The Known Unknowns

The family history is remarkably complete. We explore here where it has been necessary to rely on the most probable narrative where certainty has been impossible

 

 

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This webpage is still to be written.

 

From science to story telling

Genealogy begins as a scientific enterprise. Whilst the first step in a genealogical journey begins by gathering stories from relatives, it quickly becomes necessary to build increasingly complicated family trees. The primary tools in that exercise are records of births, marriages and deaths, made possible by the start of parish records in the mid sixteenth century, and cross checking these with census records, which show how families relate together, and where they lived. I spent years on that exercise, following up on my father’s work, with the aspiration to compile a comprehensive genealogy and a full history of one family. Modern search resources, including the extraordinary power of the access to records provided by Ancestry and Find my Past, both of which I subscribe to, are essential to the exercise.

However the listing of names and how they relate to each other is only a first step. In themselves, family trees are not very interesting. What is more interesting is the stories of the individuals who make up those trees.

I have found the more interesting research begins when the family tree is complete, or as complete as it can be, and the time comes to turn to other records, like military records, medieval records of freemen or poachers, … The journey then becomes even more interesting by turning to newspaper articles … Then … exploration of the history of the places where groups of the family lived …

Rory Stewart’s 2024 podcast on BBC Sounds, The History of Ignorance, advocates a recognition that there is as much value in ignorance, and imagination, in art, as in a scientific approach.

Genealogy becomes most interesting, and more useful, when it is a roadmap through history, and it can then become a source of inspiration and pattern, …

 

 

 

Standards of proof

In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld made his well known observation that as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

It becomes increasingly obvious in genealogical research that it is possible to find known facts from written records, but it is inevitable that no genealogist, nor historian, is able to tell an entire history with certainty.

Parish records from the sixteenth century allow many families to be assembled to a near complete family record from that time, though inevitably with gaps where records no longer exist. From the nineteenth century, census records provide the additional information which makes the exercise much easier, but census records are also not always complete. Where there is a record of an individuals birth, marriage, death or circumstances in a census year, it is possible to be pretty certain of that fact.

Even before the sixteenth century, the richness of medieval sources, means that significant elements of a family story can be synthesised with certainty.

Sometimes the known facts can be glued together with other facts, to build up the matrix of the family story.

As lawyer – levels of evidential proof

Standard of proof in criminal trials the highest – beyond reasonable doubt – near certainty – post c1550 parish records

Some gaps post c1550 and pre 1550 an assembly of medieval records – generally impossible to achieve certainty, but still possible to use intelligence and imaginations to achieve a lesser standard of proof, the civil standard of proof, on a balance of probabilities or more likely than not

Inevitably there are gaps in evidential record – possibly the realm of historical fiction to fill gaps by imagining the most likely story of the missing events, experiences, perceptions …

 

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