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hi everyone Cristian here with another episode of the barefoot genealogist today we are talking about those people in your tree who have the same name as other people that exist now some of you may know that you have people in your tree who have very common names we'll look at one of my examples today and my family his name is Dan Jones and there are hundreds if not thousands of men throughout time who have had that name some of you may have people in your tree with more unique names and you may think that they're the only person who exists with that name the reality is it's very likely especially within their own family that there are others who have the same or a similar name and one of the things that we see happen a lot is that we merge or conflate two individuals their lives and we end up mixing them up or confusing them because we haven't gotten really clear on the fact that those same named people are entirely different individuals and so what we're going to talk about today is just some basic strategies that you can use first of all to discover if there are others with the same name and second of all to sort them out so that you make sure that you're attaching the right person to the right life events and to the right family members okay let's go ahead and dive in let's talk first about how you know if there is more than one person with the same name now this is going to be all about the genealogical proof standard if you're not familiar with that the very first principle of that standard for family history research is to conduct a reasonably exhaustive search what that means is that you don't just do a quick search and grab the first thing that comes up in your search results okay a lot of times we tell the search engine what we want and it gives us what we but we don't realize that we didn't have all the information we needed to make a decision about whether or not that was actually our person and so I'm just gonna walk you through a couple of examples of ways in which I search that yield more information now conducting a reasonably exhaustive search encompasses a whole lot more than just ancestry.com online searching it means that you need to know what records exist in other wet places on the web and needs to know you need to you need to know what exists at other locations like libraries and Archives and records or posit orys I spend quite a bit of my time just reading library catalogs I know that sounds incredibly exciting but the idea is is that I want to know what records exist in the world so that when I go to look for information about my ancestors I know where to look and so conducting a reasonably exhaustive search if you want to do a google search for that term you'll find lots of really great articles that will help expand your understanding of that part of the genealogical proof standard so that you can become a better genealogist I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that today but I just wanted to make sure that you understand that that is what we're talking about today and so I'm going to show you one of the ways in which I meet that standard so one of the ways in which I do that is when I'm looking for somebody I search by their name and their name variants and I search by a location and I make sure I include adjacent locations I include adjacent locations because boundaries are just lines on maps there's no wall between you know counties or between towns and so just because you know your ancestors lived in a specific location doesn't mean that the boundaries didn't change around them doesn't mean that they might have been you know lived near a boundary and so sometimes census enumerators or others might have gotten a little confused about which place they belonged to sometimes they did move back and forth across those boundaries are around in a location and we might not have known that I search by name variants because we know that our ancestors were not always recorded with their names exactly the way that we expect them to be just because you think your last name has always been spelled the way it is spelled does not mean that that's true names have changed over time and morphed sometimes the person the person didn't know how to spell their own name sometimes the census taker or the person writing down the information just wrote down what they heard them to the best of their ability and then of course with all of those handwriting variants the people who transcribed the records sometimes transcribe it differently than what was actually written so lots of different reasons why there are variables and just because you find a person who has the name spelled the way you think it should be living in about the same location doesn't mean it's your person and so these are the two things that I search by a name and a location now I'm going to show this you and I want you to keep this in mind because this is how I do a lot of my searching I'm gonna go ahead and click on search that's going to take me to the ancestry.com search page let me make this a little bit bigger for you here okay now always make sure that you're using the advanced search form okay that's super important when you do any search on ancestry that you're using that advanced search form so make sure you click show advanced if it says hide advanced then you're looking at the advanced search form okay now up here I'm going to uncheck match all terms exactly that's gonna reset every one of my field filters okay and I'm gonna type in a particular name in this case I'm looking for men named Daniel Jones okay now I could say match all terms exactly just to see what comes up and click search now I've got this filter to only show me records in the United States and I've got 78,000 results okay that gives me an idea of how popular this particular name is now of course I do have it marked exact so I'm drag this filter back a little bit I want not just exact and similar I want exact sounds like and similar what that's going to do is it's going to catch all variations of Daniel it's gonna catch Dan and Danny it's gonna catch places where it's been abbreviated da an apostrophe L it's gonna catch all those variations for me and I'm gonna go ahead and click update on that filter and now I'm up to 114 thousand okay again what I'm trying to do is just get an idea for how popular this particular name is in general so that I know what I'm dealing with that's part of an a reasonably exhaustive search is to have an idea of what it is that you're dealing with so that you can craft searches that would get you the information that you need now I happen to know that the Daniel Jones that I'm the multiple Daniel Jones that I'm looking at all lived in and around Hawkins County Tennessee so I'm going to come in here and edit my search and the field that I use just about more than anything in fact even more than a name field is this lived-in field I'm going to go ahead and change that to lived in and I'm gonna put in Hawkins County Tennessee okay now that's important because what it's going to do is it's only going to show me records that have some connection to Hawkins County Tennessee either the record was created there or something on the record says that has that information on it okay and so then I'm gonna go ahead and click search again and now I'm down to 76 okay by just putting in that one specific location now remember what I said about locations though boundaries are just lines on maps my family even though they lived in Hawkins County Tennessee I've been to Hawkins County Tennessee it is it is the most rural place you can possibly imagine in the hills of Tennessee and I imagine that they weren't always terribly clear on exactly what the county boundaries were I also imagine there was a lot of migration in and around those hills and so I'm gonna dial this filter back to County and let me just highlight it their County