I’ve always sympathised with people who are researching their family name and have a less uncommon name than I do. Even with Elsden being quite unusual, it’s surprising how many Thomas Elsdens there are for example, and it’s only with the aid of other details such as birth place, other members of the family, and intuition that I’ve been able to trace some of my family.
My husband’s great-grandfather was John Brown… can you imagine how many John Browns there were, born in about 1850? According to my quick sweep it was 297 born in that year exactly. I narrowed the search to Surrey… but there is none! So I widen the search a little by extending the range of years, since he was born in about 1850, and I come up with eighteen, of which two were born in Reigate and two in Godstone… all possible.
When he married Emily Chalrwood, they had at least thirteen children, of which the youngest, Augusta was my husband’s grandma. You would think Augusta was quite an unusual name, but checking the birth records again there are three – but only one of them could be identified as our Augusta Sarah who was born in Reigate. Augusta, always known as Dandy to her family, married Ernest Colgate in 1911 and they had four children. Their marriage lasted until Ernest died in 1955.
Luckily, with Brown family I was helped out by the existence of the family Bible which recorded the dates of birth of the children .. although not always accurately. Emily and John married in 1873 and their first born child, William is entered into the family Bible… but then someone changes his date of birth because obviously he was actually born before his parents married!
Lois Elsden 