Will my Ann White please stand up?

In response to a message from a DNA match, I started looking a bit into my ancestor Ann White of Somerset, England. Ann was my 3rd great-grandmother, wife of Isaac Hobbs of the Hobbs branch that I've been told leads to Sir Edward Baytun. The marriage register entry connecting Ann to Isaac and the baptismal entries of their children are all I knew of her before this and although I'm not sure whether I know more about my Ann a week later, I'm nearly convinced.

The 1841 census of England was the first to record people by name and Ann, recorded in a household in the town of Elm that consists of herself, husband Isaac and six children, is already 50. Her entry in the 1851 census says she is 59, and the 1861 says 70, giving us a birth year, if all are accurate, of about 1791. The latter two census also record her town of birth as Elm/Great Elm.

Ancestry, so "helpfully", has provided me with a hint that takes me to a baptismal record and has even suggested parents for her. But there is a problem. The baptism that Ancestry dangled on that stick took place in Yatton- 30 miles away - and, if you read past the first line of the entry that contains the baptismal date of 17 Aug 1791 and the same parents as suggested by Ancestry, you will learn that this Ann was 26 years old! Sadly, there are at least three trees on Ancestry that have attached this record to the Ann married to Isaac Hobbs.

Going through the baptismal registers myself, I found in Elm, an Ann White who was baptized in 1795. She was the daughter of Charles and Martha White. Is this my Ann? The pieces fit so far, but the evidence is a bit thin. I'd love another document making the connection, but sometimes they just don't exist.

Ann and Isaac's marriage record did not record the names of their parents and the witness names were no help. Charles was a laborer, an edge tool maker, like his sons and generations of the Hobbs family, so was very unlikely to have had a will that might have linked him with Ann and her married name. Ann White is an awfully common name. I wondered if there was anything out there that would provide better evidence or more evidence.

When I was examining the census entries for the Hobbs-White family, I noticed other Whites on the same page. Could they hold the answer? This section of the census for Elm was only about sixteen pages in eight images, so I wrote down the given names of all the men with the White surname who were the right age to be Ann's possible siblings and then looked for baptismal records in the parish of Elm. Sure enough, I found baptismal records that matched the names of most of these men in years that matched their ages in the census, who also had the same parents as the Ann baptized in 1795. 

Admittedly, I have not finished my Somerset county locality guide and I'm still learning my way around English research, especially before civil registration, so it was time to ask for help. Yesterday I posed my question in the "Somerset - Ancestors & Genealogy" group on Facebook. One of the comments on my post was really helpful and also illustrated why a locality guide is so necessary. The commenter told me the men of the White family likely worked at the Elm Steel & Iron Works in Elm or the Fussell Iron Works in nearby Mells. Also, that they may have lived in cottages that were tied to the iron works that would have been quite small for a large family. She noted something I'd missed, that Isaac & Ann's 6-year-old, Ruth, was living with a different family in 1841, a Charles and Ann White. The size of the cottages may have made it necessary for Ruth to live with extended family. This commenter also provided me with a link to some maps of Great Elm on the National Library of Scotland website. She really opened up what felt like a dead-end the other day.

I plan to do some more digging and connecting of dots before I will feel that I have enough evidence to declare Charles and Martha to be my Ann's parents in my public Ancestry tree, but I do want them in my tree for now and I don't want them floating around unattached, so I used a tip I picked up from Connie Knox at Genealogy TV on her YouTube channel. I created the family unit in Ancestry, then I copied the link in the search bar for Charles' page and created a web link in Ann's page which I named Potential Father, then I did the same with a link to Ann's page in Charles' web links.

If my explanation was confusing, or you just want to see the process step-by-step, it's in this video on YouTube in the second to last segment called "Weblink between people."

I'll be sure to keep you updated on the progress of my locality guide and whatever I piece together on the Whites.

Since My Last Post

 

Carl Anderson (rt), his son Axel (lt), his grandson Gilbert (standing), and great-grandson.

Since my last post, I've spent a good deal of my genealogy time transcribing an interview that my great-uncle, Axel Anderson, recorded with my great-grandfather, Carl Johan Anderson, in 1955.

For some reason, a post about the information from the recording just would not come together, but it is the 19th of the month, I really want to stick to a minimum of two posts per month, so I thought I would write about what I've been up to.

One of the challenges posed by the Anderson recording was language. Carl was born in Sweden and there were some words and phrases, mostly names and place names, that I could not make out. There is also a thirty second exchange between Axel and Carl in Swedish. The Genealogical Translations group on Facebook really delivered for me here. A volunteer provided the missing words and names for me and also transcribed the Swedish segment with a translation, all within about 24-hours of my post.

In the past, I have also received translation help from one of the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness groups on Facebook, but that was for a quick translation of a headstone. This was a little more complicated, so I wanted to go to a group just for translations. I could see after I was accepted to this private group that all of the posts were asking for help with written translations, so I wanted to make my request as easy as possible. The recording was about an hour and fifteen minutes in two files, and I surely wasn't going to ask anyone to listen to the whole recording. I went through my transcription and made sure that each point where I had questions was notated with a I or II depending on which file the audio was on, and placed a time stamp. I then made the text bold and red for English words and blue for Swedish words. After checking the document one last time, I uploaded it to a new Dropbox folder and moved the .mp3 files into that folder, and then I created a link to the folder which I included in my request in the group. Since I was new to the group, I checked the group's rules before making my post and made sure to follow them. And again, in about 24 hours, I had my translations. It was a great experience.

I also had some questions about some of the content of the interview and I took those to the Swedish Culture & Traditions group. The specifics will be a blog post of their own once I do some additional reading, but I'll just say that this group was again very helpful; I had at least a dozen people offering information very quickly.

As for my Hobbs-Merritt line, I've finally stopped procrastinating on making a locality guide for Somerset County, England. It's such an important tool when you start research in a new area, but I have to admit, I find it a bit tedious to put together. And then there's the temptation to jump down rabbit holes when I find a new resource! But, I am making good progress. And thank goodness I have a template to follow; I haven't made a new guide in a while and I'd be lost without it.

I was only able to catch a few sessions live from RootsTech. I did attend a webinar a few nights ago from Amy Johnson Crow about the new full-text searching feature from FamilySearch. That is a very exciting development! I'm looking forward to more record sets in the future.

And finally, I've been playing around more with my mother's DNA matches on Ancestry since sending in my kit and Donald's kit. I was a little worried about Donald not getting results because he had a little trouble that day working up enough saliva, even with all the little tricks, but all was well. It was my DNA that Ancestry couldn't extract!! Hopefully I'm only a few days away from getting my results from my new sample. Thank goodness the second test was free. In the meantime, I've uploaded Donald's data to MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA and I'll start looking at their tools as soon as I can.

Although I feel like I missed something, I think that's all since my last post. I hope I can find material for another post by the end of the month.