Family History of an area

[melsibob]

With a friend I am about to start some local research. Part of what we would like to do is look at the families in our village and explore how it has grown over the years. We don't intend to look at families after the second World War ( there was significant building an development in 1950's). Using census material as our starting point we intend to work our way backwards. Obviously the most recent census we have access to is 1911. Other sources will help us move forward. My question is what suggestions do people have on how best to organise the information.

[emeltee]

Have you considered making a large map of the village with house numbers and/or names, then going through the Censuses listing who lived in which house in each Census. Once you have done that you can then start to see if you can find any other info re each family - should keep you going for years!

Emeltom

[Lesley Robertson]

This is what is often called a 1-place or 1-parish study. If you look under “forums” on our menu, you will see it that actually have a forum for such things - it’s pretty quiet, but there’s a lot of useful comments.

I have a study myself, for the Berwickshire parish of Whitsome and Hilton. I started with a single house, but the study gradually spread to the whole parish. First the census, then the burial ground, Valuation Rolls (Scotland only), etc. each set of data in its own simple database, and then families linked in genealogy software.

[melsibob]

Yes I think it will keep going for years! I thought i would look at say 1911 census, go through each entry for the village and log the details of each home and as you say spread the research area on each family. I am anxious about how best to organise it - trying to avoid having 200 separate trees! Thanks for your suggestion of a map.

[melsibob]

Thanks for this - I will check the forums for further ideas

[Megan Roberts]

To understand the scale of the task that you are setting yourselves, you can get an idea of how much the population has changed by searching just parish name in different censuses.

A parish may be made up of a number of villages and hamlets but these may not be accurately recorded in the census but the parish will be. For instance I have been looking at the parish that my father was originally from. In 1841 there were 2022 entries, and by 1911 there were 5200 entries. That parish covers 4 villages.

You could check with the local record office to see what historic maps they have of the area, voter records, school records, parish records, or other records that might be relevant to the village.

[Guy Etchells]

I extended my first family history site with information about the villages in the Framland Hundred a one place study (Framland Hundred) which contained many places (villages).

As often happens with family history research work got in the way of pleasure but the start I made was very popular at the time.
See https://anguline.co.uk/Framland/index.htm
It's a bit outdated now but it might give you some clues

Cheers
Guy

[warncoort]

I would suggest you start with the 1939 register.

[melsibob]

I extended my first family history site with information about the villages in the Framland Hundred a one place study (Framland Hundred) which contained many places (villages).

As often happens with family history research work got in the way of pleasure but the start I made was very popular at the time.
See https://anguline.co.uk/Framland/index.htm
It's a bit outdated now but it might give you some clues

Cheers
Guy

Thankyou so much - clearly a lot to contemplate before even starting!

[Ladkyis]

Perhaps the way to organise it is to have a section for each street/road/terrace etc and to group the families into them. I don't think you can avoid a separate tree for each family it just depends on how detailed you want to be.

If the village has a war memorial it would be worth looking at the names on it and perhaps starting with those you could see from the surviving WW1 records if any of them joined up together, if they went to the same regiment and if any of them died in the same battles.

That's all I can suggest at the moment as someone else has suggested the 1939 register and that was my first thought