Week 35 (Aug. 26-Sept. 1): All Mixed Up

Many of us will come across times when your family tree becomes All Mixed Up, a complex web of intertwining relationships.  Mine has several instances when the mix of names and relationships produces a tangled tree indeed, and impacts on my research as well.

In my Irish ancestry, along the Mulholland line, I find myself All Mixed Up due to names.  As was a common custom at the time, all four surviving sons of my ancestor James Mulholland named their first son James after their paternal grandfather.  As the family all lived close, this results in me having 4 men names James Mulholland, all born within a few miles of each other and within a five year timeframe.  And two of them married women named Mary!  Trying to work out which James Mulholland each record I find is sometimes just imposssible!

A complex Step relationship I have is that of Thomas May, my 3xGreat Grandfather.  Thomas married a total of 5 times, losing his several in childbirth.  It is with his 4th wife, Susannah Balls Green, the relationships become truly 'all mixed up'.  Susannah's son Isaac (from her first husband John Green) was married to Thomas's eldest daughter Betsy (Elizabeth).  So Thomas became not only father-in-law but also step-father to Isaac, and his new wife Susannah was mother-in-law and step-mother to Betsy.

Then there is the relationship of my Aunt, Mavis Pummeroy, and Great Aunt Thelma Clark.  Mavis, born in 1924, married Ernest Horton on the 15^th of September 1947.  Her Aunt Thelma, born in 1914, had married Clarence Horton, Ernest’s brother, on the 6^th of April 1935.  Thus these two women were not only aunt and niece, but also sisters-in-law.  

 'All Mixed Up' indeed!

Week 22 (May 27- June 2): Creativity

This week's theme #52Ancestors is 'Creativity', which has me thinking about all the creative ways we can record and display our family history, and how creative we often need to be to break down the brick walls in our research.

Even with something as basic as a name, we often need to be creative in our research.  From church records to birth, marriage and death registrations, census records to electoral rolls and passenger lists to immigration and naturalization records, many of our favourite sources for family information have been captured with a variety of spellings, handwritings, and abbreviations.  As those historical collections have been digitized and transcribed, modern day technicians have struggled to correctly interpret and preserve an entry from long ago, and subsequently we as researchers must be creative to find them.

If there is one thing I have learnt in my years of researching my family, it is that NO surname, however simple, will EVER be recorded with the same spelling all the time.  When researching, we need to be creative and consider how a name may have been misspelled or incorrectly recorded.  Remember that the clerk creating the record spelled the name the way he felt like spelling it - how it sounded to him at the time.  And frequently he got it wrong.  Sometimes he got it spectacularly wrong!

Abbreviations can also complicate research - William was often abbreviated as Wm, Thomas as Thos or Tom, Patrick as Pat or Patk or Patr, Daniel as Dan or Danl or Danny, Margaret as Maggie, Elizabeth as Beth or Eliza.  When searching for an ancestor, be mindful that an exact search for a given name may unintentionally hide an ancestor from view if the original record or transcription used an abbreviation.

In addition to alternate spellings and abbreviations, another source of name variations comes from errors made during the transcription process.  As people transcribe family history records, they seek to preserve content exactly as it appears in the historical original.  Despite best efforts, errors do occur and names can be unintentionally altered.  Consider how old handwriting may be misinterpreted - both by you and by earlier transcribers or indexers.

Some databases are quite flexible in regards to spelling variations when searching, but they will never cover every possible error and sometimes several searches are necessary to locate an elusive record.  Remember to be creative and keep digging - you never know what you might find - or how it may be spelled!

Week 9 (Feb. 26 - Mar. 3): Changing Names

Our ancestors changed their names for a variety of reasons.  By far the most common was a surname change for a woman upon her marriage, but there were many other reasons a person might change the name they were given at birth.  From using a preferred nickname, name contractions, altering names to fit a new home, or completely changing a name to escape the past - there were many reasons you might find an ancestor under a different name.  

We also need to remember that it was often a clerk, secretary, enumerator or other official who recorded names on official documents, and mistakes were often made and not corrected.  The name was recorded as the recorder heard it, and so spelling variations abound. They all can make tracing your ancestors that much more challenging.

There were the commonly used spelling variations, abbreviations and diminutives.  For example, if you don’t know that Polly was a diminutive of Mary or that Nellie was a diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor and Helen, you may struggle to find your ancestors’ entries.  Harry for Henry, Bill for William, Fred or Alf for Alfred, Dick for Richard, Charlie or Lottie for Charlotte, Maggie, Meg or Maisie for Margaret.  Elizabeth was another extremely common name with multiple diminutives - Eliza, Liz, Lizzie, Betty, Betsy, Beth, Bessie, Lisbeth, Liza - the list goes on.  

I have one female ancestor, baptised Elizabeth, who was known throughout her life as Betsy.  This was the name she used in census records, her marriage record, her children's birth/baptism records and on her death certificate and burial records.  The only time I can ever find her referred to as Elizabeth is at her own baptism. 

Naming patterns were common in many families, although they are by no means a reliable way of predicting the names of children.  Traditionally, the first son would be named for the paternal grandfather, the second son for the maternal grandfather and the third son for the father.  For females, the first daughter would be named for the maternal grandmother, the second daughter for the paternal grandmother and the third daughter for the mother.  Providing, of course, these names were not the same.  

