Ever come across conflicting evidence and wonder what to believe?

Sometimes you can come across conflicting evidence when researching family history.

In Scotland, birth, marriage and death certificates give detailed information not only of the person or people registered in the event but also give details of the parents.

Death certificates are a common source of conflicting evidence.  The person registering the death is likely to be upset and can give the wrong information accidentally.  They may not know some of the details or guess at them.  Dependent on the registrar taking the details, they may have been encouraged to provide an answer so that no gaps were left!

However, even in birth and marriage certificates, details can bee recorded incorrectly.

For birth certificates, it is often only one parent who attended to register the birth and they may not know the details of their partner's family or some forget their marriage date!  

With marriage certificates, there may be problems as one person may have filled in the details for both even though each person needs to sign the forms.  

For any documentation, it may simply be that your ancestors could not read or write and they were reliant on someone else recording the details with no way for them to correct any mistakes.

So how do we deal with these types of problems?

Where we can corroborate the evidence then there is much more likelihood that this will be the correct information.  Sometimes of course, when it has been recorded incorrectly once, then it may be repeated if the information is simply copied.  However, what is far more likely is that it will be recorded incorrectly once and correctly on other occasions.

There may only be two pieces of evidence however so how should you deal with this? If you are recording a birth for example and have conflicting dates with no way to choose between the two, then record anything that is certain.  

John Hunter

Using the example of the renowned physician and anatomist John Hunter who was born in 1728, we find that his birth was recorded in the parish records as being 14 July 1728.  However recorded evidence shows he celebrated and believed his birthday to be 13 February 1728. 

On a family tree therefore we can record the year of his birth and the place as neither of these facts are disputed and are corroborated.

Keep a record of the other information and put a note in your files about the disputed date as you do not know what other information may come to light in the future to help clarify this.

If you are writing a family history book then you can record the date but add in the information about the conflicting evidence on the day and month of birth.  This can be an interesting item to include and most of us enjoy the mystery and to think about what might have happened!

For more information on how we can help you sort through conflicting evidence, please get in touch for a no obligation chat.

kintree@ymail.com

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Should You Be So Quick To Dismiss The Possibility Of A Professional Family History Researcher?

If you are one of the many people who like to investigate their own family history or perhaps are thinking of investigating it, you might think that it is unlikely that you would not need a professional family history researcher.  

Should you be so quick to dismiss the possibility of a professional researcher?

Professional researchers can save you money on doing it yourself.  Looking at Scottish records, a basic online search of only three generations could easily cost you £100.  However, professional researchers can visit centres and do the work for you - and far more work - in a short time period and certainly for less cost per certificate than trying to do it online.  

Part of the fun for you, might be doing the research yourself, even if it takes much longer and is more costly.  However, have you ever hit a brick wall with your research?  Professional researchers such as Kin Tree have obtained nationally accredited qualifications and have a great deal of knowledge of other ways to find out information on your ancestors.  Getting over that brick wall could be all you need to get on with research yourself.  Why limit your family history interest because of a snag that could easily be remedied?

Professional researchers with properly accredited qualifications are used to dealing with archives and with so many records not online, they are ideally placed to visit on your behalf.  

Visiting an archive may not be practical for you or sometimes it can seem daunting but it every day business for the professional researcher.

Most people find ancestors have moved around - often to other parts of the world and it can be a difficult to navigate in other countries' records systems.  Also, like at home, many records will be offline.  Professional researchers are used to dealing with these record systems and have links with other professional researchers around the world who can look for offline records for you.

At a good professional research company like Kin Tree, our researchers have qualifications in both family history but also in history.  We have specialists in Scottish history along with more general history.  This is important to put your family story into context.  Once you have the basic dates, you will want to know how your family lived and perhaps what prompted them to move or do the type of work that they did.  We can all guess at this but with our knowledge of history and how it is properly researched, this can quickly be added to your family story in a way that it can take months if not years to do on your own.

So remember, it's important to think of every avenue for your family history research.  Don't limit your family's story because you didn't check out what help is available.  At Kin Tree, it is always free for you to have a chat.  Contact us for a free no obligation chat at 

kintree@ymail.com

Why not enter our competition to win some free research.  It's a great way to find out if a professional researcher can help you!

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The 1918/19 Flu Pandemic And Your Ancestors

Measles has been in the news recently with alerts to a possible epidemic and advice on how to protect children. How does this compare with how our ancestors coped with one of the deadliest pandemics - the flu of 1918/19?

Throughout the world it is estimated that as many as 100 million people may have died of the flu during the 1918/19 pandemic.  In Europe, it is thought that the flu was introduced by members of the armed services from the USA who were sent to the Western Front.  The flu then swept through the trenches.

US Soldiers suffering from flu are
thought to have brought it to Europe

Experts are unsure where the flu originated however they know that troops movements during and after the First World War helped to spread the flu to all corners of the globe.

The pandemic lasted from May 1918 until April 1919 although an increase in cases of flu was to continue into late 1919.  In Scotland nearly 1 million people caught the flu out of a total population of 4.8 million and around 70,000 died from it.  There were three waves of the pandemic. The first case in Scotland is thought to have been in Glasgow in May 1918.  

Today we associate flu deaths with those who are vulnerable through age or illness but during the pandemic in Scotland and throughout the world, the most likely age of death from this flu was in people aged between 20 - 40.  These people were often catching the flu in the morning and were dead by the same evening. 

So why were so many healthy people affected so badly by this version of the flu?  Doctors who have since studied this strain of flu, have discovered that when the flu came up against the immune system, it caused the immune system to overreact. This overreaction caused excess fluid to build up in their lungs and people became unable to cope.  People who were the healthiest had the strongest immune systems so were most likely to be affected by a strong reaction.  

There was little that doctors could do for people struck down by the flu though several possible remedies were suggested.  There was also a problem on the home front as there were very few doctors as many were away in the armed forces.  Those left including doctors coming out of retirement, were overwhelmed with the numbers.

The flu pandemic did not
 start in Spain

The flu is commonly referred to as Spanish flu but it did not originate in Spain.  During World War 1, Spain was a neutral country so unlike many other countries, it did not have an advanced use of news control.  

Spain openly reported the flu pandemic, however in many other countries governments and newspapers hid the extent of the pandemic as they were afraid of the effect on the general population on hearing about so much death so soon after the First World War  

As Spain had widely publicised the flu, it came to be thought that it had originated there because the earliest indications of its devastation were reported from that area. 

In Scotland, most families were not left untouched by the flu pandemic.  Many people will find flu as a cause of death for an ancestor but it has to be remembered that people sometimes died of related conditions so flu is not always listed as the cause of death.  

The suicide rate also increased greatly during the pandemic as the flu also attacked the nervous system.  If you find relations who died during 1918/19 of these related causes of death, it is worth looking further to find out if the death may have been a complication of flu.

For advice on how to identify possible flu victims, please get in touch for a free chat at kintree@ymail.com

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