Not Trusting Trees -or- Make Sure You Read the Records!

When I'm stuck researching a family line using Ancestry I will often turn to the family trees created by others. Before you get in an uproar over how suspect they may be, take a moment to hear me out. I'm generally not looking at those user contributed trees for answers but instead I'm mining them for possible clues. I approach everything in those trees using my genealogy research mantra of "Trust no one, verify everything, and even if it is written in stone it might be wrong."

So let's take a look at the marriage of Charles Golding and Susanna. This is from a branch of a tree that I'm exploring for a friend and sort of a dead end on this branch for me. I wanted to learn what the maiden surname is for Susanna.

First I need to take a step back and start with their daughter. Initially all I had was the name Louisa Colston/Coulston Golding. According to the family chart of the Reuben Charles Short found in the family bible she was born 25 Aug 1802 and died 4 Sep 1873. Now blindly trusting family bibles can be fraught with challenges. However, I've been able to corroborate the information recorded on that family chart with parish and civil records so I'm trusting that document as much as I would any ecclesiastical or government generated record.

Here is her 1802 baptism record from Upper Maudlin Street church in Bristol, England, a Moravian church which means this is a nonconformist church, a non-Church of England church.

"England & Wales Non-Conformist Births And Baptisms," database and images, Findmypast, Findmypast (www.findmypast.com : accessed 7 Sep 2020), Louisa Colston Golding, born 25 Aug 1802, baptized 12 Sep 1802; citing The National Archives (Kew, Surrey), RG/3/1361B; Upper Maudlin Street (Moravian): Births, Baptisms and Burials.

In the baptism record the minister was kind enough to state where and when Louisa was born. It is really nice that the date of her birth matches what is recorded in the family chart. in the baptism record Louisa is recorded as the daughter of Charles and Susanna Golding. Unfortunately they don't state her mother's maiden surname.

As an aside, the place of her birth, Kingswood led me down some interesting paths as I tried to place it into a county. Some sites had it in Gloucestershire, others in Wiltshire, and one in both. That had me scratching my head. So I turned to GENUKI to see what it stated. The reference on that site for Kingswood in Wiltshire stated, "... Previous to 1844 it formed part of the county of Wilts, but is now annexed to Gloucester."¹ Prior to 1844 Kingswood, Wiltshire was an enclave completely surrounded by Gloucestershire. This means that when Louisa was baptized she was born in Kingswood, Wiltshire, England and not Kingswood, Gloucestershire, England. It is a minor but important distinction when one strives to record where an event took place at the time.

I now know the names of her parents, Charles and Susanna, along with the general location where she resided and the religious following of her parents. This helps quite a bit when it comes to researching in parish records. Of course, this led me down another path where I needed to learn more about the Moravian church in England and how it affected finding records. The one important item to note is that between 1754 and 1837 only Church of England marriages had been legal (Quakers were exempt from this law)². This means that I should probably not limit myself to Nonconformist records when looking for a marriage between the parents of Louisa.

This is where the various user contributed family trees on Ancestry come into play. Practically all of the trees have her parents as Charles Golding and Susanna Coulston or Colston Here is an example of one of the family tree profile hints for Louisa.

Screen capture of an Ancestry family tree profile hint for Louisa Coulston Golding (1802-1873).

The profile has a number of sources and records attached to it. However, generally when I see a profile hint on Ancestry with one more source than the number of records that's a good indicator that other family trees many have been used as sources. That is exactly what has happened here.

Since I've not found the maiden name of Susanna recorded in the documents I had come across I wanted to find out where these Ancestry members got their information. So I looked at each tree hint for Louisa and followed their tree to her mother, Susanna. For the associated sources for Susanna's name they all came from baptism registers and only had her first name mentioned. However, there was a marriage registration between Charles and Susanna that everyone pointed to. Even better, the source had an image connected to it. That's always a win!

"Bristol, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935," database and images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 Sep 2020), Charles Golding and Susanna Golding, married 9 Oct 1793; citing Bristol Archives; Bristol, England; Bristol Church of England Parish Registers; Reference: P/B/R/3/c; Parish of St. Mary, Bitton. 

