Saturday, April 8, 2017

The genealogy sad dance

In my tree, I have a marriage between a George Miller and Margaret Farriage in Toronto Township in 1832 (October 25th, 1832 to be specific).


I was able to find a bit more information on George Miller - he was born 1809 in Poughkeepsie, New York - but not much on Margaret Farriage. It certainly doesn't help that the surname Farriage takes on a number of variations - sometimes there is only one r, sometimes e's replace the a's and sometimes there is no letter i.

I managed to find a Margaret Farridge through FamilySearch.org born May 1st, 1804 in Rothbury, Northumberland, England, daughter of William Farridge.



The name is close enough and the timeline is not outside the realm of possibility. As well, George and Margaret's second son was named William, so it all fits. But I was a little hesitant to make the jump that this could be the same person in both Nelson Township, Ontario and in Rothbury, Northumberland, England without more proof.

Now, this was back in the early days when I was just starting out in genealogy. I managed to get in touch with a distant cousin who had spent many years researching the Farriage line and she had the two as the same person, so I made the connection in my tree, figuring that I would verify it with my own research later.

So, fast-forward to a few months ago. I'm now getting around to verifying that line. There was a wavy leaf on Ancestry.com that led me to some other people who had Margaret Farriage in their tree. Most of them either had the same connection as I did or no date of death. But interestingly, two of them had a death date of 1809 with no source. I contacted them, but (like many people with trees on ancestry) neither of them know where the information had come from, and had likely copied it from someone else.

So, I ordered the microfilm reel for Rothbury and sure enough I found the burial entry:



It's blurry, but it's a Margaret Farriage, daughter of William Farriage died October, 1809, aged 5 years. It's definitely the same person.

So, the Rothbury Margaret Farriage born 1804 is not the same as the Nelson Township Margaret Farriage. I checked the Rothbury Baptisms to see if the family had named a later child Margaret, but didn't find anything. So, I now have to delink that branch of the family, and go back to square one as far as finding Margaret's actual birth date, place & parents. It's a bit of a genealogy sad dance, but finding out the truth is far better than wasting time researching the wrong family.