Thread: The culmination of a lot of research

Originally Posted by Theoman

Teach me your research methods shavingwankenobi!

I usually start with one of these two websites

Sheffield Records Online - 1841,1851,1861 census, directories, probate, burials, cutlers, poll book etc
(You'll need to apply for an account to use the data menu, but it's free and easy)

The Sheffield Indexers - Welcome to the original Sheffield Indexers website providing full online searchable indexes to 1841 Sheffield Census Records, Cemetery Records, Burial Records, Parish Records, School Admission Records, Institutions, Workhouse

While both of those have searchable indexes of the Cutler's Company's apprentices, I find it's sometimes best to look it up in Volume II of Leader's History and see if there's more information, though his notations are a little opaque until you get used to them.

https://play.google.com/books/reader...ver&pg=GBS.PP1

(You can search that for surnames)

I often just use general Google Books searches on things.

When those fail, and I need more detailed information, or more 'civic' type stuff, I have an international subscription to Ancestry.com.

That, unfortunately, is pricey, but I haven't found any substitute.

For more narrative history, I rely on newspaper searches.

American newspapers I get through:

https://www.genealogybank.com/

English newspapers from

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

(both of these are subscription services, but they're not nearly as expensive as Ancestry).

For more specialized stuff, like patents or specific Sheffield cutler's marks, I plead mercy on the research librarians at the appropriate institutions.

Research librarians are your best, best friends. They can turn up amazing things.

The final thing I use is... Well, having used all that stuff for years and just generally gotten a picture in my head of how things worked.

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

I've been gathering the info on this one for the better part of six years.

Obviously, it's not a constant thing, but I keep looking semi-regularly, and as old records get scanned and added to searchable databases, I manage to turn up more stuff.

That said, the best lead I got on this one was actually from 782sirbrian who trekked out to Ecclesfield, found the Hives family monument and sent me pictures. Without that, I was guessing about many details of Jane's marriage to Joseph Hives.

Online records showed that they'd had three children, one of whom died at about six months old -- but the headstone shows they all died very young.

It's really hard to say what happened there other than "the 19th century". Maybe disease. Maybe a handful of recessive genes that got together and had a terrible party. Maybe murder. Maybe just lousy sanitation and too much silica dust from the damn grinding wheels. Whatever it was, Jane did not have any children when she married Robert Wade.

The one bit in what I've been able to uncover which I still don't feel like I have a good handle on is the fact that Jane and Robert Wade signed a marriage bann in the same month that Joseph Hives died. I don't have a date more precise for his death than July. The bann with Robert wade was signed July 24th, so within weeks or even days of Joseph's death.

A bann, for those who don't know, is an old timey tradition of effectively formalized engagement. Jane and Robert didn't actually marry until a year later, which if memory serves was the expected period of mourning at the time, but it I have been unable to come up with arguments that make their engagement not be a little weird.

Well, Good Ole Joseph Hives knew that he was dying and Robert Wade was a friend of the family and in fact was his best friend. Not wanting his wife to be alone and the razor business to go under he blessed the union of his wife to his best friend Robert. So he could die in peace knowing she and the family business would continue and be taken care of they engaged just before his death. That may not be fact but, in my mind, it makes the union a little "less weird". I guess.

Originally Posted by Steel

Well, Good Ole Joseph Hives knew that he was dying and Robert Wade was a friend of the family and in fact was his best friend. Not wanting his wife to be alone and the razor business to go under he blessed the union of his wife to his best friend Robert. So he could die in peace knowing she and the family business would continue and be taken care of they engaged just before his death. That may not be fact but, in my mind, it makes the union a little "less weird". I guess.

You are a romantic soul.

Originally Posted by Steel

Well, Good Ole Joseph Hives knew that he was dying and Robert Wade was a friend of the family and in fact was his best friend. Not wanting his wife to be alone and the razor business to go under he blessed the union of his wife to his best friend Robert. So he could die in peace knowing she and the family business would continue and be taken care of they engaged just before his death. That may not be fact but, in my mind, it makes the union a little "less weird". I guess.

That was my operating theory for a good long while. Then I found he'd died intestate. If he had time to make arrangements with Robert Wade, he almost certainly would've had time for a rudimentary will.

It doesn't completely rule it out, but makes it pretty unlikely.

That said, it is my favorite theory. Definitely better than the one where she murdered both her husbands and some of her kids.

Well, I like the theory that they'd had a wife sale better, but that's completely ruled out after talking to one of the main scholars working on that area of history. The last wife sale in Sheffield was in 1803, so it almost certainly was not them.