Evidence - how does it help?

Let’s look at some more records to see if what else we can learn about Percy. The photo above is an extract from the 1939 England & Wales Register. It shows Percy’s date of birth and also for his wife, Amy and their daughter Molly. This photo below shows the enlistment oath he took on 9 th December, 1915, to become a soldier. Thousands of young men like him signed a similar document. Thousands never returned home. We are all lucky that Percy did. However, this document tells us much more and this is why researching family history is like being a detective. What have we discovered? the information is about Percy – his name is at the top. he lived at 29 Maclise Road, West Kensington. he was a British subject we can confirm his age he was a butcher he was married All from one piece of paper. This is called a source and like many sources it provides new information or confirms what we know or what we suspect. It’s what we suspect that drives the detective to find out more. It’s how the information about a person is gathered so we can fill in the form we saw earlier. What next? Do we start finding out more about his wife, Amy Kate Sanders? Well, this is where we have to make a decision. Do we explore every branch on the family tree or do we delve into the Massingham paternal line, the line of male, Massingham ancestors? Family researchers often build a massive family tree with as many relations as can be found. Lots of people, dates, places, events and of course source material. However, this is just data and doesn’t really look at the lives of our family members nor does the data explain why people were where they were and how they lived their lives. Our voyage will be along the parental Massingham line with occasional references to others when needed. Let’s have a quick look at Percy’s wife before we move on: