent free tutorial to help you to understand writing from 1500-1800, at the following link www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/paleography/ . Other useful websites are, www.cyndislist.com/handwriting.htm and http://www.genealogy.com/. By simply googling 'deciphering old handwriting' you will find a number of other useful websites to guide you through the process of transcribing your ancestors' beautifully scripted' but 'difficult to read' documents. It may be helpful to familiarise yourself with some of the most commonly misunderstood letters of the alphabet.



Commonly misunderstood Capital Letters



F -H

J-I

K-R

S-L

O-Q

P-R

U-V

W-M,UU



Commonly misunderstood Lower Case Letters



b-f

d-ef

j-i

k-t

s-l

t-c

ss-fs,ps,ß

w-vv

y-g



A simple confusion between a letter 'L' and an 'S' led me to believe for some years, that my three times grandfather, Michael Frayne, was an Irish lawyer. I was proud of all of my ancestors who had been deep in coal pits or working as agricultural labourers, but my 'ag labs' and all my ordinary folk dulled in comparison to my husband's ancestry. (He descends from Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, the Scottish McAlpin Kings.... ) So, against this backdrop, an Irish Lawyer was looking quite good! I am sure you can see where I am heading with this anecdote. Some years, (and much more experience) later, when I re-read Michael's daughter's birth certificate, my illustrious Irish grandfather suddenly fell from the social ladder, going from 'Lawyer' to 'Sawyer'. My disappointment, though real, was short lived however, as this discovery led to a much more exciting one when I realised that the date of arrival I had for him in Australia (1837), was too early for a free Irish immigrant. Michael Frayne was, excitingly (for me, though undoubtedly, not for him) a young Irish convict, the brother of notorious convict, Lawrence Frayne, whose memoirs of his time spent on Norfolk Island, are part of the Colonial Papers held in the NSW State Library. Robert Hughes dedicates a chapter to Lawrence Frayne, also, in his book 'The Fatal Shore'.

It was a happy ending for me, but a valuable lesson learned - paleography is an important tool for the genealogist!

'It's a capital mistake to theorise before you have all the evidence.It biases the judgement.' Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930

Don't put your ancestors on the wrong tree....

1.Beware family trees on the internet that have no sources.

2.Never assume that a tree you find on the internet is correct.

3.Check to make certain that 'ancestors' you find are really yours!

4.Always source your information and find EVIDENCE to support theories.

Public family trees are becoming increasingly popular on the internet. Sites such as Ancestry.com provide a facility for members to 'grow' their family trees and to connect with other members who are researching the same ancestors. This, in theory, is a wonderfully innovative idea. Instantly finding relatives is exciting and saves a great deal of time.... as long as they are your relatives!

I have a number of public family trees and have connected with relatives from all over the world. I have even found some cousins almost in my own backyard, who I did not previously know existed. Because I always check my sources carefully, and establish beyond doubt that I have the correct people on my tree, I am confident that these people really are my relatives. As novice family historians we have all made mistakes but the most significant genealogy hint I have learned over the years is how important it is to check sources and establish evidence before adding ancestors to your family tree. Unfortunately, not everyone takes the time or the trouble to do this.

I recently logged into Ancestry.com where I have a number of public family trees. To my surprise, I found a large portion of my family, including myself, sitting brazenly on a branch of someone else's tree. After some careful investigation, I discovered that an amazing coincidence along with careless research had mislead another researcher to 'claim' my ancestors as her own. We both had an ancestor named Elizabeth Turner, born in the same year and in the same county in England, who both married a man of the same name. Incredibly, both Elizabeth Turners wed a William Shulver and even more remarkably, the two couples married in the same year! It was easy to see how the mistake had been made, however, it was a mistake that could have been avoided with more careful investigation and a search for evidence to support a find. My Elizabeth Turner was known as Elizabeth Jane Turner and the as Elizabeth. On each of our trees our Elizabeths had different parents so from Elizabeth backward the trees are different. Without checking the marriage certificate to find the parents of the bride and groom, another ancestry member had found my tree and assumed that my Elizabeth Turner and William Shulver were her own ancestors. With not genealogical proof we were adopted and my ancestors and relatives, photographs and all, were added to an unrelated and 'instantly expanded' tree.

