Norman And Marian Barton Family Tree

    Methodology

    Overview

    The Family Tree is organised around families. The “Root Family” is that of Norman and Marian Barton and the tree works back through time from there, following the direct ancestors of Norman and Marian Barton as far back as possible. Each family of a direct ancestor up the tree from the Root Family is referred to as an “Ancestor Family”. In addition the male descendants of each Ancestor Family (that are not themselves Ancestors) are tracked forward through time to the current day, excluding any living relatives, each of these families is referred to as a “Sibling Family”. Female descendants are not tracked, since these families do not carry an ancestral surname.

    Aims

    There are several aims

    • Find the Ancestor Families of Norman and Marian Barton, this includes all that died in the “certificated” era (from 1837 to present day), meaning oldest ancestors will be born around 1775 to 1800. Ancestor Families prior to that may be included but only minimal information will be available as there were no certificates or census data.
    • From each Ancestor Family also find their descendants to the present day, but only for the male descendants where the Ancestral Family surnames are preserved to find any living relatives with ancestral surnames. Some female descendants may be included if the family story is interesting, or if the descendant has illegitimate children that take her ancestral surname, or if the descendant results in a relative that also has family information on the internet that can be linked to. This will be done for the first family of the ancestral surname encountered up the tree, and maybe the second but unlikely to be done for prior generations as the volume of information would become too much. Each such family of a descendant (that is not also an ancestor) is classified as a “Descendant Family” with a sub-classification of “Sibling Family” for the male descendant and “External Family” for a female descendant.
    • A person that marries into a Descendant Family (where the descendant is not also an ancestor) will not have their family documented. Each such family is classified as an “Inlaw Family”.
    • For each Ancestor Family and Sibling Family create a timeline of events to document the story of their lives. This will not normally be done for External Families unless there is a special reason to do so, see above.
    • Gather information on the various places of importance for the relatives, as background “colour”.

    Resources Used

    Some resources are paid via subscription or “pay per view”, some resources are free.

    • Find My Past: used to hold the reference version of the Family Tree and main source of genealogical data [paid]
    • Free BMD, Free CEN: only used once in a while to double check Find My Past when expected results do not appear, due to transcription errors for example [free]
    • Find A Grave: used to find graves, including photographs for some, though sometimes graves present in Wigan World are not present on Find A Grave [free]
    • Deceased Online: used to find graves, has burials not on Find A Grave or Wigan World, just transcripts not photographs [paid]
    • Billion Graves: similar to Find A Grave, but is integrated into Find My Past [paid]
    • General Register Office (GRO): UK Government site that provides Birth, Marriage, Death Certificates [paid]
    • Find A Will: UK Government site to search and download wills and grants of probate, though headline probate information usually on Find My Past already [paid]
    • Family Search: worldwide tree useful for picking up other people’s work, though data is often unreliable. It also has wills available which otherwise would have to be purchased from a government web site [free]
    • Family Historian: used to generate the family tree diagrams for this web site. Diagrams are created by generating a GEDCOM file from Find My Past and then loading that file into Family Historian which produces the diagrams. GEDCOM is the text format used by all Family Tree sites and applications to describe a family tree, see Wikipedia [paid]
    • Wigan World: great resource for all things Wigan related, including cemetery burial data, streets, photographs and discussions [free]
    • Skelmersdale Heritage Society: heritage information for Skelmersdale area [free]
    • National Library Of Scotland Maps: superb resource for historical maps for anywhere in UK [free to browse, paid for hard copy or download]
    • The Genealogist: has Tithe Maps from c 1840 [paid]
    • Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerk: great resource providing interesting background information about Lancashire churches plus transcriptions of baptisms, marriages and burials, including some that are not available on FindMyPast [free]
    • Barton Historical & Genealogical Society: US based “one name studies” site about Barton families, of limited use [paid]
    • Barton Database: Site linked to Barton Historical & Genealogical Society [paid]
    • Henry Harold Harrison Family: great family site about a tree with a common ancestor in Henry And Ellen Mawdsley [free]
    • Age Calculator: simple but very useful tool to calculate ages given two dates [free]
    • Inflation Calculator: Bank Of England tool to convert monetary value into current day equivalent, used to convert bequest values [free]
    • Microsoft Excel: all genealogical data stored in Spreadsheets with one worksheet per family [paid]
    • Google Drive: used to store all genealogical source data (access available on request to interested parties) [paid]