Only one little itsy bitsy problem. That record doesn't state Coulston or Colston but Golding!

One Ancestry tree profile even commented on that recorded fact with the statement:

"Susanna's name on Marriage Record is listed as Susanna Golding. Assuming since Louisa was her only daughter and she gave her the middle name of Coulston that that [sic] could be her maiden name."

They read the evidence but just didn't believe their own eyes and came up with an explanation of their own.

It just wasn't in the recording of the names of the parties but in the place where the parties signed their name. Maybe she couldn't write so the priest made the same mistake twice. This is where looking at the whole document is important since the next marriage, that between John Bush and Ruth Gunning, for the husband the signature is "The mark of  + John Bush" and the next marriage record one after that has "The mark of X Ann Bryant". So it appears that Susanna could write her own name and knew what it was.

Since the marriage was performed after the Banns of Marriage were read I searched for the record of banns. Maybe they would clarify the matter and give a different surname for Susanna. I got lucky and found them relatively quickly in the same collection.

"Bristol, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935," database and images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 Sep 2020), Charles Golding and Susanna Golding, banns read 15, 22, 29 Sep 1793; citing Bristol Archives; Bristol, England; Bristol Church of England Parish Registers; Reference: P/B/R/3/c; Parish of St. Mary, Bitton.

Even that record had her surname as Golding. In both the marriage and banns records it is stated that she is a spinster. So Golding would appear to be her maiden surname.

But is this the right Charles and Susanna? I think so. Bitton is in the same neck of the woods as Kingswood, only about 3.8 miles apart so it is possible. According to Wikipedia (yes, taken with a grain of salt), until the early 19th century there was no Church of England church in Kingswood and they were served by the parish in Bitton. Also, remember that little detail about nonconformist marriages being not legal? St. Mary's in Bitton is a Church of England parish so it would make sense to get married there to be legal in the eyes of the government.

A further search of the nonconformist baptisms, using both Findmypast and Ancestry, revealed a number of children born in Kingswood to a Charles and Susan/Susanna/Susannah Golding:

1. Jeremiah, 1794-1803
2. Edward, 1796-
3. Daniel, 1797-
4. Philip, 1799-
5. Ebenezer, 1801-
6. Louisa Colston/Coulston, 1802-1873
7. Jeremiah, 1804-
8. Ephraim, 1807-1812

Yes, there are two Jeremiahs. The first was born just over a year after Charles and Susanna were married but died as a young child. I haven't gone down the branches of the various siblings of Louisa but in just glancing at the records there are some neat finds including that of Ebenezer Golding, boot and shoe maker, being admitted to the Freedom of the City of London on 8 Oct 1835 at Guildhall.

Just wait though, there is more to mess people's trees up when documenting this family group...

To add to the confusion in the records and what is recorded in various trees, I had found the baptisms recorded under "RG4: Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths ˃ Buckinghamshire ˃ Primitive Methodist ˃ Piece 1361A: Wooburn Green (Primitive Methodist), 1832-1836" in the "England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1970" collection on Ancestry. This didn't make sense to me since I expected it to be Somerset, Gloucestershire, or Wiltshire as the county. If one looks at the reference plate included with frame of the original microfilm you will see that the collection is actually RG4/1361B according to the Public Records Office reference number. To really mess things up, "RG4: Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths ˃ Somerset ˃ Moravian ˃ Piece 1361: Bristol, Upper Maudlin Street (Moravian), 1755-1837" is actually for the Primitive Methodist denomination in Wooburn Green. Big OOPS on Ancestry's part.

To wrap things up, and assuming that I have found the correct records, it would seem to me that the various trees on Ancestry are incorrect and Susanna's maiden surname is the same as her husband, that is, Golding.

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1. The National Gazetteer : a Topographical Dictionary of the British Islands Compiled from the Latest and Best Sources and Illustrated with a Complete County Atlas and Numerous Maps, vol. 2 (London, England : Virtue & Co, 1868), p. 477, entry for Kingswood; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org : accessed 21 Sep 2020). 

2. The National Archives research guide on Nonconformists.