I searched for the correct marriage for the other Elizabeth Turner and William Shelver and easily found it. I then emailed the other family history researcher to let her know that she had added the wrong family to her tree. Fortunately, because I was able to provide this lady with the correct information about her Elizabeth and William, and I had pointed her in the right direction, she immediately corrected her tree.

Not so with another researcher, however, who also 'popped' my family onto her completely unrelated tree. When I emailed the second person, I received a curt reply, informing me that "there are more trees on the internet that have the same information as me, so I am leaving the tree as it is. She went on to claim that 'You are the only tree that isn't the same.'" I checked and sure enough I found that a lot of people had copied the same incorrect information onto their trees. All of these family trees had something in common - apart from the fact that my family was not meant to be on their branches - none of them had sources to back up their information. So, on that particular wrong tree, I am still hanging from the branch like an orange on an apple tree. I have ben unable to unable to convince anyone that I do not belong there despite my tree being well sourced. 

Once again, the mistake was easy to find and could have been avoided. On my tree, I had a Mary Ann Taylor (father John Taylor) who married a James Berry in Newark, Nottinghamshire. My Mary Ann, according to birth and census records was born in 1786 in Farndon, Nottinghamshire. On the other tree there was also a Mary Ann Taylor (also father John Taylor) born in the same year but with no birth place recorded. The other researcher had found my tree and assumed my Mary Ann and hers, to be the same person. My Mary Ann was married in Nottinghamshire and lived there for all of her life, abiding  with her daughter and son-in-law in Nottinghamshire at the time of the 1851 census aged 65 years. The other Mary Ann, ( according to the other tree) had died in Middlesex, London in 1852 where her family and she had lived for generations.

 It is purely a co-incidence that both Mary Ann Taylors, daughters of John Taylors both married a James Berry, but the one did so in Middlesex ( I have found the record) in 1807, a year before my Mary Ann married her James Berry in 1808 (in Nottinghamshire). The children from Mary Ann Taylor and James Berry married in Middlesex were born in Middlesex, London. The chldren of my Mary Ann Taylor and James Berry, married in Nottinghamshire were born in Nottinghamshire. Despite available evidence, an entire branch of my family from 1786 forward has been added to someone else's tree and I now have a new ancestry, going, impressively, I might add, back to the 1600's in Surrey and Herefordshire. And all that without a forebear leaving Nottinghamshire!

 It appears that I am to remain on this other tree, as no amount of emailing by both myself and another relative can convince the tree owner that we are unrelated. I am not complaining (too much) though, as my 'adopted' family in America has a colourful family history and some very old and wonderful ancestral photographs - it's just not MY family's history and the photographs, beautiful as they are, are not of MY ancestors. Mind you I can't say I haven't been tempted to adopt such a colourful family. It is just a wee bit difficult  to explain how my ancesors got to America without ever leaving Nottinghamshire, 

'You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.' Denis Waitley, Author

Assumptions need to be challenged.

Almost every hint on how to begin researching your family history will, correctly, suggest that you begin with yourself and what you know about yourself. The next step is to examine and record everything you know about your parents and grandparents. Much of this information will derive from anecdotes passed on to you from family members. Other information can be found on official documents such as Birth, Marriage and Death certificates, Passenger Lists and so on. This sounds fairly straight forward, and it is, BUT, in this first blog, rather than telling you 'how to' find your ancestors, I would like to emphasise 'how not to' assume that all the information you have at hand is accurate. Assumptions are a good place to begin but assumptions are not proof. As a family historian, you need to be able to challenge assumptions.

Eric Temple Bell ( mathematician and science fiction writer) wrote, 'Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.'

You might well assume with pride (as I did), that stories such as 'we have a Welsh castle in the family', or 'grandpa was in the Royal Welsh Fencibles in New Zealand' are a plausible place to begin your research and they may well be, but before you purchase a ticket to fly to far off lands in search of an ancestral home or visit the Welsh cousins, you might like to take some advice from someone who has learned the hard way. Never assume that family stories are true! In my case, grandpa was in fact, 100 years too young to be in the Welsh Fencibles, and not only is there no Welsh castle longing to be inherited, but there is actually, no Welsh blood in me at all. Not a drop! It was easy to assume that with a very Welsh sounding double-barrelled surname and a much talked about family castle in Wales, that my mother's family had Welsh origins. I wasted a great amount of time searching in vain for a family which didn't exist. Concealed behind a fictitious Welsh ancestry, was the fact that great-grandpa had added the Welsh part of the surname, to his real surname of Hoyes. By popping a hyphen in the middle and adding a family castle and Royal Fencibles as a convincing touch to his fabricated past, he managed to elude a wife and son who he deserted in New Zealand to begin a new life and family in Australia.

