Charlotte Soares
Remember the schooldays’ logic: all cats have four legs, this animal has four legs therefore it must be a cat. But no, it’s a dog or an elephant! The same sort of jumping to conclusions often happens in genealogy when it comes to linking families, but it is fraught with dangers. Whole wrong lines get added to trees on genealogy sites because they weren’t checked rigorously. It takes time to verify and it’s much quicker to just merge someone else’s research, but who wants the wrong family attached?
In my own family my grandmother’s maiden name was Colson. She had a brother and therefore my mother had an Uncle Colson and Colson cousins. There were books on our shelves that had belonged to Granny with her maiden name inside them. Because my mother talked about Grandpa and Granny Colson, we knew this was a family name, but my children and their children wouldn’t realise the connection. Those books could easily be thrown out, not knowing they were a link to a family that belonged to us. This name leads to all sorts of genealogy: wills mentioning grandchildren, nieces and nephews, census entries, and all the other data needed to form the family tree and the chance to find living relatives.
Case study
So starting with the known facts above, how can we find Mary Fuller’s mystery maiden name?
Clue 1 – look for male siblings
Did she have a brother who had sons, her nephews? They will bear her maiden name down the generations.
Clue 2 – investigate heirlooms