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....
