You wouldn’t expect Family History ‘Professionals’ to ever make mistakes when they are constructing their own Family Trees, would you? Well...hardly ever! Well...I’ve made quite a lot of mistakes actually, so you needn’t feel embarrassed about your own!! And anyway, making mistakes in Genealogy is natural and, as in any other area of your life, you become a Family History ‘expert’ when you make mistakes and learn from them. (Mind you, if you make mistakes and don’t learn from them, then you’ll just keep on making the same mistakes again and again!)

Again, as in life, you make most of your Family Tree mistakes when you’re just starting out. Luckily, Family History is a forgiving occupation – you can’t sack yourself just because you’ve made an error of two! And so, to the nub of this article - the first reason you make mistakes at first in your Family History is because you rush into things and try to take shortcuts, the second reason is you try to do too much all at once and don’t focus.

I’ll show you what I mean. When I started compiling my own Family Tree, I didn’t concentrate on just one family line. I began to build up the genealogy of my mum and dads’ family trees all at the same time – it was all so new and exciting – all those people I’d never heard of were my ancestors, and I was keen to learn as much as I could about them as quickly as possible.

Now, the only thing my dad told me about our Family Tree was that his ‘paternal’ grandmother was named Brown and came from Dorset (he was a man of few words and sparing of information!). So, I began looking for a Flint-Brown marriage on www.FreeBMD.org.uk in the 1890s– and I found that the wedding was in 1892 in Islington, North London; from the marriage certificate, I discovered that my grandmother’s full name was Elizabeth Delilah Brown, she was born around 1868 in Milbourne. The discovery that ‘Delilah’ was her middle name was a real bonus, because I had originally despaired of finding a plain ‘Elizabeth Brown’ because it was such a common name. Also, I reasoned, being named ‘Delilah’ might mean that her relations also had ‘biblical’ names.

So I took out a trial subscription to www.Ancestry.co.uk, and immediately found an Elizabeth Brown in Beaminster born in 1868 – I immediately went onto the Mormon www.FamilySearch.com site and found that there were lots of Browns in Beaminster with names like Solomon (Elizabeth's father), Hiram, (her grandfather) Abraham, and Melsheck. What a result, I thought, I’d found the right Elizabeth Brown straight away! I looked on the map and found Beaminster, but I couldn’t find Milbourne anywhere near it – so I just assumed it was a small suburb or hamlet nearby. On the Marriage Certificate, her father’s name was Samuel - and again I assumed that the North London Registrar had misheard her say Solomon! I just didn’t have the time to check it all out in detail, since I was also trying to trace all the other branches of my Family Tree at the same time, before my Ancestry trial period expired.

I spent the next couple of years carefully compiling the Family Tree of the Beaminster Browns – from Birth, Marriage and Death certificates, Censuses, Parish Registers, and through www.GenesReunited.com ; Elizabeth’s father was a farrier in a cavalry regiment and I got hold of his army record from the National Archives at Kew.

I even made the long trek down to Beaminster one sunny Saturday, and found the actual house they lived in, which amazingly was up for sale – I thought about contacting the Estate Agent to have a look around and even fantasized about buying it as a second ‘holiday’ home (I didn’t do either – it was too late in the day to arrange a viewing of the house, and my wife would have had me committed if I’d bought it!).

I gathered even more information through the www.OnlineParishClerks.org.uk organisation who put me in contact with a lady who was descended through Solomon’s illegitimate son! It seems that he moved to a nearby village from Beaminster, had his wicked way with a local girl, found out she was pregnant and promptly ran away to join the army.

So, my research was going smoothly. There were, however, a couple of things that bothered me - there was no reference to Elizabeth’s middle name, Delilah, in any Beaminster record, and I wondered how my great-grandfather and she ever met. In the 1891 Census she was a ‘school caretaker’ in Beaminster, while Arthur had just returned from 8 years in India and was living with his brother-in-law and sister in Islington - and yet they were married the next year! (It's not as if Elizabeth caught a Saturday train to London and met Arthur in a West End ‘disco’ or night-club!!) I fancifully imagined that Arthur, who was a reservist in the Middlesex Regiment, possibly went down to Dorset as part of some training exercise and met Elizabeth that way!!!

But then someone posted a record of Elizabeth’s younger sister on GenesReunited – it seems that she had married and was living in Marylebone in 1891 which was just next door to Islington. So, obviously, I thought, Elizabeth had gone to stay with her and met Arthur that way.

