Yeah, I have exhausted the easy things to try to find out more about Granny’s mother Louisa Wolff. The only record I can find of her maiden name that is definitely her is the marriage record to Theodore Bruns. She was born in 1874, but I can’t find her in the 1880 census. In the 1900 census she is married, so we know this is the right Louisa, and it says she was born in MO and also her parents were born in MO. So if that’s true, they should be in MO in 1880, most likely. There are some possibilities, including an adopted girl with the same name and the same age, but without her parents’ names or more information, there’s no way to know for sure. And unfortunately, she died young, only age 33 in 1907, before MO started issuing death certificates in 1910, so that is no help either. I may have to trace all the Wolf/Wolfe/Wolff/Wulf/Wulfe/Wulff lines in MO to see if I can figure it out by process of elimination. But that is a huge job that will take a long time, so I’m putting Louisa aside to see if I can make some progress on other lines instead.

Where did the past year go? Seems like it started about a month ago. And I only took off a couple days at the holidays, so it seems like Christmas just sped by too.

In the next few months, I’m going back to the Bruns/Ferber lines to see what blanks I can fill in. Specifically, ancestors of Dorothea Bruns (1906-1985) and George Ferber (1901-1979).

For Dorothea Bruns, I have only found 2 of 4 grandparents, and 2 of 8 great-grandparents. No great-great-grandparents at all.

For George Ferber, I have all 4 grandparents, but only 3 of 8 great-grandparents, and 2 of 16 great-great-grandparents.

All in all, not very many. Although, some of these lines are actually back to the immigrant ancestor, so it’s hard to get back past that person because you have to look at foreign records. On some of the other lines, I’ve come to a brick wall. But I’m going to try to at least get back to where the lines immigrated to the US. Maybe with some concentrated effort (and not getting sidetracked with the other new information I’ve been collecting on Posa, Chapman, and Thompson), I can make some good headway.

And that’s the closest I’m going to come to actually making a New Year’s resolution!

Yes, the tree has the wrong Mary Jane Thompson. I have looked at every Thompson born in Fiskerton, Lincolnshire. That was fun. There are a few facts about our Mary Jane that are correct, but there is not a lot of detail in records, so one must look at all the records over a person’s lifetime to make sure you have the correct person. Sometimes, it is a process of elimination, but you must make sure you have really eliminated all other possibilities. You cannot find a likely person and then just stop looking, and think you have the right one.

And that brings me to a real problem in online data today, that people do not really know what they are doing when looking at records online. I’ve seen the attitude that people should just be able to sit down at their computer and their entire tree is already out there. People don’t know what a reliable source is, and they don’t understand that someone else’s tree is NOT a source. Likewise, an index is NOT a source. What IS a source: a real document with the person’s name on it. It’s a real shame, but I see it every single day on ancestry.com, people copy information from someone else’s tree and the information is wrong! Then more people copy it, and more people, and before you know it, wrong information is in dozens of trees. And apparently people never verify the information independently, so mistakes get propagated on and on.

And even when they DO copy a wrong tree, and then attach their own sources (like, say, a census page), it seems they don’t even look at what they are doing because the source contradicts the information that they are saying it proves. No dude, look at that record you attached, it proves you are wrong, not right!

You need to be especially careful when names are common, like Thompson, and Mary. We know that we are looking at the right Mary Thompson on 4 UK census records, because she is married to Charles Allen. But on all 4 of the records, her birth location is listed as Fiskerton. So why do all the online trees say she was born in Waddington??? Most people list the source for this information as someone else’s tree, which says Waddington, so they are just blindly copying someone else. Although some people then attempt to add another source and they find the UK census and attach it to Mary in their tree, but apparently they don’t look at the source record to see it’s the right record but the wrong Mary.

So once we know our Mary was born in Fiskerton, we need to then continue on and look at all the rest of the records for Mary. Fortunately, she was in the 1900 US census, which is the only census that asks the person’s birth month and year, rather than just age. Mary is listed as being born Mar 1829. While the 1900 census says the birth place is England, that is as far as it goes, it does not list even the county, let alone the town. But put all our facts together and you can see our Mary was born in March 1829 in Fiskerton. Looking at birth (actually baptism) records, there is only one Mary Thompson born in 1829 in Fiskerton, and she was born in March. There were 2 other Mary Thompsons born in Fiskerton, one in 1743, and one in 1843; clearly they are not the right ones.

The impostor Mary was born in May 1829, another clue that she is the wrong one, let alone the fact that she was born in Waddington. If the only information you have is the name, birth year, and birth county, you need to look at all other possibilities in that entire county before you can be sure you have the right person. Yes, it’s a lot of work! I bet that’s why most people don’t bother. Yep, right name, year, same county, good enough! But… then the rest of that person’s family is wrong. Wrong parents, wrong siblings. So… yeah, dump the Thompson line back past Mary Jane, it’s all wrong.

