Getting closer to the truth - Dealing with conflicts


This morning I saw a post that another Geneablogger wrote about how much evidence is required to prove a genealogical fact. She used as her example an English birth.

I have discussed a similar case in a blogpost last year.

In this post I will be following on from my previous post with results from my research trip earlier this year.


At the end of March I travelled to Hampshire, England for a research trip, genealogy conference and catch up with family.

Whilst I was unable to find some of the records that may have furthered my research I did find some new publications that have assisted in clarifying that my conclusions may be correct or require modification.

Whilst perusing the shelves in Hampshire Record Office I came across 3 books published in 2015. Since it has been several years since my last visit these were new to me. Had I looked in the online catalogue I would have found them they are TRA286/18-20. 
Whilst only being transcripts they are at the present time the best that is available. In fact they are to some extent better than just having the original records for most researchers. 
I say this for 2 reasons 
  1. Many of the originals were written in latin
  2. The records have been supplemented by reference to other records which may not be readily available e.g records from the undertakers regularly used by catholics in Southampton.
I would also note that there are numerous pages given over to the history of catholism in Southampton at the beginning of at least one of these books. They have been written by someone with a great knowledge of these records and it must have taken a considerable time and effort to collate the contents of these books.

In my earlier post I included this image of a letter from the office of the parish priest of St Joseph's Church Southampton.



I transcribed the baptism records from TRA286/20, relevant to my research, into a Google sheet and reviewing the 2 shows some inconsistencies and demonstrates the danger of relying upon transcriptions alone.

I have discovered more from these records but will discuss these in future post(s).

In conclusion it appears that my previous assumption that my ancestor may have lied about the date of birth is false and it may be that the person in the priest's office transcribed the dates incorrectly when writing to my cousin.

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