I pulled my great-grandparent’s marriage certificate out of my files to see if Elizabeth’s address in 1892 was the same as her sister’s - it wasn’t, and then I noticed that Elizabeth Delilah’s occupation was noted as a being a ‘domestic servant’, not a ‘school caretaker’. I also noted, more strongly this time, that she was born in Milbourne and her fathers’ name was Samuel. I took the road map out again, and looked for Milbourne - and found it some 80 miles away on the other side of Dorset. And, searching Ancestry again, I found another Elizabeth Brown in the 1871 Census, born in 1868 in Milbourne, whose father’s name was Samuel and whose mother’s name was Delilah – and this Elizabeth had moved to Islington by 1891 to work as a domestic servant!

I realised that I had spent some 4 years researching the wrong Elizabeth Brown! And all because, at first, I didn’t take a few minutes to check a map thoroughly, and search on the Censuses for an Elizabeth Brown with a father named Samuel.

So, don’t rush your research (what’s the need – Family History is a hobby!), and make sure you check and re-check your facts. And don’t make sweeping assumptions. Take care and take your time – the old records will still be there next year. And you’ll save yourself a lot of fruitless work.

But, and this is the beauty of Family History research, I don’t think my Beaminster ‘odyssey’ was entirely a waste of time.

I‘d helped a lot of people who actually were related to the Beaminster Browns, and helping people is what a large part of life should be all about.

And I was rather relieved about not being related to Solomon - he’d abandoned a pregnant girl and his first-born son, and his army career consisted of being on 20 charges in his 21 years service, probably, I was told by a military historian, as a result of alcohol – when he was drunk, he was probably prone to get into fights which may have accounted for his two court-martials!

And Beaminster itself has two other noteworthy surnames. The most common name there in the 19th Century appears to have been ‘Bugler’ or ‘Buglar’, which was hardly found anywhere else in the whole country. I would love to know the origins of the name and why there were so many of them in Beaminster!

And finally, a great name for a ‘one name’ study – there were a couple of families in Beaminster with the surname ‘Sexey’ – although it probably didn’t have the same connotation as it would have today. I might even try to research it myself in the future!

And, finally, from a personal point of view, when I found out that the Elizabeth from Beaminster wasn’t my great-grandmother, I felt a strange sense of loss – possibly akin to finding out you were adopted and discovering your real ‘blood’ relative was someone else. I continued my search for the Beaminster Elizabeth and saw that she married the school teacher for whom she was caretaking. Unfortunately, there was no sign of them in the 1901 census, and I haven’t got round to trying to find them in the 1911 census. I would love to know what happened to her; maybe I’ll find out one day!

The terms ‘Genealogy’ and ‘Family History’ are used often synonymously, and many people confuse the two, but for me there is an important difference between them.

‘Genealogy’ is the study of a person’s ancestry and descendents – it deals with discovering who members of a specific family are and how these family members are related to others. Genealogy was, therefore, particularly important to determine the relationships of the rich and powerful, because practical concerns about whom inherited what from whom were at stake. If a King had no legitimate children, then it was vital to establish the next lawful heir to the kingdom; wars and armed conflict were often historically the result of a disputed succession.

‘Family History’, however, is much broader. It encompasses genealogy, in so far as you need to discover birth, marriage and death dates for your ancestors. However, this basic genealogical information constitutes only the foundations. What a Family Historian should aim to do is to find out how his or her ancestor actually lived and worked – to find out the details of a long-lost life.

Family History is much more a journey of exploration of your ancestors’ lives – what their homes were like, what jobs they did and how they did them, did they need to cope with sickness and poverty, and had they any ‘run-ins’ with the law. And to do this, you need to look beyond Censuses, civil Birth, Marriage and Death records, and Parish Registers.

To illustrate the point, take the case of a distant ancestor of mine, Bridget Flint. According to various Parish Registers, she was born illegitimately in 1780, acquired a step-father through her mother’s marriage in 1787, and had an illegitimate child of her own in 1799.

She didn’t marry the father; instead she ‘tied the knot’ with Samuel Everett in 1802. They had 6 children between 1803 and 1823, but after, 1823, there is no further record of her in England – no more Parish Register entries, no civil Births/Deaths/Marriages records after 1837 and she wasn’t recorded in the Censuses of either 1841 or 1851.

Intriguingly, there is a record on the Mormon website, www.familysearch.org, that a Bridget Everett got married in 1852 in Sydney Cathedral, Australia, and subsequently died in Bong-Bong, a rural area of New South Wales in 1854!

Despite having a seemingly interesting life, through early illegitimacies, right through to emigrating or being transported to Australia, many people would have stopped researching Bridget, especially if she was a distant ancestor. They would have laid the Genealogical record to rest.

