Trying a different approach to genealogy
After running into the well known draught of genealogical records, and spending many hours searching for scraps, it's time to try different approaches to do research.
After running into the well known draught of genealogical records, for England this is usually associated with the time period predating the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836 that led to creation of the General Register Office for England and Wales, the research on my patrilineal ancestry of the Upwell Leavis branch got stuck at 15 October 1792, when William Leavis, born about 1774, marries Ann Whinn in Upwell, Norfolk, England.
Are there any known earlier genealogical records which can be associated with William? Yes, possibly and even most probably (more about that in later posts), but not of enough quantity and/or substance to meet the standard to be ‘certain’ about who the ancestors of William were.
Having been stuck on this brick wall for some years now, and having spend many hours searching for scraps in all databases with relevant genealogical records that are easily accessible online, without much results, I came up a different search strategy:
Prior to literacy the way surnames were spelled depended on what the person producing the genealogical record thought was the best fit - leading to a great variety of ways to spell a surname. Looking at homophones for Leavis in the GRO records, we can find Leaviss, Levis, Levice, Lavis and so on. Even taking into account all homophones, it was clear that this surname and its variants are quite rare. As a research project, I then decided to take a holistic look at all the GRO records for people with the surname Leavis or any homophone, and tried to build their family trees. After spending some time on this, I noticed that there were quite a few seemingly distinct Levis/Leavis/Leaviss family lines in England and Wales. Efforts to trace back these lines results in getting stuck in te same pre-GRO period as is the case for my Upwell Leavis branch.
Since Levis/Leavis/Leaviss is a relatively rare family name, and many lines can to traced back to Leicestershire and surrounding counties, I postulated that these seemingly distinct families are highly likely to be related to each other. If it were possible to break through the pre-GRO record draught that leads to the inadvertent brick wall in each of these lines, these supposed links could be proven to exist (or not exist).
The reasons for starting this Levis Genealogy blog are related to two distinct developments in the recent past give me hope to break through my 1792 Leavis brick wall, as well as any other Levis/Leavis/Leaviss brick wall:
mass-adoption of the world wide web makes it possible to collaborate with others on the same research at a scale never imagined possible before the invention of the internet. The idea is that the concerted effort of many people researching Levis/Leavis/Leaviss genealogy will lead to greater chances of finding records, coming up with hypotheses that explain these records or lack thereof, and advancing on our family history research.
over-the-counter DNA tests that examine Y-DNA make it possible to identify the degree of relatedness of different people bearing the same surname or its homophones. Since Y-DNA is passed on relatively unchanged from father to son, it makes it the ideal candidate to find out if a Levis/Leavis/Leaviss line shares the same founding father as another seemingly different line, or if they are in fact distinct from each other.
Subsequent posts of this blog will detail progress made with the Levis genealogy research, as well as anecdotes concerning this research.