Inspiration needed please - too many names the same !

[JohnWoods]

If anyone could offer some ideas of where to go next I would be very grateful.

Researching the Williams family (one of them) in Borth, Cardiganshire. I have a William Williams (born 1811) son of John & Margaret Williams. The problem is that there were 3 John Williams who married Margarets between 1796 and 1802 any one pair of which could be the parents (or John could have remarried another Margaret but surely not three times !)

I guess what I need is something that will relate families to addresses but this is well before census returns, has anybody got any suggestions of what records I could try looking at to work out which John & Margaret are the parents ?

Thanks

John

[Guy Etchells]

In cases like this you then have to check the birth/baptism records of each of the three families and try to eliminate two.
Did any of the three have a child during the preceding year, did any have a child during the following year?
How far apart did each family have their children, does William fit into any of these sequences?
Cheers
Guy

[JohnWoods]

Guy,

Thanks for the reply, sorry for not responding earlier, I've been away.

Your suggestion sounds simple but I'm not sure it is. The position is as follows -

Marriages:

John Williams and Margaret John, 1st July 1796

John Williams and Margaret Evans, 25th January 1800

John Williams and Margaret Smith, January 8th, 1802


Baptisms :

Martha, July 6th 1802

Margaret, July 30th, 1803

William, October 27th, 1804

Jane, February 24th, 1807

Mary, July 29th, 1808

Richard, Oct 27th, 1810

David, July 2nd, 1811

William, December 7th, 1811 (this is the William we are interested in)


We can probably safely assume that David isn't related and probably assume that Martha isn't the daughter of Margaret Smith (but not for sure). However I can't see how I can work out much about the others.

Do you have any other ideas?

Thanks

John

[Rod Neep]

As a matter of interest, have you seen the actual baptism registers, or are you working from an index?

I ask this because in the earlier times, the registers of Welsh churches often had much more extra information than the English ones. This stems from the fact that surnames were patronymic. For example William Evans had a son John... whose name became John Williams or John Williamson. (and that William Evans would have been the son of a man whose first name was Evan).

Therefore, in many of the earlier Welsh registers, a baptism entry stated the lineage over the last two or three generations!
Regards
Rod

[Guy Etchells]

These baptisms seem very sparse to me, were there no occupations mentioned?
How about later in the childrens lives do the Marriage entries give any clues, what about wills and burials.
Are any of the children buried with parents?
Are there any clues in naming further children or grandchildren even, somtimes the mother's maiden name crops up here.

Many one name studies have been started due to similar circumstances and the only way to resolve the issue is to cast your net wider to get a result.
Cheers
Guy

[JohnWoods]

Rod & Guy,

Thanks for the replies.

Rod - My cousin, who has seen the registers has copies of the marriage entries, I'm not sure about the baptisms.

Guy - Thanks for those suggestions, it certainly gives us some extra things to go on. I'd like to think that some detective work could get us a bit farther back but not having hit this problem before was struggling to think of the things to look for.

Cheers

John