Litton mistake
When I started researching my family tree I did what most people do and headed straight up the paternal line.
It took me a good few years but I managed to get back to my great, great, great Grandfather William Atkinson, born about 1817. I found him on the cencus and, unbeknown to me at the time, made a fatal misreading of his place of birth multiple times on the cencus.
I read the place of birth as ’Litton’, and when I searched I found that there is a place called Litton in the Dales, near Settle.
To make things worse there was hundreds of years worth of Atkinsons from that area and a website all about that.I even went up there for a day out and thought it was really nice!
Well it turns out that I have a cousin John who works over the road from me at the University, William is his great, great Grandfather so he’s a generation older than me as it were. John had read Litton correctly as Silton, in other words Over Silton or Nether Silton near Northallerton.
This has lead to us being able to go a generation further back to John Atkinson, born around 1785 and has put an end to the brick wall that I hit years ago with William.
It just goes to show how badly even small mistakes can affect your research and this is why I triple and quadrouple check everything! I don’t know how I made the mistake in the first place, I suppose my only excuse is that the old script on the census returns can be really very hard to read!