User:Stangermerrill1

= THE DISTANCE CRITERION IN FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH =

Depending on time period, topography, population mobility, etc., travel before the Industrial Revolution was slow and costly. People usually followed the easiest course and moved the shortest possible distance when purchasing property, establishing their trades and families, etc. For these reasons, distance is always an important consideration in family history research.

Understanding distance between recorded events such as christenings, marriages and burials helps us to understand the likelihood of relationships. For instance, if you know an ancestor's birthplace, and you discover a possible marriage for the parents, is the marriage actually feasible? How far was the marriage from the birthplace of the child(ren)? Or, if you have multiple marriage candidates, which are more plausible--those which occurred a few miles from your ancestral birthplace, or those which occurred many miles distant?

In another application, in one parish register you may have a group of children, attributed to one or both parents, and then suddenly the birth pattern stops prematurely. You may then discover another group of children in another parish, attributed to the same parent(s) with a plausible birth pattern. Are the parents the same? How far apart were the parishes?

Or you may be reading a parish register in which the family's place of residence is different from the location of the church. Where was the family home?