It’s been a long time since I had something to post on Mystery Monday, but this one is a doozy! Before my vacation, I wrote about ordering Samuel Redford and Frances Travis’ marriage record. Now on top of the Duckworth/Redford mystery, I have a tale of two marriage records apparently.

Before I realized I could see a copy of the marriage certificate online, I ordered a copy from the General Records Office. I didn’t receive it until Saturday, which I think is pretty speedy for a record from another country! Anyway, I was cooking when the mail was brought in, so I asked my father to open the record for me. It’s always fun seeing records through a non-genealogist eyes. He immediately zeroed in on the fact that Samuel Redford was listed as a widower. Which prompted a variety of discussions, the biggest one being my shock at his widower status.

I thought it was funny that this was the first time I was hearing this, especially since I had viewed the record on FindmyPast.co.uk after I ordered it. Sunday morning when I had a little more time to investigate, I brought up the computer record and the certificate to compare. That’s where the mystery comes in! To respect the copyrights of the records offices, I’m going to just show you a transcription. You’ll just have to trust me on the differences for now!

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I changed the text color on the most significant differences on the records. You can see that on the transcription from Find my Past, it says Samuel is a bachelor and that Frances resides in Werneth. Frances’ residence makes much more sense in the FMP record since I’ve found her family’s census data for 1861, 1871, and 1881 all in Werneth. What I think might have happened when they copied the record down in the GRO (who knows when?) is that the record above Samuel and Frances’ got mixed up with theirs. You can’t tell from the GRO certificate since it only gives the one record, however on FMP I can see the full page. The other record lists the husband as a Widower and both spouses living in Hyde. So most likely a mixup happened somewhere, but it’s not a good thing when you’re researching your family tree from across the pond!

This does show that mistakes happen all the time in records and you should always double check things even from the most trusted of sources.

Saint Augustine, Florida; March 2013

After a week of relaxing in Florida, I’m home again. It was so much fun to spend time with my family in a non-stressful situation. Now that I’m home I have tons of things I want to accomplish. I only wish it were as pretty and warm here in Maryland!

My website has been around since May of 2003. That means this May, the website will be 10 years old! I was feeling a little nostalgic about it all, so I decided to visit the Internet Wayback Machine the other night.

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My brother registered the domain for me in at the end of May 2003. By July the Wayback Machine had archived my site! Awesome.

2003 – click for full size

The first incarnation of the site had a Regency-era man drawn by me, telling everyone to enter the website. Sadly, he no longer exists, so this is the page you ended up on after clicking on him.

2003 – click for full size

There he is a little bit! The colors a little off because I used to change the colors of my website all the time. This is the page that you landed on after picking a line of the family tree. I’m not 100% positive but I think I actually made pedigrees for each surname.

2004 – click for full size

In 2004, I was obsessed with image mapping. So this design was a combination of an image map and frames. I can’t believe how much I used to use frames! Sorry for the non-HTML inclined, I’m dating my website knowledge definitely though!

2004 – click for full size

None of the pages except the Index of Surnames were archived. Each person had their own page where I listed all their facts, and familial connections. Whew, I remember how much time I used to spend on the website.

early 2005 – click for full size

In early 2005, I had switched out the pink color for blue. I remember using the same picture and instead of an image map I made individual buttons. Same basic setup, just new color.

late 2005 – click for full size

By the end of 2005, I had installed The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding. I probably hadn’t installed a theme by the time the website was archived.

2006 – click for full size

In 2006 I used one of the themes and I never looked back from using Darrin Lythgoe’s software!

2007 – click for full size

A different theme for 2007. I really enjoyed this theme and I changed the “Featured Articles” and text on the front page often. It was here where I started to feel like a blog would be fun to have.

2008 – click for full size

In 2008 I made the decision to split up my tree into my mother’s side and my father’s.

2009 – click for full size

I must have changed my theme in 2009, but it didn’t archive well. I was definitely still using TNG. I had also just started using twitter and that black box is where the twitter feed was.

2010 – click for full size

2010 was the year I took the training wheels off and created my own TNG theme. I also started the blog.

2011 – click for full size

2011 – same design.

2012 – click for full size

2012 – still no change.

So that brings us to 2013! I’ve pretty much been working on a new design since 2011, but just haven’t made it work. After seeing how much the site has changed over the years, I’m definitely more motivated to make a new design happen. So hopefully when I get back from vacation, I can sketch out something fresh that will be a new start for the website!

Or at least, what I’m calling a glitch. I have no idea if this is something I’ve done or if it’s a bonafide glitch. I just know I add my stuff the same way every time and I don’t have 8,345 instances of Johnsville, Bracken County, Kentucky in my file.

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For some reason, I had a LOT of Beith, Ayrshire, Scotland this morning. It’s probably been there awhile since I don’t usually check the places tab. I was curious today though and wanted to try something new. I got to do something new alright!

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I went through the process of merging all the instances of Beith together. Since they are all identical I didn’t think Resolving would do anything, but I wish I had tried now because that might have been quicker. Next time I’ll try. I feel like I was working on it for 8 years, but it really turned out to be a half hour. Okay 45 minutes, but I did get distracted and walked away from it a few times. It was pretty monotonous.

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Eventually I was down to enough that they fit the screen! An end was in sight!

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I have no idea how I ended up with at least 76 different listings for Beith but I hope it never happens again. That doesn’t seem to be my luck though. I’ll just keep an eye on it and maybe Google it.

Can you guys tell I’m procrastinating yet? Thank god it’s Friday! I hope everyone has a good one!

In a completely unrelated note, I’ve got to revisit the rules on capitalizing letters in a title. This fly by the seat of my pants approach doesn’t work well for me anymore. haha!

So today is the day my blog turns 3 years old, and I evaluate the goal I set for myself about six weeks ago. I knew it was a tough task but having goals to work towards really helps me. A lot of obstacles were thrown in my way. I spent a lot of weekend time helping out my neighbors who had a family emergency, and I spent a week sick as a dog. So all in all, my goal was really doomed from the beginning. Trust me, I’m laughing at myself as I wrote that. I have a weird sense of humor.

Anyway, I didn’t complete the goal. I wanted to finish my cleanup through Mollie Jane Webb’s parents. I want to fill in one more set of those 3rd Great Grandparents. It didn’t happen, I made a LOT of progress though.

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So I didn’t make a ton of visible progress on my goal. I did however make progress and really that was the main goal. I think I might have even met my goal without having the plague for a week and a half. For a solid 4 days all I could do was stare into space. So I’m wimpy enough to take that excuse and run with it!

I might not have finished everything I wanted to but I did move past the Taylors. I had originally wanted to go ahead and add past Bartholomew Taylor in but when I started looking at my “documentation”, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it just yet when I had a goal in mind. The purpose of the new cleaner file is so that I once again have a strong base to work from. My old file was such a mess from trying to combine numerous things, and switching software numerous times. I hadn’t taken proper precautions when doing those things and it made a mess of my file. So I’m in a much better place now! I might not have everyone added back in, but it’s been so much better researching, since I know that I’ve got everyone sourced in the new file. If someone asks me about anyone in the new file, I can tell them exactly where my information came from. It’s a good feeling!

I’m not setting a new goal yet because I have a lot going on here for the next few weeks, even a vacation! So when all that has settled down, I’ll set a new goal. Maybe it will be to finish this once and for all, or maybe it will be a smaller, more specific goal. Who knows!