People in website - General


  • If a person has a 5-digit "ID" number (often shown as #nnnnn)
    then the general "Family" of the person can be distinguished by the second digit: nDnnn
    1=>Burton; 2=>Grimshaw; 3=>Leech; 4=>Pearson; 5=>Rodger; 6=>Roose; 7=>Shackleton; 8=>Webster
    Other values for the 2nd digit may occur.
  • The ID assigned to a person is not guaranteed to remain the same in the long term. As new people are researched and added, then the numbering of people in the family will be shuffled.
    Generally children are kept close to one of their parents, but that "rule" is often broken.

  • The marking of people as being "Ancestor", "Brick Wall", "Relative" or "Related by Marriage" is done by a program.
    There was no legislation in England to adopt a child until 1926.
    Where there is evidence of adoption, e.g. in a census listing, we use manual methods to add them to a family.
    There are 18 people currently who are manually marked as "Relatives", or "Related by Marriage", for various reasons.

  • All people who are, or maybe, alive are excluded from the published website.
  • Whole "twigs" of the families are not published, for various reasons.
  • A number of people are excluded from the website because they have recently died (after 2020).

  • We try to show people with the name that they commonly used AT THAT TIME.
    In England married (or widowed) women commonly used their current (or former) husband's surname.
    Women of Scots descent would EITHER use their original birth surname, OR their husband's surname, whether they lived in Scotland or England.
    No assumption about their marital status can be made from the surname used.
    Their children would use their father's surname.

  • Over the centuries the spelling of names has varied.
    As few "common folk" in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries could either read or write,
    records were created by those who could (often the clergy).
    They would use their own assumptions, from what they heard, of how a name should be spelled,
    and use the handwriting of their times, and their own "shorthand" for common words.
  • Church records were often used "Latin/French" for given names - for example Gwillem for William, Petrius for Peter.
  • Later transcribers would convert these records, but use the assumptions and conventions of their times.
  • We try to overcome some of these hurdles as we again transcribe the records into our databases, then into the website.

  • Family names which "suffer" from these problems include
    Shadwell/Shatwell, Rodger/Rodgers/Roger/Rogers.