Eason Genealogy One Name Study update

Alternative title: What I did in the holidays

I started this journey a few years ago when I found a lot of Eason families (my maiden name) here in New Zealand that were not related to my family - I wrote a blog on this a while ago. It made me wonder about linking them together and I started looking at a range of Eason families. This eventually led me to register a One Name Study with the Guild. 

What I like about this study is that I can do it in whatever way I like and take as long as I like - and get sidetracked! I have put a few trees up on my website but am now thinking I might add a large number of the trees I have compiled, even though many of them are certainly not complete. I have a Facebook page where I have been putting the odd bit of research, but with over 13,000 people in my database I think I should probably start putting some of it online. I know there are a number of trees out there on Family Search, Wikitree and My Heritage as well as Ancestry that I have covered, but I always do my own research  before even looking at those (if I even do) and  I like to make sure everything is documented the best I can. In saying that, I make mistakes, jump to conclusions, and sometimes make some interesting connections that are not always correct, but I have notes in my files saying why I made them and that I'm not sure of them. Because of this I have been hesitant to put things on my site, but am thinking I will just out a disclaimer and hope that some of the Eason lines out there will get in touch and I can send all my notes and they can correct me - with evidence of course.

In the course of my One Name Study I come across all sorts of interesting versions of the Eason name - Esson, Essen, Easom, Easton, Eson and many more. This can make things a bit difficult when tracing people and some families use all versions of the name for different people depending on what parish they move to and who the bishop was.

I get sidetracked frequently and when I first started my study I decided I would do a county at a time starting in England. I started with Kent, as that is where my family are from an I made trees of as many of the families that I could and tried to connect them all. This worked quite well for a bit and I did a few counties this way. Then I found many families moving to the United States and Australia and I kept getting dragged to a different place, so I decided to change tack.

I had downloaded all of the England, Scotland and Wales census records for the name Eason and I had started with the 1841 census a while ago, see who I had in my trees already and adding new ones. These school holidays I set myself a goal, to finish the 1841 census for every Eason. This meant doing the whole tree for each family as far as I could go - not just putting in that one family. It's done. I have added a large number of trees and connected a few that I had before - I'm itching to get onto the 1851 census now.

It was a difficult journey and I found a large number of transcription errors (always look at the originals, do not go by the transcriptions, you'll be amazed at what is written sometimes). There were also the issues of being called Eason in the 1841 census but when I followed the family and found births and later census documents that they were not Eason, but another version of the name. My personal rule for this is if they are known as another version more frequently, then I stop researching them - it has to be a whole family using an alternative name. Some families have one child who uses Eason and another that uses Easton, that keeps me on my toes.

I also stop following a female once she is no longer an Eason (or I would be doing some trees for a very long time). I will find her death but I don't put in her children and husband's details. There will be a few extras in my files, as I do add all the people on a census, or if they are listed on another document that is pertinent to the Eason name but I don't go looking for them specifically.

The numbers:

So in the 1841 census there were 781 instances of the Eason name. Of those 520 are now in my database with their trees fairly complete as far as I can go for now. 108 I found were not Eason once I followed their lines far enough and there are 90 that I have no idea where they belong at this stage.

Part of the reason of having no idea is the common names. Here are the main ones in this 1841 census and how many occurrences there are - I'll be interested to see what it looks like for 1851 and so on.

Mary - 71 (and another 11 Mary Ann)

John - 58

William - 57

Elizabeth - 46 (and another 14 Eliza, of which some are Elizabeth)

Sarah - 43

Ann/Anne - 41

So  over 350 are only 8 names and many with the same birth date.

The 1841 census is probably the most vague of all of them, so I am hoping the future ones will be a little easier to get checked. The birthplace was only listed as a yes or no to being of that parish so it was difficult to sort people when it says no - they could come from anywhere. The other thing in the 1841 census is that they rounded the birth dates to the closest 5 if people were over 15, so a 23yr old would be down as being 25 and a 27yr old would also be down as being 25. Makes for some interesting sorting. People also lied about their age - you can't take anything too seriously with any census - lots of extra data is required to prove something is correct.

On to the 1851 census - I'm looking forward to having more information to play with and perhaps some of those trees I put together will clear up some of my unknowns from 1841. Maybe I should get some gardening done first....

Feet and change

 

It's been a time of change in my life over the last few weeks. 

Finally, after 16 months, I have had my foot operation. They had to tighten up a ligament and take a bit of bone out and lift the bottom of my foot up - no small op and it will be a few weeks yet before I am running around! There is a piece of wire sticking out the end of my toe (not a small piece either!) at the moment and it doesn't come out until October. I'll be off work for a while so I have time to get some things done at home. It's a change to be sitting around, it's a change to not have pain in my foot and it's been a change in what I do every day.

I'm about to change my job. After 4 years at Haeata I am moving to Papanui High School to take up the role of Learning Support Coordinator. This is a new role and I am looking forward to finding my place there and working out how I can best support those learners. This starts in Term 4 (October) so I have a bit of time before I get to start but I'm super excited about it! As part of this I am spending some time working on my Boma project as it relates well to this new role. Soon I will be able to share a prototype and work on getting this up and running.

