The Trouble with You, John ...

... is that you had a cousin.  It's not your fault - it isn't his, either.  But the trouble is, you were both called John - and worse - you were born just weeks apart in the same village!  

Some years ago I read about a process called 'Family Reconstruction', and I realised that this was what I'd just started to do with all of my family history data which, up to that point I'd collected willy-nilly and tried to make sense of in a variety of complex spreadsheets, none of which actually did what I wanted.

Then I hit on a far simpler idea.  I started a new spreadsheet, with a single line for each person, starting with all the key personal data, like names, reference numbers, dates of birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial, and following this with columns for each census from 1841 to 1911 ... and since I began, I've had to add two more columns for 1921 and 1939.  

The very sequence of the lines groups the individuals into families and, by shading the census columns for each one they lived through, and leaving blank those before their birth or after their death, I can see easily how the family has grown over the years.  Adding the place-name into the census column lets me see which ones I've found and which I have left to look for.  It's a long job and, I have to admit, it may never be finished.  But it keeps me occupied in retirement and provides satisfaction and the odd blog-worthy story from time to time ... which reminds me ...

A few weeks ago, I wrote here about a tragic murder and suicide in a north Suffolk village.  The deceased couple were John and Betsey Churchyard, and it's their son John who starts this tale.  John was born in Hoxne in the spring of 1878 and in the course of a morning last week I was able to construct the detail of the family of which he was the head.  He married Sophia Allum in 1901 and had six children, who were all living in 1911.  The one thing I was missing was the date of John's death. 

Findmypast very helpfully offered two Suffolk-born possibilities, both born in 1878.  One died in 1934, the other in 1947.  I decided to check the 1939 Register.  At the start of World War II, John was living with wife Mary and two children, the elder of whom was clearly, by name and date of birth, the second son of Sophia.  

A little more digging provided some additional detail. Two  more children were added to the family in 1913 and 1915, Sophia died in 1919 aged 46 and almost five years later, John married Mary Cook. with whom he had three more children.  It was one of these who was the youngest of the family unit in 1939.  Hence the 1947 death date was the one I needed, and it was also fitting that the district included the village where the family had been recorded in 1939.

But the trouble was ... John had a cousin, also John, also born in 1878.  Their fathers were brothers.  Clearly all the details I'd found out tallied, the two marriages, the family in 1939 and the death in 1947 ... but which John did they apply to?  Was it, as I had assumed, the John of the family shattered by tragedy in his childhood, or his cousin, for whom I had only a birth record?  

There was one key piece of data I had yet to explore.  I said that the family in 1911 consisted of six children, all still living.  However, the census listed only five: the second son, still with his father in 1939, and four younger siblings.  Robert, the eldest, was missing.  After some searching, I found a Bobbe {sic!} Churchyard, living with his grandparents in 1911.  These were George and Jane Churchyard.  George was the younger brother of the John who had wielded that lethal shotgun.

So I had my answer - The John whose story I had now established with such detail, was the son of George and Jane.  The John with the tragic childhood also married during the Edwardian decade.  He was living as a gamekeeper in a nearby village in 1911 and it was he, I have decided, who died in 1934.  Amusingly, perhaps, his second daughter was born in the same year as a daughter of the other John.  Each was called Florence, but at least each was given a second name.  One was named Sophia after her mother, the other Louisa after her aunt.

I spoke of the stories that come from looking deeply into families in this way ... there is more to tell here so watch out in the coming weeks!