Genealogy of Easterbrook families living in the British Isles. There is a bias towards the latter half of the 19th century as this period has the most records easily available for research.
Genealogy of a few families that are connected to an Easterbrook family by marriage.
Easterbrook families living outside the British Isles. The information is provided by other researchers and is usually only included if the research has established a link back to the British Isles.
Variations on the Easterbrook name such as Eastabrook and Easterbrooke. These are mostly included only where different branches of the same family have settled on different spellings.

This site and the research it covers is a work-in-progress. It does not cover all Easterbrook families and contains many gaps. Extracting information from the original records and other sources takes considerable time and effort so the information grows slowly. I update the site whenever I make significant progress. In particular Devon is poorly covered but this is the subject of current research.

Family Tree

The Family Tree diagrams and reports are generated from my GeneWeb database.

The clickable symbols and notation used are:

	View the family descendant tree as a diagram. This will open in a new window (unless you already are viewing a tree, in which case it will open in the tree window). This often contains more generations than the tree shown on the main page.
	View the family descendant tree as a report. More detailed than the tree view but less easy to view.
	Download the GEDCOM file for this family.
William EASTERBROOK married to Eliza SMITH o John Thomas	Surnames are in capitals and are omitted for descendants taking the same surname. Married women are always referred to by their birth name. In this example, Thomas is son John's middle name (not capitalised) and his surname is EASTERBROOK (implicitly from his father).
Sarah ? Sarah ?? ? SMITH ? ? N K	A ? for a surname means it is not yet known, usually a married woman where all source documents use her married name. ?? means that the name is also currently unknown, but other information is known. ? for a first name means a woman has changed her name on marriage but I cannot find any details of the husband. ? ? is an unknown spouse that further research may name. N K is Not Known, such as the father for an illegitimate birth when missing from the birth certificate (these are unlikely to ever be resolved).
30 July 1827 September 1827 1827 ca1827	Full dates are exact, normally use the Gregorian Calendar, and have been obtained from certificates or similar sources. Dates with only months are estimated, often from the BMD index, and therefore may be 3 or more months out. Just a year may be incorrect by a year or two. ca means the date is uncertain by more than a year or two. See below for more information on dates.
&1856 +1856 /1856	& denotes the marriage date. + indicates date of death / denotes before.
17	This is a reference to the list of families

Even trees of only 2 or 3 generations can be too wide for a normal computer screen. The trees embedded in the main pages use a smaller font to minimise the amount of horizontal scrolling required. If these are too small, the icon can be clicked to see the full tree in another window, or the text size can be changed by:

Internet Explorer: Choose View->Text Size from the menu bar.
Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox: Use Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to increase and decrease the text size.
Opera: Use the + and - keys to increase and decrease the size (the keys on the numeric pad are the easiest to use for this).

Dates and Calendars

The majority of dates on this site refer to an event after 1752 in Britain or its colonies, and therefore uses the same method of recording dates as we do today using the Gregorian calendar. Prior to about 1920, the calendars varied by country and therefore a date in one country may not be the same date in another. There is a useful article at GenFair that describes the complication of dates before 1920, and particularly how dates in Britain and its colonies should be recorded prior to 1752. For individuals born in Britain, this site uses the Julian calendar up to 1751 and the Gregorian calendar from 1752.

Parish records pose even more of a problem as they weren't always recorded using the Gregorian or Julian calendars or in English. There is a useful description of the various forms at RootsWeb.

Many dates are derived from original documents and are potentially inaccurate:

Many birth dates are derived from census forms. Generally only children's ages can be relied on as many adults in the 19th century didn't record the passing of birthdays as we do today. Often an individual seems to get younger on successive census forms! The census only records the age at last birthday and as the censuses are generally taken 3 months into the year, any figure given could fit into 2 calendar years.
The majority of documents in the 19th century and earlier are handwritten, many older ones have deteriated badly, and some have been marked over (such as tallying the census), often making the reading of some dates and ages difficult. Where they are difficult to read often a guess of what is written is made.
Dates of death derived from the census (e.g. /1901 meaning before 1901) are derived from the spouse giving their married status as Widow or Widower. Unfortunately there are many cases that this is incorrect: Women abandoned by their husbands adopted widow status for several reasons. When the spouse was not at home on census night is was easier to give widow(er) than try and explain the absence, or the enumerator assumed it rather than enquire too deeply. Divorce was effectivily not available and Widow(er) status was often a workable substitute when one spouse moved away from the area.
Prior to civil registration (1837 in England and Wales) births were rarely recorded, but most baptisms were - in Parish Records. In most cases baptism took place shortly after birth so the year of baptism is the same as the year of birth. However, sometimes baptisms took place years later so there is always an element of doubt.

Copyright

All the information here is the result of original research and is copyright. This means you may not use it, copy it, or re-publish it in whole or part without permission.

The rationale behind this is to prevent the results of my research, and that of the other researchers, being stolen, misused, or used for commercial purposes. As long as you ask me first, I am unlikely to withhold permission for non-commercial use. By its nature the information presented may be incomplete or inaccurate and as I uncover new sources I update the site to reflect the new information - if you have a copy it will not reflect these updates and so will become out-of-date.

It is my intention in the future to move this work to a Creative Commons [cc] type of rights ownership. Before I can do this I need to determine the type of licence and the interaction with the EU Data Protection laws, the copyright of the source material, and any other legal issues with family trees. I have little legal knowledge so this may take some time.

Easterbrook Family History Last Updated: Site 2008-07-22 Page 2008-01-28