This news came a somewhat of a shock to myself, who had proudly named two of four children after my Welsh ancestors, whom I had assumed, were happily dwelling in a castle in Wales awaiting my visit. Fortunately, the other two children were justly named for Scottish and Irish forebears who were real. I can be forgiven this oversight, since when I named the children, I had not begun to research my family history and assumed that every family story was true!

I did finally locate the Hoyes family, not in Wales of course, but in Nottinghamshire, England where there was no castle and no Fencibles. Just millers and weavers and Methodist church connections. I had no choice but to assume that my two times great grandfather, James Berry Hoyes was a man of strong religious convictions. After all, he was the choirmaster at the Great Gonerby Church in Houghton, Lincolnshire and emigrated in 1863 to New Zealand, as part of the Albertlander missionary group. It was easy to assume he was a man of faith, right up until I recently read in the London Gazette that on the 28th of October 1862 just prior to embarking on his religious venture, James was declared bankrupt. It appears that the reason for James' departure from England, may well have been as much, if not more, economically motivated, than a desire to take forth the Christian faith to the Maori people of New Zealand. This would explain why, on arriving in New Zealand, rather than preach to the natives, James Berry Hoyes purchased shares in silver and gold mines and became a self made gentleman in Newton, Auckland.

When I began to research my family tree, I began with my own surname. I was the proud bearer of the Scottish surname MacDade. My grandmother had told me on many occasions that the 'a' was NEVER, EVER, EVER to be omitted. 'Mac' she said, was the Scottish Protestant name and 'Mc', the Irish Catholic. For an Irish protestant brought up in Northern Ireland amidst religious unrest and bigotry, the 'a' between the 'M' and the 'c' was clearly important to her. My grandmother was a wise and genteel lady and I had no reason to assume that what she said was anything other than the truth. Another thing, I assumed, was that my father, though much loved, was a lazy man, always leaving the critical 'a' out of the 'McDade' that he used. Worse still, to my horror, I discovered that he had neglected to put the 'a' in my surname when he registered my birth. My sisters were MacDades and I was a crucial letter short of a Macdade!

Despite finding a number of excellent Scottish genealogy websites, and despite searching the high and the low road in Scotland, I could not find my MacDades. I found one couple, matching the names and ages of my great grandparents, and sent for their 1894 marriage certificate. Even the bride's maiden surname of Gibson was the same. An amazing co-incidence surely, but the marriage certificate was put into my 'unwanted certificate' box, as this couple were married in the Maryhill Catholic Church in Glasgow. As everyone in my family knew - we were Presbyterian through and through! Or were we? A journey to Scotland and a visit to the General Register Office by an aunt sent shock-waves to the very roots of the family tree. I dragged my 'wrong couple', John and Elizabeth McDade (of the the Maryhill Catholic Church marriage), back out of the box ( it pays to never throw certificates out.. just in case!) and placed John and Elizabeth McDade high on a branch of the family tree where they rightly belong as my great grandparents! I can only assume, that my grandmother inserted the 'a' between the 'M' and the 'c' to remove any trace of Catholicism from her married name. I think that this is a reasonably safe assumption, however, given my grandmother's Irish protestant background. (Elizabeth Gibson McDade is pictured right.)

When it came to my Swiss and German ancestry, I was a much wiser researcher. After a brief and fruitless search for my Swiss Heberling ancestors, I put my rusty high school German to work, suspecting that the pronunciation of the name Heberling, in English, could have been spelled as Häberling in the German language. Immediately, I found Jacob and Anna Häberling and their five daughters from Zurich, Switzerland, on a passenger list from Hamburg, Germany, to Maryborough, Australia. Many surnames were anglicised when families immigrated, or incorrectly recorded by a clerk who could not understand a foreign accent. My Nergers were recorded as Nurjur, Nurgar and Narjar before they gave up (I assume) and changed the name to Nargar.

