Sunday, May 29, 2011

Ancestry.com and my Armstrongs

An email from Ancestry.com sent me off on an unexpected online journey today. One little "Possible Record Matches" email and a couple of shaking leaves inspired me to clean up the Armstrong branch of my tree.

Years ago when I first started researching my genealogy, I contacted a distant Armstrong cousin who shared her Armstrong/Hudspith Family Tree with me, but made me promise not to put it on the Internet. I kept this promise, but in doing so, I neglected that branch almost completely. All these years later, with the help of my Ancestry World Edition, I have discovered that much of that tree was incorrect/incomplete anyway.

Even with the multitude of international records at my fingertips, I am still brickwalled with my third great grandfather Thomas Armstrong. He was reportedly born 1 Feb 1801 in Brampton, Cumberland, married Dorothy Hudspith in 1829 and then moved to Canada. I attempted to wade through all of the many Armstrong families in England, but was soon overwhelmed. I had better luck finding him later in life in the Canadian censuses and I was also able to follow many of his children and their descendants forward in time. After a couple of hours, my Armstrong branch (at least below Thomas) was pleasingly full and healthy.

Kudos to Ancestry.com for pointing out the error in my ways, but they better not do it very often or I won't get anything else done!

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