Working on the third generation of the Siderfin Book

As I finish up the third known generation of the Siderfin family in the Siderfin Book I can see that I want to do footnotes rather than endnotes and will now go back and add in that feature to the book. James Sanders used footnotes as well but mostly included the  references within the text with just a few footnotes. I would like to have more footnotes as I have documented all of his references (thus far) adding in images and full titles of the works which he used. My confidence in my decided method has grown substantially as I have worked my way into the old text. Many of the books that James Sanders used have been republished which in a way is unfortunate. Repeating the mistakes that can and do exist in old works gives them new significance on brand new paper. It is really better to revise these texts if they are republished. The access to these records has improved ten thousand fold in the past hundred years. Even though the National Archives of the UK still has less than 10% of their holdings scanned you can ask to have items scanned (the cost is more than a will but considerably less than a trip there to photograph it!), there is still a great deal of material online especially old books on the Internet Archive. 

Today I will work on taking the actual reference citation out of the text and put it into footnotes where I can briefly comment if need be on why I have picked that particular image to insert with the original mention or to correct small errors in the work and make note that I have done so. 

I must admit I had not thought about the missing three hundred years between the mention of Siderfin in the 1200s and then the next mention in the 1500s. Where could they have been in this time period? They do not appear to have left any records that are entered in the Discovery database at the UK Archives. Was it just an uneventful time for this family? Did the Bubonic Plague overshadow any possible entries that might occur? Did the family disappear entirely and a new emigrant come into the country in the 1400s with the Siderfin surname? All interesting questions and I checked the Emigrants Database 1330-1550 but using various spellings for the surname I did not find any entries. I then checked Somerset and Devon in the Emigrants Database but again did not find any surnames that resembled Siderfin in that time period. My grandfather did talk about the Bubonic Plague once that I recall - it sounded gruesome for entire villages to die out so I retained that in my mind. One thing I recall him saying was that some villages just closed themselves away from people. They were self-sufficient so they did not have the need for anyone new coming in and in the area where the Siderfin family was found in the 1500s near the Exmoor one could see that as a potential happening. It is extremely wooded in that area and one could perhaps disappear particularly if an entire village is protecting itself. Interesting thought actually.