I have been cleaning out my emails and drives, lots of stuff to clear. I didn't realise how much I had accumulated over the years and how much really is just not needed. Hard to get rid of things though, we can now gather so much online, it's not the same as going through books and papers, there is so much more!!! One of my friends came round and we talked about decluttering so I have been trying to do a drawer or a cupboard/shelf each day while I am housebound. It's getting there - slowly.

I've also been cleaning up in the garden. Shuffling around on my bottom, trying to keep my foot out of the dirt, and not being able to reach far across the garden at the moment, but loving the time to just potter and get the weeds out where I can. Am looking forward to being able to stomp around in the shrubs once I am back on my feet!

I wanted to put my old video tapes onto DVD - or at least store them digitally. Problem is - most of the computers lying around this house do not have DVD drives! Finding storage online for all the data is becoming an issue as well - I seem to have a ton of data in every drive I own! It seems that I have multiple copies of things on different drives. Oh to sort more out....

I have been working on my Eason genealogy as well. It's great to have access to online sites through the library but it means lots more to do. I have been updating my FB page a lot and putting more on my website as well. It's something I love doing and has been a good focus over the last few weeks. I just have to make myself do other things first in the day before I let myself do any, otherwise nothing else gets done!

I have been reading a lot. I am lucky to have some great friends who read widely and they have put me onto some great books. As part of that I finally bought some online to read on my Kindle app - a new thing for me as I do prefer to have a paper copy, but with not being able to drive to the library at the moment, paper books are a bit scarce.

The Power of Us - David Price

I joined the DisruptEd Book Club Facebook group recently and this is the book to read at the moment. (the Kindle version is only a couple of dollars on Amazon right now). Reading this book has confirmed my knowledge that I was exceptionally lucky to be part of the first few years at Haeata. We were pushing the boundaries and doing it in a collaborative, supportive environment. I was constantly in a state of flow and was passionate about what we were doing. It seemed chaotic and could look like that from the outside, but the growth and the knowledge we gained was amazing. We really needed a few more years to show how this new model could work - it takes 5-7 years to really implement change. One of the quotes from this book is about a company BrewDog and it really resonated with me "We are a high growth company. This creates amazing opportunities for us and our team members. This also creates a constant state of flux and a healthy dose of chaos. For us, the time to start worrying is when we don't have the chaos, because it will mean our growth has slowed. WE NEED TO EAT CHAOS FOR BREAKFAST." One of the things that attracted me to Haeata in the first place was that Andy (the founding Principal) said at a public meeting "If you don't like change, don't apply" - he knew that there would be constant change, which there certainly was. We collaborated and worked together to continually improve practice. It wasn't perfect and often wasn't pretty, but I do believe we were heading in the right direction. This book has just reinforced my belief that working collaboratively is the way to move forward.

Peptalk magazine

This is a great magazine that is published here in NZ. It has great articles about wellbeing and has a section specifically for teenagers as well. Well worth subscribing too if you have any interested in mental health, or have a teenager in the house.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

This was Book of the Year in 2014 in Australia and is a moving yet funny book that I would highly recommend. I'm keen now to reed the other two that follow this book - it will be interesting to see if they are as good.

The Tipping Point  by Malcolm Gladwell as well as Blink

I found this really interesting - it talks about a few different concepts that make total sense. The idea of making things stick, making things practical and personal to become memorable is a no brainer. There was a study about Sesame Street and how they made it memorable. The quote I like is "if you want to know what kids aren't learning, all you have to do is notice what they aren't watching." Something we should think about as teachers. There is also the rule of 150 - keeping groups below this number makes a huge difference. Some really interesting studies done on this. I'm now going to be reading Blink - the power of thinking without thinking. Looking forward to it.

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

 It was great to be able to drop into Victoria University's mini webinars during the week. I enjoyed the little snippets and have been using some of the phrases each day when I can. I enjoyed the extra te reo on TV - having subtitles was great, the more we see and hear Te Reo Māori the better. I do wonder why we don't do this all the time - it should be more than just a week to highlight what we all should be doing every day.

So that's me for the moment, lots of changes and lots of learning. Loving it.

