Richard Smith wrote: > Has anyone encountered the names Isaac and John being used > interchangeably? I'm trying to untangle the Kemish family of > Michelmersh, Hants in the late 17th / early 18th century, and a lot of > things would slot neatly into place if the Isaac who appears in the > parish registers in the 1680s was the same man as the John who appears > in the 1670s and 1690s. But I've heard heard of them being treated as a > single name before. Has anyone else? > > Richard The recference to the "Commonwealth Gap" in replies interested me. What records existed before the Commonwealth? From here in Oz, I think that the furthest back I have been able to go is 1700. Jacobus was James. Replies to the list, please. Doug. -- Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is your doxy. - Wm Warburton, 18th c. Bishop of Gloucester.

On Saturday, 14 November 2015 01:01:07 UTC, Doug Laidlaw wrote: > > The recference to the "Commonwealth Gap" in replies interested me. What > records existed before the Commonwealth? From here in Oz, I think that the > furthest back I have been able to go is 1700. > There's quite a wide range of record. What's available, though, will depend on location; and what's useful will depend on family status (the more settled and prosperous a family is, obviously, the easier it becomes to research). For instance, in the parish of my main interest, the BMD registers go back to 1581. Next door, back to the 1540s. Next door, only from the 1690s. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to establish detailed 17th century pedigrees with absolutely no BMDs. The other big source of information (at least for the yeoman families that I look at) is probate. Here, I'm blessed, as inventories (which are wonderful data mines) in my area have largely survived. The same problem exists with the third great source, manorial records. If you've got them, great - bit of a downer if you haven't. There's the Protestation Return of 1641/2. Tax records. Land records (like Feet of Fines). Legal cases in Chancery (disputes between a lord and his tenants might give you a huge list of names). There are many very informative family archives where indentures, admittances, surrenders, etc. have survived. So there's plenty there - increasingly easy to search with Discovery and the county search engines. But ... and it's a big but ... I think that the researcher has to change methodology for pre-1700, much like the adjustment from GRO/Census to PR/BT. If you want to make progress on one family, then you have to spend much more time looking at other families (both potential relatives and neighbours) for clues than you would in the 18th century (with a much more complete set of BMDs). Chris