• Find
  • Surnames
  • Bookmarks
  • Places
  • Dates
  • Cemeteries
  • Search
• Media
  • Photos
  • Documents
  • Headstones
  • Histories
  • Recordings
  • Videos
  • Albums
  • All Media
• Info
  • What's New
  • Most Wanted
  • Reports
  • Statistics
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • Repositories
  • Contact Us

Methodology

Home    Search    Print    Login    Add Bookmark

What this site aims to do is collect information on Howes clan members, not their spouses’ families. Where a spouse’s parents are known, that fact is noted, but generally not pursued. Just occasionally, however, two Howes siblings married two other siblings and so their parents are noted so that proper family connections can be made. Information has been collected on all descendents of Howes clan members, however.

The aim of this page is to describe how I've worked and to explain some of the conventions used on the site, for example, my approach to calculating years of birth from census information is different though more accurate than the traditional way. Where someone sends in a GED file, we do our best to convert it to a similar format to the notes below (certainly with addresses). If we didn't do that, the site would lose some of the benefit of consistency.

General

Collect every known “fact” about every person, at least starting with census records! That includes collecting census age even if actual date of birth is known. It means that we never throw anything away, except for incorrect guesses! By doing that, we are completely open. It saves others time looking up other sources and our work can be checked.
“St” means Saint as in St Peter; words like Street and Road are spelled out in full.
When calendar quarter is known from a source like FreeBMD, the middle month is used
Spelling is as written; If it says “laborer” that’s how they wrote it! British readers might like to note that there are many UK instances of colour, labour and so on being spelled without a "u" in old British documents!

Addresses

Addresses typed in as per source, unless it is completely obvious that it is the same place
Countries are not shown in UK addresses
Where UK county boundary known to have changed, append “- now new county”

Dates

Dates are formatted as DD MMM YYYY, that being the effective genealogy standard. Dates of birth calculated as census year – age – 1. Given that 6 of 7 published UK censuses took place at around the end of March, this method will be correct 75% of the time. Similar logic applied to US censuses which take place on June 1 means that the method will still be correct the majority of the time (about 58%).

Names

I used the word “Unknown” to refer to a known individual’s surname (eg, female maiden name) or first name (eg, the husband of a widow in a census) and the word “Placeholder” to refer to an unknown individual or individuals, eg, the parent(s) of grandchildren living with grandparents in a census.

Sources

Actual census date has been used for UK censuses in 1841/51 with only the years used for other years. Intention is to change the latter during the next few months.
FreeBMD used as a proxy source for looking up in national BMD registers. Where FreeBMD is noted as a source for the name, it usually means that this is where I have found a woman’s maiden name, or a man's middle name.
“FreeBMD” used too as proxy for other sites giving access to registers of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.
Originally, I did not note sources if they gave the same answer for year of birth, for example, but as time has gone on I am noting all source data

What could be next on the to do list?

I'm willing to be guided by what people think is the best source, eg, the IGI or FreeReg, or by what volunteers are willing to take on. For the moment, I'm tidying up data already entered, making additional connections where I can. Here is a very short list of other possible sources:
- IGI, subject to proper quality controls!
- FreeReg
- Norfolk County Council Archives
- Norfolk Transcription Archive - being transferred to FreeReg, but has a better search facility built in
- data from other parts of the country - volunteers anyone?
- data from other parts of the world - ditto!
- military service records
- social networking sites, such as Genes Reunited
- ........up to you!

Paul. November 2008