Genealogy - Eason website

You may have read my previous blog on my addiction. I think I have finally gone overboard on this addiction! Over the years I have been collecting a number of different Eason trees in the search for my own line. They have been all sitting in a database, with some in trees and some just individuals with no connections as yet.
In searching for yet another line, I came across the Guild of One-Name Studies. I searched for Eason. None there, just a couple of marriages into other families. I dismissed it at the time, but it got me thinking...
I had decided a while ago to finally put all the information I had online. I needed to check this with others who have done a large amount of research on my own tree as I wasn't sure if everyone would be keen to share or not. After meeting with a couple of them while I was in England this year, I decided to go ahead with the website. Lots of research then - how do I host it, what do I use that is best for a genealogical website, lots of questions. This led me back to the Guild which hosts websites for their studies and after a bit more research I joined up.
It's been a busy few months! I have put a website together, learnt a lot about the TNG software that runs the site, and I have been learning more HTML (this is an awesome help site) so I can make it look how I want it to look - that's still a work in progress. The software is great, it makes it super easy to load a GEDCOM from my Legacy software (jargon for all my data) and it has a lot of different templates to use if you want to just get something up quickly.
So I have been trawling through parish records, census documents and Army records, finding lots of Eason families that I have managed to link together in most cases. A few good stories and lots of questions later I have my Eason Genealogy website up and running, my Facebook page to go with it, and a challenge now to find all the Easons I can from all over the world.
If you know anyone with the surname Eason, please head them my way!! I am really keen to get as many lines as I can onto the website.
I sure have plenty to do in my spare time.

Genealogy - my addiction

I have always had an interest in genealogy. When I was a teenager I went to England and met some relatives I had never seen or really heard of before. One of them, my Great Uncle on my mother's side, had an amazing family tree that went back to one of our relatives signing the Magna Carta. He wrote me a copy of my direct line, gave me a picture of our family crest (which I still have) and I was hooked. We were lucky that one of that side of the family was an historian and did this for a job. He had done so much research on the Sagar line that there was little left to do. On my father's side however, there was only a small amount done, by one of the groups that you pay to look into your tree (some of which I found later was incorrect). This meant the Eason line was ripe for the picking.
Some background:
My father, Denis William Eason (born 1930 in Middlesbrough, England) came out to New Zealand on the ship "Mataroa" in 1956. He worked as a General Practitioner in the small town of Owaka in South Otago. He married my mother there in 1957 and then moved to Darfield, Canterbury in 1958 which is where I was born.
There were a lot of Easons in the Otago area that weren't related as far as we knew. Dad and I did a lot of work in the 1970s and 1980s getting a basic tree together and working our way back to Kent, England. Over the years he and I tag teamed the research as one or other of us had time and we were continually calling each other with the "guess what I found" phone calls. Often we discussed possibilities and maybes and both kept good records that we could go back to and share.

I spent a lot of time researching my husband's side of the family over the last 10 years, doing the work on a large tree for the McLachlan clan in New Zealand, and then helping run the McLachlan Reunion in 2010. I really enjoyed the puzzles and the stories and found myself immersed again in genealogy.
After Dad's death in 2015, I took over the reins again and started working through the large amount of files and paperwork he had amassed over the years. I decided to put all of the trees and information into one file using Legacy which has been fantastic. It has enabled me to find links and not have to keep going back over things I had seen before. I also put all of the information into a Google Drive that I could share with my relatives. This includes photos, all the certificates and research documents I have found. It keeps it in one place and also has it shared with other people I trust so it's not lost when I'm not around anymore.
One of the papers I found while doing this was a booklet from the Eason family reunion held in Owaka in 1977. This had given us a large number of the New Zealand Easons but as yet, no link to anyone we had in England. I'll come back to this.
The large majority of our family comes from Kent, England and so I decided to put every census of Eason I could find into the file. This ensured I had all the census data for those I knew were connected, but also gave me some families that I still needed to put together. I found a family with Matthew Eason b1788 in Whaplode, Lincolnshire, but his family were all born in Kent and he died in Hildenbrough, Tonbridge, Kent (this link takes you to a really useful wiki for research) in 1874. I couldn't make the connection with any other Eason family in Kent so I went looking back at his family in Whaplode. What a lot of them there were! I ended up with a tree of about 150 people in no time.
Dad had made contact with a lot of people interested in the Eason family name over the years. One was from the USA and after looking through his files and finding one she had given him, I found that she was connected to this family from Whaplode. I added her tree in and ended up with a few hundred in that line. I have written to her (snail mail) and hope the address is still current, as I want to connect her with all the research I have done. I hope she has email now, as it's a big file to print!
After a lot of online research I went back to the papers Dad had and found the copy of the New Zealand Easons again. Lo and behold I recognised the names at the top of the page: Thomas Henry Eason married Jane Martin. I did a quick check and sure enough, there they were. Thomas Henry Eason b1825 Whaplode, Linconlnshire and Jane Wheeler Martin b 1825 Lincolnshire. Very exciting moment. This joined 2 large trees together and now it has over 1300 people in it.
So, although my Dad was an Eason in Owaka, and I have a tree full of New Zealand Easons, many of whom were born in Owaka, we are still not connected. I'm still working on getting those Lincolnshire and Kent Easons joined together and each day I do more, both trees get bigger. There are over 5000 in my file now and one day I hope they will join up.
For anyone vaguely interested in genealogy I say go for it! There are so many online links now that can help with your search (many are free) that it is a lot easier than ordering, then scrolling through, microfiche which I did for years - although some parishes you still need to do this for. You soon learn the sites that are helpful and it's a great puzzle to keep you thinking. Don't forget to check all sources, I have found many trees online that are incorrect, so take the information, then check it and double check it.
I'm an addict. Love it.