The importance of location is drilled into us from the beginning of our genealogy research. We need to know where our ancestors lived. Census records and electoral rolls are based on location. Land records are very much based on location. Sometimes, however, we need to forget which side of the county, shire or state line our ancestor lived on.
Consider two towns only a few miles from one another but in
different counties of England. There’s flat land between them - no major
rivers, no mountains, so it’s easy to get from one to the other.
One ancestor of mine who lived in Fordham, Essex, clearly had
contact with nearby Bures, Suffolk. It’s in another county, but
is less than 4 miles distant. Maybe he sold his grain at Bures, or went to
market there or attended meetings – somehow he got to know the people
there. It is where his wife was born.
We need to know where our ancestors lived. But we also need
to take a look around and see if there are other places where he or she could
have interacted with others — places where he or she could have created more
records. Our ancestors didn’t necessarily stay within the lines for all of
their activities.
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