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Easterbrook Name

Devon

West Country (excl.Devon)

South East England

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About

• 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. Currently the majority of Easterbrook families recorded in public records between 1837 and 1939 are documented here.
• Easterbrook families living outside the British Isles. This is currently sparse especially for countries with a large number of families. Apart from Canada (which is currently being analysed), most records from other countries have been researched because they link back to the British Isles.
• Genealogy of a few families that are connected to an Easterbrook family by marriage.
• Variations on the Easterbrook name such as Eastabrook and Esterbrook. These are mostly included only where different branches of the same family have settled on different spellings.

Family Tree

The clickable symbols and notation used in the family trees and transcriptions are:

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 x ? SMITH ? ? N K	A ? ?? or x for a name means it is not yet known such a married woman where all source documents use her married name. ? ? 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).
Jane SMITH (JONES) Elizabeth ? (TOLCHARD)	Surnames are those recorded at birth, alternative names such as from a previous marriage are shown in parenthesis. Jane was SMITH at birth but was previously married to JONES. Elizabeth's birth surname cannot be found but she has been recorded as TOLCHARD, probably from a previous marriage.
30 July 1827 30/07/1827 1827/07/30 September 1827 1827 ca1827	Full dates are exact using the Gregorian Calendar except where indicated, and have been obtained from certificates or similar sources. Common form or international notation is used (the mixed order notation common in North America is not used). 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.
25 March 1744 (Julian) 1751 25.Sep 1750/1 25.Jan 1750? 25.Sep	Julian Dates in the family trees are explicitly noted and are 1st January based due to limitions of the Geneweb database. Julian dates from church records are indicated by italics. Dates between 1st January and 24th March use one of the following forms: The notation 1750/1 means the year was 1750 for the actual 25th March start but 1751 if a 1st January method is used. A ? indicates a transcription only recorded one year but it is not clear if a 25th March or 1st January method was used.
&1856 +1856 /1856	& denotes the marriage date. + indicates date of death / denotes before.
1856Q1 MarQ1856 JanFebMar 1856	Civil registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths in England and Wales prior to 1984 were recorded by Quarter. This indicates the quarter the event was registered. Marriages were nearly always registered in the quarter the event occured, but births and deaths are registered later but rarely later than the next quarter. As BMD records have been obtained from a number of difference sources, several different notations are used.
family 17	This is a reference to the list of families. Note that the number is allocated automatically when the data is extracted from the database and therefore may change when the site is updated.
base child	Illegitimate child. (Base child is the term used in the parish records).
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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 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

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 for genealogical purposes at RootsWeb and a description of the Gregorian Calendar including how and when it was adopted in Wikipedia.

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

• Many birth years 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! Most censuses only records the age at last birthday and as the censuses are generally taken 3-6 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 not an option for most couples 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 if the baptism record does not record the birth.

Copyright

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.