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Ponder With a Purpose
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 10, First Published: August 2004Pondering, thinking, and waiting awhile are important watchwords for effective genealogists.
We all have a feeling of urgency, but there’s a difference between that, and just being in a hurry.
Being in a hurry causes errors and wrong decisions, and you can’t go when you don’t know your direction.
Good genealogists take time, and ordinary sensible people are similar. Let me illustrate:
My son lives near Manchester, and my grandchildren were born there. My husband and I once took them for a bike ride, and lunch out. He went off to order, and as we waited, my grand daughters had a serious discussion:
"Why do you think Grandad and Nana say ‘fud’ instead of ‘food’?"
Total silence met this, and they pondered. I was about to put in my educated pennyworth about regional accents when the youngest said:
"It’s probably because they go to church and we don’t!"
This is an example of a ‘PRINCIPLE WITH A PROMISE’:
• Principle: Listen to everything before you do anything. Then use your brain and ponder awhile.
• Promise: if you think hard and hard enough, you’ll find a satisfactory answer.
• Advantage: Your knowledge will expand into unexpected/unusual areas.
As we labour to learn about our ancestors we need to remember the ‘Principle with a Promise’, because only ideal ancestors leave a plethora of clues about their lives, homes, habits, hopes, fears and dreams.
Here are some examples from research:
HIDDEN MARRIAGES
I had a problem finding marriages using approximated dates from censuses. I could have understood not finding one or two, but not to find any was unusual. Eventually I discovered them in the Register Office, which was very strange considering this family’s previous marriage habits.
Did this mean:
• Abandonment of the Church of England?
• An argument with the vicar?
• Conversion to Methodism?
• The church had burnt down?
I pondered, and entertained myself thinking up reasons including:
Did they say ‘food’ instead of ‘fud’?
Then I examined old local maps, and saw that the new Register Office had opened right where they were, so it was much simpler just to get married there.
This was time saving knowledge for future marriage searches, and it taught me the value of knowing the immediate geography of an area. Maps are now part of my working method.
DUAL BIRTHDAY:
I obtained a certificate for a birth 2 June 1876.
Later I found by chance an obscure Methodist church entry giving birth 26 April and baptism 15 May 1876.
I decided to accept the official birth certificate, but I kept going back and looking at it. Why should I be accepting the last as first? No child could be born twice!
I continually examined and pondered until I worked it out.
• Methodist birth 26 April 1876
• Methodist baptism 15 May 1876
• Official birth certificate 2 June 1876
• Birth registered 11 July 1876
I think this is the full scenario:
• Child born 26 April and baptised on 15 May (date order correct in register so it DID happen).
• Birth should have been registered before 7 June (six weeks after the birth).
• By 11 July when they finally registered it they had to deceive the registrar to avoid trouble.(Penalties for late registration introduced in 1875)
MYSTERIOUS BOARDER,
Joanna CLARK 1875-1901
I’m still working on this one. Here is some of the extensive information we’ve compiled from parish records and census over the years:
My grandmother knew Joanna and talked of her as wearing velvet dresses, having the best of everything, and her own private income.
She first appeared in 1881 with my family in Whickham Durham.
• William TULIP head aged 49 Timber yard foreman
• Mary E TULIP wife aged 49
• Then followed five of their children, and
• Joanna CLARK boarder aged 5 born St. John’s Northumberland, England.
She was born 17 May 1875 in Newcastle on Tyne, Parents David CLARK and Alice Ann TAYLOR.
The 1901 census shows her ‘living on own means’, still with my family.
We even have a photograph of her, which shows some physical disability.
She died in 1901 and left a will naming her brother Henry, and Violet and Frederick (two children of her deceased brother James).
A quote from the will:
"Mary Ellen TULIP who has been like a mother to me ever since I was born and to whom I am deeply grateful for her constant and unremitting kindness, and William TULIP on whom I have always looked as a father."
These are the questions I ponder:
• Was Joanna related to us?
• Why did she never live with her own family?
• Where were her brothers in 1881? (James aged 13 and Henry aged 7)
• Where were her parents? Dead? (not found on any census)
• What was the source of her independent income?
• What was the nature of her disability?
Today, the value of pondering has been forgotten, and many people don’t know how to think. The quick answer is king, and the ponderer is seen as ‘ponderous’ and indecisive rather than sharp and incisive.
Maybe you saw the solution to the hidden marriages/dual birth problem straight away, and could have told me the answer, but there is value in discovering things without help.
We shouldn’t always rush to provide, but should let people labour to learn in their own way and in their own time.
Having said that, I’d be ecstatic if anyone solved the ‘Joanna enigma’!
Pondering with a purpose is a principle with promise for all ‘proper’ genealogists and other sensible people.
Pondering must be genetic because three generations of my family do it to good purpose!
May I encourage you to be a thinker when focusing on your ancestors, to recognise the urgency of the chase, but never be in so much of a hurry that you can’t slow down and wait awhile until a solution ‘begins to present itself’.