The impostor Mary’s parents in our tree are listed as Thomas Thompson born 1798 and Elizabeth Staples born 1801, both born in Waddington. Our real Mary’s parents are Thomas Thompson born 1805, and Elizabeth Cave born 1804 in Brattleby. Our Mary did not have 14 siblings, or even 8. I can only find 2 siblings, Jane born 1827 in Fiskerton, and Rebecca born 1835 I believe in Fiskerton also. In the 1841 census, the family is living in Washingborough. Thomas’ father William is living with the family, but Jane is not. I haven’t found Jane yet in 1841, when she would be about 14 and old enough to be living elsewhere as a servant/apprentice.

Thomas and Elizabeth had only the 3 children, as far as I can tell. In 1851 they lived in Skellingthorpe, then in 1861 and 1871 they lived in Lincoln. I haven’t found them in 1881 yet. I will continue on researching this line and see what else I can find.

I’m almost afraid to start really verifying the Allen line, considering how our Chapmans were wrong earlier than about 1860 and the Thompsons were wrong earlier than about 1830. The family tree will look VERY different when I’m done!

What a mess. I’m thinking right about now that I would do better to scrap the current family tree and just start over again.

I’m not sure about Mary Jane Thompson, who married Charles Allen. They did get married on 21 Oct 1847, but the rest of Mary Jane Thompson’s family I’m not so sure about. It looks like there are three families in Lincolnshire with parents of Thomas and Elizabeth Thompson, and they seem to have moved around some. I think our family lived in Waddington for awhile, but our Mary Jane seems to have gotten mixed up with another Mary Jane. Cheryl had our Mary Jane born in Waddington in May 1829. But it turns out there is another Mary Jane born in Fiskerton in Mar 1829, which looks like ours instead. The 1900 census in Joliet, IL, says she was born Mar 1829, not May.

On the census for 1851, 1861, 1871, and 1881, Mary Jane’s birthplace is listed as Fiskerton, not Waddington. That’s consistent all right. The 1841 census does not list the town where born, and after the 1881 census Mary Jane left England, so she is not on the 1891 census. During the 4 censuses which list her birthplace as Fiskerton, she is married to Charles Allen, so we know for sure that is the right Mary Jane. But as for her parents and siblings, I’m going to have to do a bit more digging.

Right now, Mary Jane’s parents are Thomas Thompson and Elizabeth Staples, and they are living in Waddington in 1841, 1851, and 1861. Thomas Thompson died in 1864. I’m not sure I can figure this out, the time period in question is pretty far back. The first census in the UK was in 1841, and that will just tell us family groups and the town they lived in, not where they were born.

So let’s see what I can come up with for Mary Jane’s family! Where are you great-great-grandma?? 🙂

Well it’s a good thing I’m going through all the data we have had for years, because it looks like there is a bit more wrong than just our great-grandfather William Chapman’s parents. After working on William Chapman and Sarah Harvey’s children, I started looking at Sarah Jane Allen (who married William and Sarah’s son William) and decided to look at the Allens. But then as usual in genealogical research, one goes off on a tangent. The tangent started with Sarah Jane’s parents Charles Allen and Mary Jane Thompson, and then led to looking at Mary Jane’s parents Thomas Thompson and Elizabeth Staples.

The tree showed 15 children for Thomas Thompson and Elizabeth Staples. You can see them on the old typed pedigree pages if you still have them. But from what I can tell so far, they really had only 9 children. Other researchers with trees online do not show the extra children either. I think in our case, the extra children came from not really knowing the correct parents, which can be problematic in the UK indexes because the mother’s married name is used, rather than her maiden name. Because our names are so common, it can be very difficult to determine if you are looking at the right Thomas and Elizabeth Thompson. It looks like what Cheryl had done is picked up some children of other couples named Thomas and Elizabeth Thompson, and added the children to our Thompson family.

The Thompsons we are interested in lived in Waddington, and the other families lived in Bardney and Washingborough. So remove from our family any child born in Bardney or Washingborough. These are the children for our Thompson family as best I can tell right now:

Richard, christened 5 Jun 1825.
Ann, christened 3 Mar 1827
Mary, christened 5 May 1829
Sarah, christened 7 Jan 1831
Harriet, christened 26 Aug 1833
Phoebe, christened 29 Mar 1835
Betsy, christened 20 Feb 1837
Thomas, christened 31 Mar 1838
Thomas, christened 13 May 1842

Of course, I will need to borrow the microfilm to be sent to the local Family History Center here, and verify the children with the church registers. But this is the best I can figure out currently. No doubt I will encounter more surprises as I continue to verify our tree, so stay tuned. I will post more information as I find it.