With this in mind, I expanded my searches to include as many variations of the surnames I was searching as I could think of. I found that my Hoyes family, who I had assumed to be out of the UK at the time of the 1851 census, were in fact all at home, under the name of Hayes. I may never know whether my great Uncle Rex Morley Hoyes lived at 19 or 29 Upland Road, Remuera in New Zealand as he is recorded at one address and his wife at the other. I assume this to be a 'typo', although assuming anything about this particular uncle could lead to a search in vain. His name changes include Hoyes to Morely-Hoyes, to Morley-Morley and finally to Fessenden C.R. Morley-Morley Viscompte de Borenden! I assume that he changed his name to escape the attention of the police, MI5, Indian authorities, not to mention, a number of aggravated ex-wives.

Death certificates are another notorious source of mis-information. Never assume that all of the information on a death certificate is accurate. My great grandmother, Hannah Morrison's maiden name was Hannah Tait Gair. On three different death certificates of her children, she is named as (parent) Hannah Tait, Hannah Fail and Hannah Smith. Recently, whilst looking into the convict ancestors of friend, I discovered that a great grandmother's maiden name was written as Leek on her son's death certificate when in fact it was Collier. The age of the deceased given on a death certificate is very likely to be incorrect as well( vanity seems to make us yonger as we age!). A 'several times' great grandmother of mine was 32 in the 1861 English census and 9 years later when she immigrated from London to Australia, according to a passenger record, she had only aged two years to become, 34. In December of 1870, the same year, when she remarried, she was 37 years old and on her death certificate in 1897, her age was given as 72 years. If I had assumed the age on any of these certificates was correct, to find her birth, I would have had to search all years between 1825 and 1853. In this case, the death certificate was, in fact, the only accurate record of her year of birth. It is important to remember, however, that it is not the person themself giving the details for a death certificate and family members quite often will have to guess the year of birth or even a place of birth. A birth record or Christening record is much more an accurate proof of a birth date. It is safe to assume that death certificates are frequently unreliable documents although often the only place we have to begin.

I am not for one moment downplaying the important role of assumption for the family history detective. Census records can tell us where our ancestors lived, what their occupations were and their children's names and ages. Beginning with this information, we must research the times in which our ancestors lived to discover more about their lives. We live in a wonderfully technological time where we do not have to assume much about where our ancestors lived. Google Maps and Google Earth can literally take us to the county, the town and the street and even the actual home an ancestor lived in (assuming the enumerator's information was accurate). We can use the imagination along with some knowledge to 'fill in' the gaps, however, to piece together a fairly accurate picture of the day to day lives of ancestors. Assumption is a crucial element in creating a narrative about our forebear and in making their lives 'real' to us.

As important as it is to question and challenge our assumptions, I am not suggesting for one moment, that you ignore every family tale that is told to you, or to ignore the information on every death certificate you find. What is sensible, though, is to assume that there might be some element of exaggeration in the proud family tale and expand your search with this in mind. 'Assuming' that family lore is untrue without question can be just as misleading in the quest for your ancestry as well. To reiterate E.T. Bell, always 'examine the assumptions.' It is important to remember that assumptions are not proof but that by challenging and scrutinising our assumptions we can find the truth, whatever that may be. After all, it is the truth (with a little fiction to colour the narrative) that every family historian strives for. Gather your family tales and then prove them right or wrong. Information passed on to you, although not always reliable, is still an excellent place to begin. You will, perhaps, travel in a completely different direction to where you thought you were heading, but your journey will never be boring.

In researching my family tree, I have assumed much to be true which was fiction and some fiction to be truth. The path has been an interesting journey in which I have learned to challenge those assumptions to discover as much as possible of the truth. Be prepared for the truth to be extraordinary, astonishing, curious, marvellous and as in the case of my great uncle Rex Morley Hoyes, 'strange-but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.' Lord Byron (1788-1824)

You will also find my family stories at http://www.sharn-genealogyjottings.blogspot.com/

In coming Blogs:

Useful Websites
Convict Records
Irish Ancestry
Scottish Ancestry
Norwegian Ancestry
German Ancestry
New Zealand Ancestry
Surnames
How to use Google to find records
Using Libraries and Archives
Shipping records
Free records

Much more.....