Family Historian User Group

Hi. I have found someone whom I believe to be an ancestor on the FamilySearch site in the IGI.

Continuing on from here, I searched the same batch using their link, and input the parents from my original find.

I got 23 hits!! I realise it is possible that there were indeed 23 children, but it seems unlikely.

Is there anyway to use the IGI indices to distinguish which are from the same parents and which aren't. I downloaded all 23 records to a GEDCOM and opened in FH. There were 23 sets of parents created, all with different IDs.

I'm a bit confused. Sorry if I'm missing something obvious. I'm a bit new with the IGI.

PS. All 23 'children' were christened at the same place, if this is relevant.

ID:713

The IGI is for the most part an extraction of parish records. Prior to 1837 only common sense will show if they are all the same family, I would guess there are probably multiple families involved. If you only searched a single batch then as a batch only consists of one or two parishes all the births would be from the same church.

When you download gedcom information from the IGI every person (eg 3 for birth father mother and child) is done as a separate record. It is up to you to decide if they are all the same or different.

Thanks for the reply.

Would you then think it reasonable to assume they are all siblings if the parents' names are the same for each? Otherwise I am at a loss to know how to distinguish them.

Thanks again for any advice.

Unfortunatly, you can not be sure at all that they are one family with out more proof, I would look at Census information if they exist for the dates concerned to confirm family groups, also check for marriages of similar men to women with the same christian name.

Naming patterns in many villages can easily lead to cousins with the same name, so two grandchildren with both named after their grandfather.

Especially common female names like Mary or Mary Ann can occur and it is very common to find for instance 2 George and Mary Record's in Marshwood, Dorset (a village of only 30 or so households).

If you look at the original records they will probably have the occupation of the father and possibly a village/town which might help to distinguish. The IGI entry doesn't show occupation or abode (as far as I know). On the original records it might well say, for example:

John son of Joseph and Ann Smith, Joiner of Great Sankey
John son of Joseph and Ann Smith, Weaver of Penketh
would appear to be the same if seen in the IGI.

You don't say what period you are in. While IGI is, as Jane said, mainly an extract of partish registers it also includes (especially for earlier periods)member submitted data which is often speculative. Make sure all the records are 'extracted from local records' (or some words like that). However you do say they are from the same batch so I would guess they are an extract of the register.
Another point to remember is infant mortality and the common practice of giving later children the same name as a dead child. I have a case of an ancestor having five Thomas' (by three wifes) before one survived into adulthood. Looking at burials for the same period can help sort these out. I know IGI is not good on burials so you would need to consult the registers.

Yes and there are examples of couples giving a child the same name as one of their other living children, presumably to try to raise the odds of one of them making it into adulthood, only to find that they both survived! Must have been very confusing.

It has to be emphasised that the IGI is an index, submitted in batches by volunteers.  It does not have a complete coverage of every parish.  Some parishes have not allowed access to their Old Parish Records.  On the other hand, there have been occasions when I have found a birth record in the IGI, that I have not discovered anywhere else, which matched a christening record that I already had.

Before Family Search came on to the Internet, I did a full computer search for my family name and variants at my local LDS centre. Our family is small in numbers but it produced 165 sheets of data made up of batches composed by many different people. There appeared to be repeats in various places, so I did a real cut and paste.  As a result, I found as many as 8 repeats/variations for a single event !  In other cases, some of the dates were expressed as 'about 1853', for example, which appeared to be estimates from an event, such as a marriage or death.

Individual births and marriages are sometimes recorded in the original records in two parishes, perhaps reflecting the 'home' parishes of the parents or bride and groom, respectively.

Over all, it is a good reference source, that may give you a lot of leads, but be aware of its limitations.