Why I still Use Spreadsheets — Part 2: Eliminating Wrong Records

When I began researching one of my great-great grandfathers, all I had was a name, Henry Lowe, and the occupation of tailor. I only had that information because my great-grandfather’s marriage registration showed the name and occupation of his father. I didn’t know my great-grandfather’s mother’s name and that wasn’t shown on the registration. And because my great-grandfather was in the military when he married and stationed at an army barracks, I didn’t even know where he grew up, so had no idea where to begin looking for his parents.

I had never been able to find my great-grandfather in a census with his parents. Based on his marriage record, he had been born in 1850 or 1851 in England, so he should have appeared in the 1861 and 1871 English censuses before he was married in 1875. But it turns out the name Henry Lowe was fairly common in the mid-1800s. With so many Henry Lowes and so little information, I couldn’t tell which was mine. So my initial research turned out to be a process of elimination.

And for this process, I used a spreadsheet. I looked up all the Henry Lowes who were in the English censuses from 1841 onward. Then I used a spreadsheet to record all the ones who were in the age range to be my great-grandfather’s father. Each Henry had a row with the year of the census, location, occupation and other family members in different columns. Once I had them all recorded, I tried to match each one through time using the available information. If I found one Henry in the same location in all the censuses, with some of the same family members and a natural age progression, I determined it was the same person. I used colour coding to identify each of the different Henrys and began the process of eliminating them as my great-great grandfather by researching them in more detail.

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