Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Seeking More Opinions/Advice

As long as I'm posing dilemmas and looking for advice, here's another one for you.

I've taken my family history back as far as the written records go. Take for instance the line I'm working on now. The records in this village began in 1794 for baptisms/births, marriages, and deaths. These early records are very brief and in the case of a death will only give the name of the person (no designation as daughter of or wife of), the name of the village, their house number and their age. For a marriage they will give the full name of the groom and first name of the bride, their ages, the house number of the groom, and the names of their witnesses. Again, there are no references to them being the son of or daughter of anyone. It isn't until about 1820 that they begin to give the name of the bride's father and later still before they give the name of the groom's father.

So once I bumped into "the end of time" (OK, the end of records) I'm left with individuals who lived in the same house and had the same surname but I don't know their relationship with the others living in the house. In other words, I don't know how to attach them to the family tree. I think it's pretty safe to assume that if they lived in the same house and had the same surname they are probably related. But do I just hazard a guess from their age or leave these individuals off the family tree because I don't have a document that actually references their relationship to anyone else?

What would you do?