Back to William and Eleanor Kear (General)

by BSEDDON , Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 14:29 (3785 days ago) @ MPGriffiths

Hi again MPG

As the police would say, we have opened up several lines of enquiry! Thanks for all your efforts, they offer valuable insights into how the data can be exploited......

The most productive line to date seems to be the following......

There are around 100 Eleanors (and variants) on FOD with baptisms between 1720 and 1736. Somewhat arbitrary but as William and Eleanor's first was born in 1752 a reasonable stab. Whittling this down, on mainly geographic grounds, I was left with just 3 prime suspects

1728 Eleanor Edwards Breem
1726 Eleanor Tomblins Coleford
1726 Eleanor Court Breem

There are also two interesting burial records

1804 William Kear Breem
1816 Eleanor Kear Breem aged 88 implying 1728 birth

All this leads me to suspect that Eleanor Court Tomblins and Eleanor C Tomblins found all over the Ancestry trees never existed. Someone joined two people together cos they couldn't decide which to choose and this then got copied across multiple trees.

In fact the most likely spouse for William looks to be Eleanor Edwards, but as is often the case, it's a question of faith rather than fact. I'll certainly be double checking anything I find published on Ancestry in the future......

I now have two new branches to research. The Kear tree potentially goes back to the mid 1500s so maybe I'll leave it for now and wait for the long winter nights!!!

Regards Brian

PS I have found that using the FOD advanced search into early records often leads to "implied marriages". ie children of x and y but no marriage for x and y. Do you know if the marriage records are less complete or is there another reason?