DIGGING DEEPER
When you make a mini breakthrough and add something new to your tree – in this case, the marriage in 1697 of my magnificent 7x great-grandparents, Alexander Walkden and Jane Taylor – it’s often worth going back over your notes of how you got there.
Scribbled names in the margins, random dates with question marks, or a sheet of search results that didn’t fit, can suddenly fall into place and put a big fat smile on your face. Or not, as the case may be… Right now, I’m poring over a page of burials I printed out a month or so ago from Lancashire Online Parish Clerks (LOPC; www.lan-opc.org.uk) – a list of everyone called Walkden laid to rest at St Mary the Virgin, Prestwich, between 1730 and 1770. Does anything on here make sense with what we know now? Yes indeedy! My eye goes straight to an entry halfway down the page: December 1737/8, ‘Jane Walkden, wife of Alexander Walkden, abode Unsworth’.