52 Ancestors 2026 Week 27 - A Record I Read Differently Now
The Birdham Twins of 1788 As another blogger wrote, in the early days of our genealogy journeys we tend to save any record that appears to back up a tree entry and then move swiftly on. I was exactly the same. If a baptism matched a name, or a burial matched a date, I happily clicked save and carried on climbing the branches. It’s only with time — and perhaps a little wisdom earned through years of research — that you realise how much richness sits quietly between the lines of those early records. When I began revisiting the documents I had collected decades ago, looking at them with older and more experienced eyes, I found a wealth of detail I had completely overlooked the first time around. One such document is the Birdham parish register for 1788 , a simple page of baptisms and burials. I must have saved it years ago because it contained entries for my 5× great‑grandparents James French (1764–1829) and Sarah Chandler (1763–1821) children Joseph and Fanny. Back then, I saw their na...
