Baldock/Fagg/Small Family History

One domain to rule them all, One domain to find them,
One domain to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mormon where the servers lie …

So, Familysearch wants to put all the world’s historical records online in one generation, do they? From a personal point of view, I find this disturbing, and I’ll explain why….

Much has been posted online recently regarding the increasing “collaboration” between Familysearch and other providers, such as Ancestry.com, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, BillionGraves etc. And much has been said in the past regarding accuracy of online data. Don’t get me wrong, I was only too pleased six years ago to have access to online data through such providers, and made great steps in a very short time provisionally traversing my direct paternal lineage through to the mid-sixteenth century of Kent, England. However, I was also fortunate enough to have lived there most of my life, and found it very easy to access paper records at the former Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone, or at Canterbury Cathedral Archives, to verify the data which was being presented to me. Of course, I also have good knowledge of the Kent place names and surnames which were represented. As such, I often find myself adding ‘alternate’ (read ‘corrected’) names or places to Ancestry transcriptions, and reporting faults on transcriptions at FindMyPast.

However, what about colleagues in the USA, or Europe, or Australasia, who may not have such knowledge and take what is presented to them as a true reflection of the original.

I recently located an Ancestry tree containing an ancestor who appeared to have (incorrectly) married his own mother, and consequently had an incorrect list of children and siblings attributed against them. Having spoken to the tree owner, it turns out this was as the result of merging trees and/or data.

We have recently been told that Ancestry have been concentrating a lot on overhauling the software which sits ‘behind the scenes’, some of which no longer suits today’s data or user demands. I think that a concerted effort should be undertaken to semi-automate data checking to stop such obvious mistakes happening. I know that the Merge wizard in Family Tree Maker had such checks. I have not used FTM for a while, and frankly I have now decided to maintain my master set of data on my own blog, and will not be updating my Ancestry tree (which is now 3 years out of date) or any other online presence.

I know I will miss out on ‘hints’ via Ancestry – well, hey, I’ll just check things manually. My tree is now large enough that I would probably not keep up with the hints, anyway. That way, I can focus my research, and if any of that research develops in error it won’t propagate to everyone else’s trees in 10 milliseconds !! There will only be me to blame.

My opinion is controversial, I know, especially when I have made use of data shared on these sites by others. Yet I too have spent time researching and value the effort and accuracy of my data, and welcome any comments to correct innocent mistakes on my part. In this way, I feel my research is more than a data-mining exercise, and benefits from accuracy and local knowledge.

When websites such as those above accept transcriptions and pass them through their ‘checking’ process, are they simply accepting a concensus of opinion as to what a scribble represents, or are they calling upon volunteers with more local knowledge to provide a more weighted contribution. I doubt contributors outside of Kent would have been able to decypher a parish record containing the signature of minister A Egerton-Brydges (Anthony) I recently discovered – my local knowledge certainly helped on that one (and others!)

Accuracy of data must start rising up the priority list of genealogy data providers, in my opinion.

Otherwise we will find we are all next in line to the English throne and Jesus is our nephew!

Quite a while ago now I came across the name of Arthur Edward FAGG who played cricket for Kent and England.

One always wonders, of course, if and how such namesakes may be related.

Arthur Edward FAGG (1915-1977) – Kent & England cricketer

This week, I came back to this research, and did indeed determine a link to my tree. Arthur is my 4th cousin once removed, our common ancestors being my 4xgreat grandparents, Thomas BALDOCK and Ann DAWKINS.

The highlight of Arthur’s career is surely his achieving two double-centuries in a single first class cricket match, a record I believe stands to this day.
On 15 July 1938, whilst playing for Kent against Essex at Colchester, Arthur achieved 202 not out in his second innings, adding to his first innings total of 244.
During the 1936-7 Ashes series, he had contracted a serious bout of rheumatic fever, from which he never fully recovered. Despite a short Test Match career, he continued playing County cricket until the mid-1950s. He then became an umpire, and hit the headlines again in 1973 at Edgbaston by refusing to rejoin the field after the West Indies disputed one of his decisions!

Sources:

1. http://www.cricketcountry.com/cricket-articles/Arthur-Fagg-scores-double-hundred-in-each-innings/28961

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Fagg

Whilst browsing the parish records on Find My Past recently, I came across some intriguing adult baptisms. They are for the surname EAST, who seem to have come from Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. They appear to be siblings, two sisters and a brother, children of Thomas and Ann EAST, and are all listed as ‘Papermaker’, so they probably came to work at Buckland Paper Mill. They were all baptised at St. Andrew’s church in Buckland on 29th June 1837.

For those with a relevant subscription to FMP, the image can be found here:
Adult baptisms

St Andrew, Dover Buckland, Kent (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ann was 50 (born 1783), William was 57 (born 1780) and Sarah was 39 (born 1798). Birth dates are given in the margin.

These would almost certainly be outside most people’s research boundaries of date, let alone county!

There are also adult baptisms DAVIS (more Papermakers), JOHNSON and PETMAN.

I’m sure 57 years has been beaten somewhere – what’s the greatest gap you have found?