Firstly, I was really proud to receive an invitation to include the GeneaBloggers badge on my blog site. It is nice to have this recognition as part of the Genealogy Do Over.

Because it is well overdue to do so and because it is preparation for DNA next week here is my Charles Baulch Family Tree created about four years ago. I include it here for the benefit of our Baulch family and because my sister Kathy suggested that I should.

It is so overdue. In 1954 when Victor Hallett asked his Baulch family for information he promised to share his results. Unfortunately, the task took a little longer than he expected and has only been put together with the help of many other members of the Baulch family. In particular a lot of the work has been done by my sister Kathy Baulch.

With many of us now five generation or more descendants of Charles Baulch and Ann Biddlecombe some of our relationships are more distant than can be found with any certainty using an autosomal test. Indeed why undertake an autosomal test when we already have a family tree? Firstly, it is a nice conformation that the autosomal test does provide valid results. Secondly, my family tree does contain more family than just Baulchs believe it or not.

I can’t emphasise enough the necessity to check sources and information should you use our tree.

My tree contains information I’ve not necessarily checked in recent years so may contain errors. Indeed, two particular errors are shared with the 326 Baulch family trees I found on Ancestry.com this evening for Charles Baulch and Ann Biddlecombe who married in Muchelney, Somerset in 1799.

The errors related to this Charles Baulch at the top of the tree. Certainly there was a Charles Baulch, the son Roger and Betsey Baulch baptised in Muchelney, Somerset on 25 January 1767 and as advised by the Somerset Record Office to a family member many, many years ago. However, two entries further down in the parish register the burial of a Charles Baulch is recorded on 8 March 1767. The infant Charles?

We found no burial for Charles Baulch in the civil records. So, as a marker for this research, it was recorded that Charles Baulch died BEFORE 1837. But no burial for Charles has been found in the Pitney parish registers either. However, there are two entries in the Pitney churchwarden records that suggest that Charles may have died about 1816 – a period when no burials at all were recorded in Pitney.

I haven’t altogether dismissed the notion that our Charles Baulch was a son of Roger Baulch. Roger had a son Henry and a Henry Baulch was a witness to the marriage of Charles Baulch and Ann Biddlecombe. Coincidence?

Just because I haven’t found the information yet doesn’t mean that it isn’t there to be found. There are still registers for parishes close to Pitney and Muchelney for which we have found no online indexes – including FreeREG, and the Somerset Online Parish Clerk indexes – so there is still quite a deal of sources to be searched.