Do you have an ancestor with such a common name? It feels
like it's impossible to figure out who they are, where they
live, and who their relatives are? Well, in this video, we're
going to tackle common name research strategies. Stick
around.
So, howdy. I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics
and if this is your first time here, welcome and let us know
in the comment section that you're a first timer. We hope
you understand your DNA, climb your family tree, and write
your ancestors stories along the way because if family
history isn't fun, you're doing it wrong. So, let's talk about,
well, it's not exactly fun to research ancestors that have
common surname but there is a way to work around these
strategies. Well, the very first thing you should do when
you're tackling an ancestor with a common surname or common
name in general like John Smith is to develop an ancestral fact
sheet. Now, this is going to include a lot of information
such as what was their age or birth date or birthplace. The
more details you can add, the better chance you have of
keeping them separate from other people at the same time
and place. So what were their spouses names? What were their
children's name? What was their religion? Yeah. Not every John
Smith or Frank Townsend practiced the same religion.
What was their ethnicity? Now this is especially useful when
you're researching in the south or any place full of
immigrants. Many people took on names of they knew as they
anglicized their names or came on to records. What was their
ethnicity? What was their occupation? If you have as Paul
Smith that's a dentist and you're getting them confused
with Paul Smith the professor. Pay attention to the
occupations. What were their nicknames? I recently read an
article about someone who went to visit a locality and he was
looking for John Smith and the local said, well, which one do
you mean? Big Smith, Curly Smith, Death Smith, Bob Smith,
or not necessarily Bob Smith but they had all these
nicknames and the guy's like, I don't know. I'm just looking
for John Smith and you and the local said, excuse me sir,
every one of those is John Smith. Now, I don't know how
accurate that quip is but you get the idea. Use nicknames
when you someone with a common name that you're trying to sort
out in a location. Now, I can't state this enough. Look for
spelling variations. Just because you have an a name
Smith doesn't mean that's the only way to spell it. S M I T
H. You can have S M Y T H E. Yeah, that's still Smith. So,
get all of the variations of how you spell your name. In
just a little bit, I'm going to be showing you why you need to
use timelines and how to help your research but in your
ancestral fact sheet, create a timeline. Write down where
everything is happening in your ancestors life. There are more
tips and tricks on creating ancestral fact sheet. I want
you to make sure you check the link in the description for my
blog post that has all of the show notes and the links to
additional resources to help you create an ancestral fact
sheet. Now, after you have your ancestral fact sheet, go and
reprove the details on that fact sheet because just because
you think you know you have that information to be accurate
because maybe you inherited genealogy from Aunt Ethel or
maybe you've built your tree online, go back with a fresh
shed of eyes and reprove everything. Make sure the
records say what you think they say. Make sure you actually
have records for the facts that you think that you have and
construct your family trees based on the reproving of that
information. Once again, we have a link in the description
for a video that you're going to want to watch called peer
reviewing the research of others but I want you to watch
this video. It with the mind spent ah I need to peer review
my own work. So be sure that you get familiar with the
description under each video. Next we you're working with
ancestors that have common names, you need to have a
research plan. In a previous video, Elise Scalise Powell
told us hope is not a research plan. You have to develop a
question and then work your way through that question to its
final conclusion and one of the reasons why you need to do this
is because you're going to realize, hey, I have this
question and a lot of records answer this question but I'm
missing those records. We have videos talking about Elise's
research plan, how to develop that and we also have videos
that talk about how to find what records might be missing
to answer the questions that I have. Check the show notes
below but let me give you a little brief overview of some
of the records that you might be missing on your fact sheet.
Birth, marriage, and death. Now, birth, marriage, and death
is a modern invention. Those records may or may not exist
for the time and place that you're researching but if they
did exist at the time and place that you're researching for
your common name ancestor, you want to go look up those
records. Others, migration records, military records, land
records, religious records, city directories. If you've
been here a while, you know I love city directories. If you
haven't, you need to learn to love city directories, census
records, newspaper articles, will and estate records, court
records, tax records, and then some uncommon genealogy sources
that my friend Lisa Leeson who has her own YouTube channel
talks about. All of these information so that you don't
have to take notes while you're watching will be available in
the show note blog post accompanying this video. So,
once you come up with what records could possibly answer
your question and you might be missing them, then you need to
go find of these records actually exist for the time and
place you're researching. The FamilySearch Wiki will help
you out and we have a video about the FamilySearch Wiki
and how to use it. Check for the link in the description.
