The Importance of Family History Society Membership
By Carol Ackroyd
I have been on the committee of the DDFHS and also a volunteer in the research room for the past few years. Being a volunteer is very rewarding as you get to meet other researchers and get to know them. At times you are in for some surprises too.
When on duty in June of this year our editor came to do some research and asked for some help as she had been searching for her 2 x great grandmother Mary Cotton for a long time with no success. It was known that Mary married Benjamin Tyas in 1858 and that her father’s name was John. As Mary had given a few different places of birth on the census it wasn’t clear where she was born.
The first thing we looked at was the 1861 census where her birth place was given as Egmanton, Nottinghamshire. I then suggested checking the 1851 census when she would have still been at home with her family. The family was living in Conisbrough which our editor confirmed was their place of residence.
Once the record was brought up and it was confirmed that it was the correct family I knew at once why nothing was found for Mary Cotton. Her name was Mary Colton and not only that, the family were in my own family tree. Mary’s father John was the brother of my husband’s 2 x great grandfather Christopher Colton.
I too had found the name Colton transcribed as Cotton. It took quite a while to find the marriage of my husband’s grandparents as his grandmother’s name on the GRO index was transcribed as Cotton.
Since being aware of this mistake I have been able to go back a bit further. Not all baptisms have been found but the ones that have are all Colton. When the family moved to Sheffield and for a while to Conisbrough I found the name was also recorded as Calton but this I think was due to dialect.
When Christopher Colton drowned in the Great Sheffield Flood in 1864 the name was spelled both ways, Colton and Calton but that is another story.
Carol Ackroyd – http://ackroydfamilyresearch.co.uk/
I hope you enjoyed this brief but interesting article, which reminds us to check variations of surnames in our research.