|
|
|
Are all Binsteads related? A very interesting question. My opinion on this has fluctuated over the years. When I began my research I was initially only interested in my direct ancestry but, ploughing through the indexes at Somerset House looking for my grandfather’s birth, I saw how uncommon the surname was. I then wondered if we were not perhaps all one family and decided to put it to the test and went to the start of the indexes (1837) and recorded all the births, marriages and deaths of Binsteads, Binsteds and Binsteeds that I found up to 1999. That was the start of my one-name study. With a couple of thousand names, all over the place, it began to seem as if my first idea was rather naïve and I moved away from that viewpoint. Now, so many years later, with 57% of all Binsteads reduced to just seven major trees (as of 2006) and some of the remainder clearly belonging to one or other of the major trees but just defying the last bit of proof, things are looking a bit different especially as there is a clear tendency for a geographical concentration the further back the research goes. If, in just four and a bit centuries, the Binsteads can reduce to so few families, what would the situation be if one could push the research back another century or two? Thus my thinking about this came a full circle. Footnote. A dream of mine was to finance a DNA testing program among volunteers from different families to try and establish if a relationship exists irrespective of whether or not it could be proved by records. Binstead Binsted Binsteed family genealogy home page
©
2004-2010 Richard Binstead for Binstead Binsted Binsteed family genealogy |