For my German branch of my family tree, anglicization of names when they emigrated from Germany to Australia saw the entire family change their names.  Friedrich became Frederick, Suatus became Susetta and eventually Susan, Heinrich became Henry, Margaretha became Margaret, and so on.  It helped to family to fit in with their new homeland.

What's in a Name?

I have blogged before about how a small number of first names dominated within the community.  The given names of our eighteenth and nineteenth century British ancestors were drawn from a surprisingly small pool.  The four most popular male names were carried by one in every two males, and the top thirteen male names were carried by 87% of the male population.

In the 1700s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, Thomas, Richard and James
Girls - Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane

In the 1800s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, James, George and Charles
Girls - Mary, Anna, Emma, Elizabeth and Margaret

There were, of course, always fads among names - copying that of the current Monarch and their family, for example, or using a traditional name common in your own family, or following popular fads.  Horatio, for example, made a brief surge in popularity after Nelson's victory at Trafalgar.  Similarly, Adolf disappeared from German communities after World War 2.

Then there were also the commonly used spelling variations, abbreviations and diminutives.  For example, if you don’t know that Polly was a diminutive of Mary or that Nellie was a diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor and Helen, you may struggle to find your ancestors’ entries.  Harry for Henry, Bill for William, Fred or Alf for Alfred, Dick for Richard, Charlie or Lottie for Charlotte, Maggie, Meg or Maisie for Margaret.  Elizabeth was another extremely common name with multiple diminutives - Eliza, Liz, Lizzie, Betty, Betsy, Beth, Bessie, Lisbeth, Liza - the list goes on.  

I have one female ancestor, baptised Elizabeth, who was known throughout her life as Betsy.  This was the name she used in census records, her children's birth/baptism records and on her death certificate and burial record.  The only time I can ever find her referred to as Elizabeth is at her baptism.

Changing Place Names Mapped

The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, part of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has unveiled a new interactive map feature on their website: Mapy z Przeszłością (Maps of the Past). The online tool superimposes historical maps over a modern map of Central and Eastern Europe, allowing researchers to visualize and compare shifting borders and place names over time. 

The turbulent nature of Poland’s history, with its boundaries expanding, contracting, and disappearing over several centuries, is reflected in the geographic range of the maps available as overlays. The new map tool is useful for users with ancestry from modern Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, or the historical territories of the German, Russian and Austrian Empires.

In Central and Eastern European genealogy, you will encounter place names that changed depending on who controlled an area and when. This complicates research as we sort out and weigh the accuracy of the various place names that are found in overseas sources. For example, researching a Lithuanian immigrant ancestor, you may find that their town of origin is reported in its Polish form in the sources of the country they emigrated to, such as Great Britain, America or Australia, reflecting the official name from the early nineteenth century. The same town or village may be recorded in another record with an approximation of its Russian name, from when Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. The town name may also appear in its Lithuanian form, which became official in the twentieth century. Researchers with Jewish ancestry may also find a distinct Yiddish form of their ancestral town or village recorded in overseas sources.

A historical map with Polish placenames overlayed on a modern map of Grodno, Belarus

With the new map overlays, a researcher can alternate between historical periods, translating placenames in the process. This is most effective for placenames with Polish and German variants. Pay attention to the names of nearby towns and villages. Those placenames may appear later in religious or civil records. Some maps also include symbols that mark the nearest religious community.

The Name Pool

Have you noticed that the given names of our eighteenth and nineteenth century British ancestors were drawn from a surprisingly small pool?  John for example was carried by one in every five English males. The four most popular male names were carried by one in every two males. And the top thirteen male names were carried by 87% of the male population indicating that all of the other male names in use at the time were together borne by only 13% of the population.

That being the case, the usual popularity lists found on the internet – those that record the top 10, 20, 50 names – are unhelpful unless they provide frequency statistics.

There were also the commonly used spelling variations, abbreviations and diminutives.  For example, if you don’t know that Polly was a diminutive of Mary or that Nellie was a diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor and Helen, you may struggle to find your ancestors’ entries.  Harry for Henry, Bill for William, Fred or Alf for Alfred, Dick for Richard, Charlie or Lottie for Charlotte, Maggie, Meg or Maisie for Margaret.  Elizabeth was another extremely common name with multiple diminutives - Eliza, Liz, Lizzie, Betty, Betsy, Beth, Bessie, Lisbeth, Liza - the list goes on.

In the 1700s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, Thomas, Richard and James
Girls - Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane

In the 1800s the top five names for each gender were :
Boys - John, William, James, George and Charles
Girls - Mary, Anna, Emma, Elizabeth and Margaret

There were, of course, always fads among names - copying that of the current Monarch and their family, for example, or using a traditional name common in your family.

Naming patterns were also common in many families, although they are by no means a reliable way of predicting the names of children.  Traditionally, the first son would be named for the paternal grandfather, the second son for the maternal grandfather and the third son for the father.  For females, the first daughter would be named for the maternal grandmother, the second daughter for the paternal grandmother and the third daughter for the mother.  Providing, of course, these names were not the same.  

Then, there are the families that seemed to delight in using unusual names for their children, and those who followed popular fads.  Horatio, for example, made a brief surge in popularity after Nelson's victory at Trafalgar.  Similarly, Adolf disappeared from German communities after World War 2.