Down the rabbit hole
Was I falling down the rabbit hole, or doing due diligence in my research? It’s a fine point at times, I find. Here is today’s case in point.
My great great grandmother, Jane (Round) Harley (1883-1904) was recorded in the 1901 census as living with her brother, Joseph Round and his wife Ann. Though technically she was referred to as the sister of the head of household, Joseph, it is possible that she was Ann’s sister. But as far as I know she had neither a brother Joseph nor a sister Ann.
But let’s check that. I have only discovered one sibling for Jane, a younger sister Eliza (born 1885), the two of them being listed in several censuses with their parents. This would have been fairly unusual in those days, so perhaps there were more.
So Search 1: look for more children of Samuel Round and Kitty Webster, of Oldbury, Worcestershire, around 1883.
Lo and behold, I found another child: Grace, born 1837. But Grace died less than a year later. Emboldened, I checked through records on ancestry.com, on familysearch.com, and on findmypast.co.uk. Clicking away merrily I read through lots of records on all three sites, but no more children of Samuel and Kitty appeared. Then I realized that Joseph was born in 1830, three years before Jane, and two years before Samuel and Kitty were married. Could Samuel have been married previously?
Search 2: another marriage for Samuel Round or an earlier child Joseph son of Samuel. No luck. Out of all the Rounds in the area, not a single Samuel father of Joseph combination. Perhaps Joseph was not actually Jane’s brother, but a cousin or other close relative. Samuel had two living brothers (one died in infancy) and a sister. I can discount the sister since her children would not have been Rounds.
So on to Search 3: look for the marriages and children of Simeon and Henry. Simeon had nine children, no Joseph among them. I found two children of Henry and his wife, neither called Joseph – though there could have been more.
Suddenly I was struck by a new thought: was the Jane in the 1901 census Jane Harley? Or was she Jane Round? If the latter, of course, I have been chasing my tail.
Sure enough, the 1901 Jane was Jane Round. How many hours did I waste on this fool’s errand? Never mind, I did find a new sibling for Jane, as well as Simeon and Henry’s families, so all is not lost.
But wait, what of the Jane of the 1904 probate I thought was Jane Harley? Sure enough, she was Jane Round. So now what do I see? That what I thought was Jane Harley’s death record was not, that she may have died earlier than 1904, and therefore earlier than 1901. In fact the last data I have on her is in the 1891 census, when she was living with Frank and his family.
Conclusion: Jane probably died sometime after 1891, and before 1901. So I corrected my earlier record, and listed her as ‘death unknown, between 1891 and 1901.’
My rabbit hole run was not entirely for naught! But better to have been more careful in the first place.
The cover image is from https://www.readingvine.com/passages/down-the-rabbit-hole