Provided a surname is not too common in a locality, top down research is a practicable approach for finding early ancestors with confidence by joining up one’s traditional bottom-up research to a comprehensive top-down tree for a surname. The methodology is simple.
To create a top-down tree one extracts, in detail, all the marriage, baptism and burial entries from the registers for your chosen surname starting with the earliest marriage record one can find and continuing to say the 1850s when the first two detailed censuses are available. Local knowledge and a good map such as the first 6”= 1 mile Ordnance Survey map of your area will help you decide how wide an area you need to search.
For example when building a top down tree for the Rostrons that lived in the eastern end of the Rossendale valley in Lancashire I had to extract marriages not only at St. Nicholas, Newchurch but also at St. Chad, Rochdale and at St. Mary, Bury in order to find the marriages of those that lived in the valley on the east side of Bacup and south of the river Irwell. In an agricultural area of north Yorkshire a 15 mile radius proved to more than adequate when reconstructing the tree for the Morgans of Helmsley. Some Family History Societies have compiled a marriage index which will be a big help if it’s comprehensive as was the case when building a tree for the Stuffins in the counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge.
With a name like Rostron or Stuffins one has to be careful to ensure that all the entries are found because the spelling by the clerks was inconsistent. Even in the 19th century the surname at the baptisms of one couple’s children at St. Nicholas, Newchurch was recorded as Rawsthron, Rawsthrone, Rostron and Rawstron! Take no notice of the spelling if you find such differences - record them all in your computer under the modern spelling of the name so that they are sorted by Christian name and date of birth in the index created by your family history software.
One then starts with the earliest marriage with obvious male issue to reconstruct the family from the baptism and burial registers and determine the children that survived. Most of those that survived will have married, sometimes more than once, and it’s not difficult from the details of abode/occupation and the names of any family witnesses recorded in the marriage register to decide on the probable marriages of the surviving children. Naming patterns may help to link families in subsequent generations. Continue until families alive at the 1841 and 1851 censuses are reached. It is then possible to “prove” that the earlier reconstructions from parish records are correct when families that agree with the census records are found.
Once you have names and dates of burial do check for wills – an invaluable source for “proving” one’s reconstruction. Indeed a will may reveal “missing” baptisms - it did with the Rostrons.
Finally be prepared for migration into the area. When you find records for people that were not descendants of your initial couple you have to start a new tree to accommodate them so you are likely to finish up with several trees not just one. That was the case for the Rostrons in Rossendale but many of the inhabitants in the early 1800s are the descendants of just two couples Edmund Rostron and Lydia Smith married in 1736 and John Rostron and Sarah Ramsbottom married in 1762.
To create a top-down tree one extracts, in detail, all the marriage, baptism and burial entries from the registers for your chosen surname starting with the earliest marriage record one can find and continuing to say the 1850s when the first two detailed censuses are available. Local knowledge and a good map such as the first 6”= 1 mile Ordnance Survey map of your area will help you decide how wide an area you need to search.
For example when building a top down tree for the Rostrons that lived in the eastern end of the Rossendale valley in Lancashire I had to extract marriages not only at St. Nicholas, Newchurch but also at St. Chad, Rochdale and at St. Mary, Bury in order to find the marriages of those that lived in the valley on the east side of Bacup and south of the river Irwell. In an agricultural area of north Yorkshire a 15 mile radius proved to more than adequate when reconstructing the tree for the Morgans of Helmsley. Some Family History Societies have compiled a marriage index which will be a big help if it’s comprehensive as was the case when building a tree for the Stuffins in the counties of Huntingdon and Cambridge.
With a name like Rostron or Stuffins one has to be careful to ensure that all the entries are found because the spelling by the clerks was inconsistent. Even in the 19th century the surname at the baptisms of one couple’s children at St. Nicholas, Newchurch was recorded as Rawsthron, Rawsthrone, Rostron and Rawstron! Take no notice of the spelling if you find such differences - record them all in your computer under the modern spelling of the name so that they are sorted by Christian name and date of birth in the index created by your family history software.
One then starts with the earliest marriage with obvious male issue to reconstruct the family from the baptism and burial registers and determine the children that survived. Most of those that survived will have married, sometimes more than once, and it’s not difficult from the details of abode/occupation and the names of any family witnesses recorded in the marriage register to decide on the probable marriages of the surviving children. Naming patterns may help to link families in subsequent generations. Continue until families alive at the 1841 and 1851 censuses are reached. It is then possible to “prove” that the earlier reconstructions from parish records are correct when families that agree with the census records are found.
Once you have names and dates of burial do check for wills – an invaluable source for “proving” one’s reconstruction. Indeed a will may reveal “missing” baptisms - it did with the Rostrons.
Finally be prepared for migration into the area. When you find records for people that were not descendants of your initial couple you have to start a new tree to accommodate them so you are likely to finish up with several trees not just one. That was the case for the Rostrons in Rossendale but many of the inhabitants in the early 1800s are the descendants of just two couples Edmund Rostron and Lydia Smith married in 1736 and John Rostron and Sarah Ramsbottom married in 1762.
