Family Historian User Group

A couple of people on my tree have common names, and I was thinking that in order to make sure I have the right records attached to the right people, I should investigate the other individuals with the same names. I know many of you hear do one-name studies, so I was hoping you could point me toward some basic guidelines of how to get things organized. I'll be doing some searching on my own, of course, but links to other websites would be welcome.

One obvious approach would be to avoid looking at the jummbled-up every-which-way search results of Ancestry's Global Search, and to examine each record set by itself.

Every now and again, I find the same person recorded twice in a census, but for the most part, it seems likely that if you see five results for John Smith in the 1871 Census, there are likely to be at least five different John Smiths to study (and more if some were missed or mis-transcribed).

Tips on sorting out the lookalikes would be very welcome, either by using Family Historian or other tools.

Jan

ID:3933

We often find ourselves tracing the life events of apparently unrelated people with similar names in order to be sure you have the right one. One of the great things about FH is you can record it all and then link them in later if you eventually find out where they fit on your tree.

I also occasionally use a (not very sophisticated, but often helpful) query that simply adds everyone for whom we have a first name and surname and birth date, sort it by surname, firstname, father's first name and birth date, and then scan the right area by eye to see if anything looks like a duplicate.

I help with a small One Name Society. What I (and my predecessor) do is make one big gedcom with everyone on it. Adding new people and making little family trees within the same gedcom file. It gets quite big and you might end up with duplicates! It doesn't matter so long as you are aware of that. Once you find connections between families you can deal with them by merging etc. If I get a large distinct family I give them a Gedcom file to themselves as well as on the main one.

A tip! Searching a huge file with one main surname can be daunting (eg 250 people with the first name William!)but searching for the spouse surname easily sorts them out and helps to spot the duplicates as well!

Anne

I tend to do the same Anne.
I did not realise how popular BALDOCK was in Kent until I started two years ago!
I agree with the caveat on duplicates. By using Notes fields, I can jog my memory regarding possible links to investigate in the future.
I now find myself adding people from the 14th -17th centuries, in the vain hope of finding a link!