Submitting Information & Updating the Website Database

All information (or corrections) you are happy to pass to the project will be most gratefully received.

Although information can be added directly to the website database, it is not currently possible for me to manage submitted information to ensure that the project database (which is held offline) is kept up to date. Consequently, it is easier if information is first added to the project database and is then made visible online when the website data is updated.

If you wish to submit new information or corrections to the project, please use the online feedback form - Contact Us - to send new information directly. It would also be very helpful if you could include a reference to the source of your information as this may allow us to a) confirm the information and b) provide us with an opportunity to follow leads using other resources - initially, all submitted information will referenced to the submitter as source.

The website data is updated on the 1st day of every month.

Birth Dating Conventions

Where a precise birth date can be found, this is shown on the website.

However, in many cases, the birth year can only be estimated/determined from a christening date, marriage record, census entry or a memorial inscription - in this case a simple year is displayed i.e. 1797. [Unless a precise birth date is recorded in the original record, it is assumed that a child was born within 3 months of christening.]

Where no definitive information can be found, but a likely birth year can be fairly estimated, the "estimated" year is recorded i.e. abt 1797.

In many cases dates/years of birth are not known and may be difficult to provide such a precise estimate. Therefore the following convention has been used to provide a "rule of thumb" for estimating the likely time period when an individual may have been born.

Men:

• are estimated to have been born between 20 and 40 years before their first marriage (or if this is not known, between 21 and 41 years before the birth of their first child).

• if at the time of his first marriage his spouse is known to be older than 25 years, his birth year is then estimated to have been between 15 years before and 5 years after that of his wife.

Women:

• are estimated to have been born between 15 and 35 years before their first marriage (or if this is not known, between 16 and 36 years before the birth of their first child). This period can be narrowed if the birth date/year of her last known child was likely to take her "upper limit" age over 50 years.

• if at the time of her first marriage, her husband is known to be older than 30 years, her birth year is then estimated to have been between 5 years before and 15 years after that of her husband.

Naming Conventions - (Family Names)

As with the spelling of Given Names, the recorded spelling of Family Names has varied through time. Often such spelling was dependent on how the writer of the document, register, etc. interpreted what he/she heard, particularly if they were unsure of the "correct" spelling, or as branches of families moved away from their home areas the the spelling of their surname may also have changed. It is only relatively recently, with increased personal literacy, that the variety of surname spellings have been accepted in their modern form and that we have become so "dogmatic" about how we spell our names.

• Example: the surname Thackeray can be found in many variations - amongst which are Thackray, Tackera, Thackrah, Thackerah, etc.

With so many different ways to spell surnames, it has been difficult to manage large amount of information acquired by this project. To ease this administration difficulty the most common variants found in the context of this project are used to display family names on the website.

• from the example above, the most common spelling found and used in the project database is Thackray (rather than Thackeray)

However, the earliest recorded spelling of surname for each individual (if different) is shown in the "Recorded form of name" field in the Individual's record.

Searching Family Names with different spellings

In order to search for family names spelled differently to those used on the website, use the Advanced Search facility on the website and either:

1. Scroll to the bottom of the page, then open Other Events using Click to Display; you should then be able to search for variants on the "Recorded form of name" field.

or

2. Enter the family name spelling you are looking for in the Last Name field, then from the drop menu to the left of this change the search "condition" from equals or contains to metaphone of. This will then list all family names which sound like the one you are looking for.

Naming Conventions - (Given Names)

The names given to individuals have varied in spelling over the ages and I have used a standard English
spelling for all given name. 

e.g.  Ann or Susanna have been "standardised" to Anne and Susan

Names spelt in the Latin form in the original record have been Anglicised.

e.g. Carolus and Johan. have been changed to the English form Charles and John

Where "latinate" alternatives occur that may cause confusion the originally recorded form of the given name is listed alongside my standardised form.

e.g. Ellena, Maria or Dionysius are displayed on the website as Ellen (Ellena), Mary (Maria) and Dennis (Dionysius)

Wives with unknown Maiden Name

In many cases the original Surname/Maiden name of a wife is not yet known - this is usually due to information about the original marriage of a couple not being known or the remarriage of a widow from an "unfound" family.
 
In order to make it easier to find such individuals and prevent the need to list hundreds, if not thousands, of UNKNOWN individuals such wives are given their husband's (or widowed) surname enclosed in squared ([ ]) brackets. (A list of these partners can be found from the [ link on the Surname List pages.)