NOTHING is ever one hundred percent certain in genealogy, is it? It's all about building a case. You weigh up the evidence, sift the reasonable from the unreasonable, eliminate alternatives, and make a choice. You're detective, defense, prosecution and jury all in one. 

Say your earliest known ancestor is great-great-great grandfather Harry. All you know about Harry is how old he was (maybe from a marriage entry), what he did for a living, and where he fathered children. You're looking for his birth. Lo, it comes to pass that you find a Harry with the right surname, in the right place, at the right time, the right station in life. Everything adds up. You make an executive decision. Harry - and his newly found parentage - swank to the top of your ancestral tree, a bright new shining tier of connectedness.

But— What if somewhere out there in Document Land there is another Harry, with the same surname, in the same place, at the same time, the same station in life? A Harry who dodged those fusty manuscripts and inkblot computer images you've been eyeballing. A Harry who one day will sneak up out of some parish chest or solicitor's bundle, shout boo, and drop a rusty old spanner onto your precious stack of names.

The further afield you wander to find your old Harry the more likely the threat of ambush.

So, here are the steps that have led me to settle (for now) on the Daniel of Gussage All Saints as being our great-great-great-great-great grandfather:

1. I was stuck at the marriage of Daniel Annitts and Mary Voller in Binsted, Hampshire, 1751. They had children there, then moved to neighbouring Bramshott, where Daniel worked as a keeper of Woolmer Forest. He died in Bramshott on the 11th of March 1789, aged 66.

2. If Daniel's age at death is correct, he must have been born around 1722-23.

3. A search of the parish registers for Binsted and Bramshott found no corresponding baptism.

4. A baptism of the right date did, however, turn up in Gussage All Saints, Dorset: "Danniell Annetts Son of Daniel Annetts and of his wife was baptiz'd July ye 5th [1723]". (Poor wife. After all that hard work of delivering baby Danniell, she doesn't even merit the courtesy of her own christian name. Harrumph.)

5. Now there's a great looming tract from Dorset to Hampshire which the Daniel (I'm normalising the spelling) of Gussage All Saints has to cross to get to Binsted in 1751.

6. Both father Daniel and son Daniel disappear from the register of Gussage All Saints. There are no burials or marriages for either.

7. On March 4th 1726, a Marriage License Allegation is sworn for Daniel Annetts of Lower Gussage, Dorset, and Mary Hunt of Breamore, Hampshire. The marriage is to take place in Ellingham, Hampshire. "Lower Gussage" is an alternative name for Gussage All Saints.

8. So, here we have a Daniel Annetts of Gussage All Saints who has crossed the border into Hampshire three years after the baptism in which we're interested, a baptism which is the only entry for any variant of the name Annetts among all the baptisms, marriages and burials of the parish from 1650-1799. The Daniel of the marriage allegation is very likely to be the elder Daniel of the baptism. Obviously, Mary Hunt can't be the mother of the child baptised three years earlier, but she can be a new step-mother.

9. The Daniel of the marriage allegation is described as a "husbandman", a low-ranking, often tenant, farmer. This sits well with the occupations of later Annetts who are keepers, yeomen and millers. Yes, I know that around eighty percent of the populace is engaged in agriculture at this time, but there are carpenters, innkeepers, smiths and weavers too. So I'm scoring "husbandman" as a plus.

10. Ellingham is just over fifty miles from Binsted, with plenty of opportunities for work in between. And en route there's a farm called "Annetts Farm" in Lower Farringdon - I haven't yet been able to find out which Annetts this name refers to, nor how old the farm is.

11. Taking all this into consideration, I think there's a good chance that the Daniel baptised in Gussage All Saints in 1723 is the same Daniel who married in Binsted in 1751. It's not as if his christian name is as common as John or William or Thomas. How many Daniel Annetts born c.1723 can there be in our area? So, unless and until another Daniel pounces out of the Hampshire wilds, I'm opting for this one.

12. You'll notice that, if this line of descent is correct, there's a family tradition of naming eldest sons Daniel, which comes to a full stop with Daniel born 1761. I have a theory about this. There's that deposition made to the Parliamentary Commission about the profitability of Woolmer Forest, in which Daniel Junior says he "acted as a servant" under his father for "upwards of twenty-two years". This doesn't sound, to me, as if there was much love lost between father and son. I wonder if Daniel chose instead to name his son after Henry White, his fellow keeper and, perhaps, friend and father figure.

If I had to place a percentage on the likelihood of the Dorset Daniel being our Daniel, I'd put it at maybe 80%. Next step is to find the marriage record to go with the allegation of 1726. And, of course, keep an eye out for any sneak attacks from other Daniels.


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