EXAMINING NAME LISTS
Considering the usefulness of NAME LISTS
HELPING YOU HONE YOUR GENEALOGY SKILLS
The Family Tree Academy is here to help you grow your genealogy skills. The aim is to help teach more about the search skills and source know-how needed to step up your family history research. In this issue, Family Tree Academy tutor David Annal examines the importance of name lists.
David Annal
Electoral Register for the Goring (Oxfordshire) Polling District showing 'Occupation Voters' for the parish of Southstoke and Woodcot, 1885. London Metropolitan Archives & Guildhall Library. Ancestry UK, Poll Books and Electoral Registers, 1538-1893
ESSENTIAL SEARCH SKILLS TO MASTER
We frequently refer to certain documents as ‘family history sources’ but do we ever stop to think about what we actually mean when we use the phrase?
It’s not as if the documents that we use in our research come with a label attached to them saying ‘This is a family history source’!
So, what is it that we’re looking for? What makes something a good source for family historians?
What makes a good source? Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer but I think that our ‘wish list’ should include the following items:
• names
• dates
• places and...
• relationships
The key ‘family history sources’ (birth, marriage and death records, census returns, and wills) have all of these and more and it’s not hard to see why so much of our research time is spent looking at them. And the last item on our list is arguably the most important: relationships.
Records without relationships… But in this month’s Family Tree Academy I want to consider the usefulness of a wide range of documents which (usually) lack this key element: records which come under the general heading of ‘name lists’.
I want to look at how we can use them to add something to our research and, in some cases, how we can use them as an effective tool in our neverending struggle against those dreaded brick walls.
Exploring electoral registers Perhaps the most familiar items that fall in this category are electoral registers. They’re also one of the best – and most easily accessible – resources for tracing our 20th century ancestors.