Now, once you have pieced together all of the information
on your fact sheet, you need to ensure that you're constructing
a family tree based on of all of that information. So, one of
the places that you can do that is FamilySearch because it's
free but she could use Findmypast, MyHeritage, or Ancestry
as well as some other services like Jenny and WikiTree. All of
the links to those websites will be in the show notes but
when you build your tree on FamilySearch, the other thing
I want you to pay attention to is reconstructing the world
around your ancestors who were the extended family members,
the laws, the great uncles, the neighbors, the witnesses to
their documents. Who were their friends? Who are they buying
land from? Who are they the godparents of or who were their
god pandas? Do you notice how this tree is going to be quite
large if these additional people that is called the fam
club? If they're not part of your direct family? So what are
you going to do? You're go use FamilySearch and you're
going to build all these extra little trees over on family
search because when you've solved the mystery of who is
your John Smith using all of these extra people you can
abandon the research you did and just focus on your John now
and you have the additive benefit of leading that
research for others this is the one platform that is wonderful
for that type of fan club research to take advantage of
it now when you're constructing the and constructing their
family, you might have to go even further and do a surname
study. Yeah, if you're working with the Last Name Like Smith,
it can get overwhelming but there are projects in the Guild
of One Names studies that we have a video about here on our
channel and you can't assist in a surname study or you can
start your own but the idea is to search everyone with that
surname and you might be able to figure out who your common
name ancestors are. This is definitely something to explore
after you had exhausted all of the possibilities that you have
or if you have multiple people that you're trying to keep
straight and you want a location to house all of that
research. Now, another strategy that I have used to try to
figure out who my William Townsend is because there's a
lot of William Townsends is I did a twist on the one name
study and that is a one name in one place study. I researched
all the towns in Franklin County, Ohio, who lived there
in 1880. I went back, I went forward, and I was able to
isolate the likely siblings and a potential uncle for my
ancestor William James Townsend when records didn't exist to
help me figure out my common name ancestor. If you want to
read about that series, then make sure you check the blog
post show notes that are in the description. You're going to
have a lot of content to binge watch and I'm so glad we've
gotten to this point where we can help you in that way.
You've got to use analytical tools. I recently attended a
workshop talking about how to separate two men of the same
name and one of the things they these instructors said was to
use clue webs. Well, I have a video on how to create clue
webs and you can find that link in the description as well as
the show notes but clue webs are fascinating ways to piece
together the clues that you have in another format. It's
fine to put things on genealogy charts but sometimes your clues
for your individuals make sense when you utilize a clue web.
Now, as promised, I also mention making timelines. Take
advantage of timelines because these help you figure out who
is related to who and how so how are you going to figure
that out well here is Nathaniel Gordon and many of our long
time viewers know that he is not my relative although many
people put them in their his their family tree related to my
Charles Gordon what I think is happening is people are
confusing Nathaniel Charles Gordon who was born in Virginia
and migrated to North Carolina with another man of that same
and age and we still haven't figured out him but when you
start looking at this timeline you start thinking you know in
1778, he has three children or 1778 to 1780 he has three
children in North Carolina he's another one in 1784 in North
Carolina so why would they have gone up and had another child
the same year in South Carolina it it it's possible but
going to be kind of rare when you see that there's one child
born so close to one another. So we're going to take off that
South Carolina one. So then you go down and then we have them
in North Carolina and they go to Mississippi and come back.
Okay so if this guy had dual families maybe. Maybe that
would work. But these children are attributed to the same man
and the same woman. So that's not likely. I'd like to see
more of proof of it. But we're talking in a time period where
the records are pretty where to find. So then we have two
children born in Pennsylvania. So they go to North Carolina,
they're in North Carolina and they go to Pennsylvania and
they come back to North Carolina. They go to
Pennsylvania. I'm sorry that doesn't make any sense. Do you
see the power of timelines of putting your information out
that you start finding ah maybe not only do I have just one
Nathaniel Charles Gordon hanging out in North Carolina
but it's entirely possible but there's multiples. One that
went to Mississippi, one that went to South Carolina, one
that went to Pennsylvania and one that went to Illinois me?
So, another way that you can piece out your timeline is that
you can use FamilySearch and my heritage where they have map
your ancestors. You can look at an individual ancestor look at
the events that happened in their lives and see them
plotted on a map. When you see something happening like
Nathaniel Gordon where there he's all over the place,
chances are you have some confusion. So, can something in
a odd location. Well, absolutely. My father was born
in Ohio. He migrated to a Texas in the seventies but he died in
Vegas but he was buried in Texas. So, what happened? My
father died on vacation. So, things can happen in an
unexpected location but you definitely have to have proof
that makes that make sense for the time, place, and the
technology for transportation available at the time. The a
lot to get you started. I really hope that you will check
out the show notes that I link to in the description as well
as some of the other videos already available for you on
the platform. Go ahead and hit the subscribe button so you can
get more genealogy research tips as well as check this
video for how to be a better genealogy