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New Strategy

 

Photo by Paul Marlow on Unsplash

When you don’t know where to look — you look everywhere. 

My Hannah could be from anywhere. While there’s a good chance she was from Warwickshire or its neighbour counties, it’s not certain. With no concrete evidence which branch of the Genders tree she belongs to, I have decided to explore them all. I have registered the name ‘Genders’ and its variants as a study with the Guild of One Name Studies.

What this means is I am documenting all instances of the name Genders in all possible records: vital records, censuses, immigration records, occupation, military, criminal etc etc. Basically a surname study that tracks and reconstructs all families that ever used the name Genders. This may seem like overkill, after all, my ancestors are only a tiny percentage of everyone in the Genders tree. Well yes, but…

Searching for Hannah can feel highly unproductive at times. It’s like picking a river at random and casting a rod in the hope that one specific fish you are after might be there. Without clues to follow the search can be unstructured. I don’t intend to stop searching for Hannah, but the search would be much more motivating if it produced something useful and interesting, regardless of whether I find her. A one name study allows me to comb through all possible sources, regardless of location, and the resulting database can provide some fascinating insights into the lives, movements, and origins of this very interesting surname. It will also allow me to reconstruct the trees of all the different families, which a) might help me find Hannah, and b) might help other family historians with an interest in this surname.

I have begun with the records held by the GRO, the earliest dating from 1837 when civil registration began. So far I have catalogued all the births up to 1912 and have over 1700 entries in my spreadsheet. Even without holding a magnifying glass to the individuals listed yet, the data is showing obvious patterns. The main centres for this surname are Walsall, Tamworth, Aston, and Birmingham, but there are also consistent appearances in Bourne, Lincolnshire, and also down south. Approaching the twentieth century, the name becomes more prevalent in the East Midlands. I am interested to know where it appears next. 

Now obviously this is a long-term project, but this doesn’t faze me. I’ve already invested years into searching for Hannah. I was going to invest more years anyway. I will establish a website for the study and publish articles relating to my more general Genders research there. It will also be where I upload my spreadsheet data and, eventually, the reconstructed trees. Anything that looks like a lead or clue to Hannah’s identity will be shared here as usual. 

So, a new project. A slightly daunting one, but exciting too. 

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