But the Family Historian delved deeper! When ‘Ancestry’ released Australian Transportation records a few years ago, they showed that a Bridget Everett was convicted of some crime early in 1837 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and was sentenced to 14 years transportation.

To find out why she was transported involved researching poor law and workhouse records, Parish Chest material, court proceedings, prison records and local newspapers, and it revealed a fascinating and tragic story of Bridget’s life.

It appeared that Sam regularly absconded for long periods of time, usually after the birth of a child, forcing Bridget to apply to the Parish Overseers for Poor Law Relief, interspersed with visits to the Workhouse. It appears that she was probably a weaver for, during November 1811, she was lent a spinning wheel by the Workhouse Authority, to supplement the meager Poor Relief payments she regularly received. This poverty and dependence became the pattern for the rest of Bridget’s life.

Bridget became quite used to bringing up her children alone with little sight of Sam. Indeed, she had obviously made her friends where she could, as she started to receive a regular 1/- per week on 17th October 1814, " for the support of her natural child", Archie, and the wording confirms from the Poor Law payment system of that time, when payments continued until the child reached the age of 12, that he was illegitimate.

By December 1815, Sam had returned home - this time, more or less, for good. He had little work and regularly received Poor Relief to keep his family. We cannot know the pressures on Sam at this time, nor on his eldest son William, but we may make a guess when we find that on 24 November 1826 Sam and William, with three other men, broke into the village shop, and stole linen, clothes, shoes, boots, groceries and money.

They were caught and arrested, held in the County Gaol and tried on 24 March 1827 on a charge of burglary. They were all found guilty and sentenced to death (Punishment was harsh in the early 19th Century)! At this time, sentences for capital offences, with the exception of murder, were usually commuted to transportation, and Sam was shipped off to Australia, never to see England again.

After this, Bridget was regularly in receipt of Poor Relief from the Parish. In 1832, Bridget herself was arrested on a charge obtaining five sovereigns by false pretences and she was held for some six weeks in the Castle Gaol at Norwich. There was, however, no record of payment of this money in the poor law receipts and at the trial, Bridget was acquitted of the charge.

However, in 1837, another far worse event was to take place. On 25 January 1837, Bridget’s son, Archie, together with three friends, broke into a farm, and stole eight bushels of grain; a week later, they were all arrested. Archie had taken his share of the wheat home, and it was alleged that his mother, Bridget, and sister, Hannah, knew it to be stolen. On 19 February 1837, Bridget and Hannah were arrested for receiving stolen goods, and were taken into custody.

On 8 March 1837, Archie was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months with hard labour in the County Gaol. Hannah was found guilty of “receiving” and was sentenced to three months with hard labour, and Bridget, who was also found guilty of the same offence, was sentenced to 14 years transportation!

Bridget, like Sam, was never to see England again. Further misfortunes happened to her family, with her youngest daughter Mary dying in the following year, and after a life of petty crime, her youngest son, Samuel, was also transported to Australia in 1840 for 7 years.

Sam and Bridget did meet up again in 1842 and resumed living together, but sadly, after all these years, this unexpected reunion was to be brief. Sam died of ‘dropsy’ on 7th August 1843.

Among a list of Tasmanian prisoners for 1845-1846 there is a record of Bridget being granted her ‘Ticket of Leave’ on 25 August 1843, stating that she had never been charged with misconduct in the colony and recommending a Conditional Pardon, which was granted in December 1845.

Finally, on 27 December 1852, at St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Sydney, Bridget, (aged 72!) was married to John Bourke of whom nothing more is known at this time. However, the marriage was to last only sixteen months – Bridget died on 22 April 1854 at Bong Bong, New South Wales, where she was buried on 26 April 1854.

Bridget’s life was truly an amazing one, full of hardship and sorrow. But she battled on and her story is both humbling and poignant. It has gives me, in particular, a sense of perspective; the problems I’ve encountered in my own life seem trivial when compared with what Bridget had to endure.

So, you can see how much more you can achieve if you are prepared to delve deeper than just the Parish Registers (or censuses or birth, marriage and death records). ‘Family History’ research made Bridget ‘come alive’. I can imagine her as a real person, especially as her prison record showed that she was 4ft 10½” in height with a dark complexion, ruddy and freckled, with grey eyes and brown hair mixed with grey.

So don’t be content with just collecting dates; look in the vast array of other material that is available online and in the national and local archives to find more personal facts about your ancestors. And that is the way to make your Family History become a truly exciting and absorbing hobby.