Genealogy Chat

done a small 'one name' study JUST to eliminate people from your own tree?

I am thinking I might have to do so with my Fishlocks, they 'all' were born and stayed in the Brentford area, or near the Thames up and downstream at least back to the 1770s..but there is also a huge 'enclave' of Wiltshire Fishlocks a few of whom moved into the same areas as mine, they unfortunately seem to have the uncommon first names of 'my lot' also so quite a tangle of Williams and Thomas' .

There 'may' be a linking relative or there may not ( the name is just from 'someone who lives near a fish lake or lock' so could well have developed separately so to speak in both locations ( and Hamps and Yorks also ).

My maiden name is quite unusual, infact there were only 9 others born with that surname between my dad and myself and most of those were children of his cousins.

I always thought my name was foreign but it can be traced back to Cornwall in the 1600s

Two brothers moved to London around 1820 and there is no trace of the name now in the west country....maybe all the others were girls or didn't have children?

The name has changed over the years, probably because they couldn't read or write and it was written down how it sounded

I've done one on a branch of my tree. It took ages but was well worth it to get all the families sorted. They liked to call the children the same names, so you'd have 4 cousins all called Thomas born very close together.

I collected all the records I could find for my family name in the Berwick upon Tweed area, because I assumed that they would all be one family. However, having sorted them all out, we've traced back to 3 males around 1700, and have no evidence of them being connected.
For around 150 years there were 2 families with the same unusual surname living in the town, who were apparently unconnected.

Yep and it was a nightmare - thoroughly enjoyable.

My g/gran Harriet was a Brain and from the Bristol area, now anyone in the know will tell you this is almost like being a Smith.

But it had to be done, followed many lines that led nowhere or after days of following turned out not be be mine!!! But I hit paydirt via a lady who had done work on the LDS and we worked out my g/g/grandfather and her g/grandfather were brothers and she had done even more work. And all without a computer, she was amazing. I helped her with some of her dead ends and vice versa.

SUCH FUN!!!! :-D :-D :-D

But through this I was able to amend loads of duff entries on FreeBMD by going back to the original pages, match up husbands and wives. So some extra good came from this.

;-)

Have done one, it was long and confusing but seemed that most people with that particular surname were related....on lot emigrated to America, at the same time another lot emigrated to Australia.

Good fun though :) and I was lucky it is a reasonably unusal name I was tracing

I think on the last count I have 11 Moreman family trees with plenty of Thomas, James, William and John's amongst them. As I kept finding information about the different Moreman's I thought it was a waste not to use the information that I had found.

Given they are all from around Mangotsfield I have my fingers crossed that one day they may fall into place.

:-)

I am trying to sort all people with a particular surname in an area of south Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.....Unfortunately it's the equivalent of the SMITH surname there.
I have name coincidences and even trade ones, - many men were blacksmiths, so it is taking a while to sort out the people who are really connected, - very worthwhile though and the only way, I think, to find out what I need.

On another name in the family I started off in a Record Office, way-back-when, just recording findings of a particular surname, in case they fitted in as they were within a 20 mile radius of known family. Again the name was fairly uncommon, but not so in that area. There are still gaps, but this exercise has helped alot in sorting families and in one particular small town in Sussex, there seem to be 2 distinct families with no connection over hundreds of years.
This research led me to contact someone who had registered the name with G.O.O.N.S. and so my work was useful to her and her expertise has been invaluable to me. She has literally thousands of certificates bought and shared over many years, so a one-name study is often a great option for finding answers.

Gwyn

I think the 'technical' term is family reconstruction :-D

Inspired by Dave Annal's informative lecture 'Brick walls and lost ancestors' where he describes how he confirmed which of three men was 'his' by using family reconstruction, I am attempting to use the process for a family in the 16/17c.....I have my fingers crossed that I am as successful :-)

http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/brick-walls-and-lost-ancestors/

Chris

Yes, I have done several. One of the most interesting ones was for the Bettridge / Betteridge name from the area around Ashby de la Zouch and Coalville in Leicestershire.

It transpired that there are at least two separate but very distinct families in the area. Both have their origins a few miles away in Warwickshire but so far I can find no evidence they are related.

No: one family were almost exclusively coal mining families. On the other hand, family No: two almost never went near the mines, and were found in occupations such as shopkeepers, innkeepers dealers and traders or working on one of the many sanitary ware factories.

Nor are there any marriages between the two family lines although there are several marriages for distant cousins within the same family.

Thankyou all for interesting replies :-)

I know on my grandfather's side there were two families of the same name in Grimsby, un-connected, but has led to confusion on some trees as one of the other family had the same first names as my grandfather and his death has been attributed to the wrong one.

If people are able to look at the 2011 census 100 years hence, they may notice that one of my near neighbours has the same surname as me and perhaps assume we are related, not a very common name to find two in the same street! But just coincidence.

With my Fishlocks most were watermen, a few who might well have been expected to follow that trade became shoemakers instead just to confuse ...but some of the 'so far unconnected' Fishlocks were also watermen :-S :-D

Very interesting article Chris, thanks for that.

Carol :-D