Family Historian User Group

Hi, I have been focussing on my immediate family tree now for some years and have reached the limit of verifiable data. So I want to extend in to a One Name Study in the hope that I may find more esoteric relationships, although my name (Satterthwaite) is less common there are still lots of people out there in the records.
My question is Do I add all these new records in to my main Satterthwaite Family database so I can look for similarities or connections or should I use a separate database. I am using FH v7
thanks in advance

Steve

Personally, I would begin by adding them as unrelated individuals to your current project. Then, If, further down the line you see a link, you could easily attach/link them to an existing individual, as opposed to merging them if they were in separate projects.

As you develope your one name study, you’ll hopefully find links between the disparate groups, and eventually, the number of separate pools will decrease, and you’ll end up with one big happy family! (if you live long enough )

To support Gowermick I have done the same in my project and differentiated the Un-related people by adding a suffix like, Joe /BLOGGS/ (U-R), then add create a flag to record them as Unrelated.
They can then be displayed in a named list.

Regards
Mike

That is my approach, we are collecting data on a few rarer names and in fact we have managed make a few links as a result. FH handles large numbers of people very well, we have ~26,000 at present.

It depends would be my answer.

If your surname / one name study is only for you then all in one project is probably best. However, if you are a member of or going to join The Surname Society or Guild of One-Name studies, then you would probably be better off with a separate project. You can always export just the name bearers from your current project and use that as the basis for starting a study. This will give you the option to share just the details of the name bearers with others without sharing your wider personal ancestry.

Option 2 is what I have done as I am doing a worldwide study into a single surname and did not want to get those people mixed in with my own family history.

Thanks all for your input. I think I will make a start by creating an 'unrelated' flag in my existing database. This should be sufficient to identify those records and if I decide to split them out to a separate database at a later date.

Cheers

Steve

It may not be necessary to use such a Flag as the unrelated records will be in separate Relationship Pools from your main tree.

Run the standard Query > Relatives and Relationships > Search For Orphans which is slightly misnamed as what it does is list Individual records grouped into their Relationship Pool numbers.

So your main tree will probably be in Pool number 1 with the other records in higher-numbered Pools.

It is easy to identify those other records with a Query Rows tab filter using the =RelationPool(%INDI%) and excluding records with Pool value 1.

That is what Mike Loney was referring to when he said: "the number of separate pools will decrease ...".

For my Vousden One Name Study there was no question as to whether or not to include or separate the study because my first Vousden was my grandmother, Agnes Minnie Lucy Vousden. In Family Historian I flag each of the lines of my four grandparents, and I just see all the Vousdens as "my family". There are only a very few who do not connect in, and of course they show up in FH as separate Pools.

An additional reason for doing it this way - which has only been the case for the past year or three - is that the Guild of One Name Studies offers the free-to-members facility of web hosting the study with the add-on that all of the rest of your family research can be included. So my web site has the catchy title of "Vousden One-Name Study & My Family History". This facility is in order to provide a safe haven for members’ one-name studies, and make them available to public view indefinitely as long as it is able.

Thanks all,
I have now learned about relationship pools and will put them to good use

On the other hand, when I started to research my maiden name, WAYCOTT, as an ONS, I quickly found that it was an anomoly which did not exist before about 1750 and seems to have arisen spontaneously in different areas of south Devon, seemingly as a result of the local accent saying the much more common name WICKETT. The family groups are quite discrete; they do not link to me or to each other and so I have kept them in separate projects. Some have less than 100 people in, others over 600 and with the usual duplication of names (William, Richard, Mary, Ann) I knew that putting them all in my own tree would cause endless confusion. It is easy to combine the gedcoms if I want to, for example to place them on My Heritage or (this years lockdown project) on the GOONS website, but much simpler for me to work on separate projects. Every ONS is different!

Maureen,
thanks for your input. Yes I suffer from Satterwaite, Satterwhite, Satterfield etc. I suppose its a cross we all have to bear. I can resolve many of these if I can see the original document (or a scan of it) as they are transcription errors however that's not always the case. The perceived wisdom is that all these names originated from one geographic location in the Lake District where there are comprehensive written Quaker records however I am yet to find any verifiable link to them within my family tree which goes back to the early 1700s. I feel the tree I have is accurate as far as possible and am reluctant to dilute it by adding guesses at relationships hence my original question. Now I know I can easily separate my family from other Satterthwaites on the same database I will add to that for now with the knowledge I can change my approach if it gets messy.

Steve

I do the opposite. I keep several projects for my ancestors.
And I similarly have separate projects for my academic (place study) research too. Anyone left over, goes in a miscellaneous project. I sometimes cross reference but mostly I remember who is where. And I have a spiral bound exercise book (permitted in the National Archive), in which I record initial notes.

I like to have separate projects as I had a corrupted project in TMG (inherited from 2 previous softwarte packages) and having 6 academic projects of about 6,000 names each makes me feel easier than if I had merged them all together.