and adjacent counties so that it gets Hawkins County but it also gets any other counties that touch Hawkins County and I'm gonna go ahead and click update on that and now I'm up to 271 results okay that is a super manageable list of results even on a name as popular as Daniel Jones now of course you'll see here I've got this sorted by category not by record because I want to be able to look at my search results by specific database and I'm particularly interested in census records to start with I just want to see how many different Daniel Jones we're dealing with in that particular location now I can see here I've got an 1830 census looks like I've got some census substitutes which are probably tax lists or voter lists I've got an 1840 census and in 1850 census now the 1850 census as you know was the very first census that recorded the names of every person in the household so that's probably going to be the one that I want to look at first for this particular family just to see I get kind of get an idea of what's happening here so I have seven men listed who are named Daniel Jones or some variant of that and who live in Hawkins County Tennessee or an adjacent County in this case Sullivan County Tennessee Scott County Virginia or Greene Hancock or Greene County Tennessee so those are the counties that are adjacent to Hawkins County in some way and so now I've got a list of seven men here to deal with now one of the things that you're probably going to notice very quickly is that some of these in have birth dates that are very close to each other I've got an 1810 and 1813 and in 1816 so these three men are very close in age to one another and that's important to know because how do I know which one is my guy if I'm looking for a daniel Jones born about 1812 how do I know which one is is the right person I need to be able to keep these men separate not just for the sake of my first search but for the sake of all my subsequent searches as I go looking for additional information about these particular men I need to be able to keep them straight okay and even maybe even these two guys this 1828 Daniel Jones and this 1830 Daniel Jones you know if depending on if the year is off I want to go look at that original image make sure it really says that he's as old as he is not that somebody misread a number you know is he is he really 22 or z32 what was written on the original record not just what did the transcriber who indexed the record right down okay so I have this group of men now here to work with and I want to be able to keep them straight and sort them out now I will probably go and look at every single one of these census records so that I can sort through these men prior to 1850 the census records don't give you nearly as much information okay they're still valuable though because we can see that the only daniel Jones listed in 1840 are all living in Hawkins County Tennessee even though I've asked to see adjacent counties it looks like there weren't any living in adjacent counties so that helps me start to understand that whoever these men were that were living in some of these other counties were either not the head of household in 1840 or they were living elsewhere okay and that's important to be able to follow some of those other men so that I can rule them out as being my people and I'll just do that I'll do that both directions here I'll go to 1860 next I'm you know everyone so I'll just drag these so that they're in chronological order so that I can start to see patterns as I look through these records right all of my Hawkins County it's gonna see Daniel Jones's by 1860 are gone right they're not listed anymore we've just got that Sullivan County Green County and then Scott County Virginia guys listed that's important again important to know where did they go did they all died moved they all move together I could every one of these daniel Jones living in hoc in cat Hawkins County they related to each other again if I'm looking for my Daniel Jones I need to know how they relate how the relationships work not just that there are other men with this same name so I'll do that a lot of times I'll pull up every one of those records and I'll start looking for patterns that just pop out at me as I go from census to census looking through those particular records okay again 1870 nobody in Hopkins County that tells me that they likely moved because I doubt that all three or four of the Daniel Jones that we're living there died all in that same 10-year period of time so that's part of what we call a reasonably exhaustive search you'll notice I'm looking at information I'm not putting anything in my tree I'm not coming to any conclusions I'm just looking at information about the people that I have searched for under a name and a location and that's all right I haven't thrown everything of the search engine which sometimes we do sometimes we see this search engine the search box and we feel like we have to fill out every single field the problem is when we fill in every single field the search engines going to return us any piece of information that matches any single field we searched on and sometimes that is not the best approach to searching sometimes the best approach to searching particularly if we're trying to do a reasonably exhaustive search is to look at limited pieces of more restricted information so daniel Jones living in a specific County and just see what comes up okay and and if I wanted to go back out and look at other records I don't have to redo my search I can just click here on all categories that's going to take me right back out to my main search list I can look at things like Tennessee burials to see if people died I can look at disabled volunteer soldiers if any of them were affected by the Civil War I can look through other records early early to Tennessee tax lists all sorts of things available to me here to see other connections to men named Daniel Jones now use the census as the framework like I said but then I'm going to be looking for other records to help me support that information and to start collecting that information now once you end up with all of this information collected about all of these different Daniel Jones's now you've got to start sorting them all out and that's where I think it gets really fun right you start to see again patterns are you looking at the same two or three men over and over again are you looking at four or five different men is there a situation where one man has been enumerated more than once in the census because he has multiple families or is it a matter of three cousins who have all been given the same name as their grandfather and so here's just one of the tools that I used to do that I use spreadsheets so I go into a spreadsheet program and I list life events down the left-hand side of the page and then I list name variants across the top of the page so in this case I have one two three four five men that I have identified named Daniel Jones who were about the same age living in about the same place and here's how I have chosen to keep them straight so I started with just this top information right off this off the census or off of the information that I had collected I've got these three men in particular 1810 1812 and 1813 that would be really easy to mix up and it's not just because their ages are so similar or that because their birth locations are all right near one another it's also because every one of these men was married in the 1830s mid-1830s to women with similar names elizabeth eliza and elizabeth right so you can't even identify them just by their spouses name oh it's the Dan Jones married to Elizabeth no because we've got multiples of those as well if I can't find for me should I just leave that Phil blink because again it will help me realize help me start looking for patterns am i looking at the same person and I've just created an extra column here are these entirely different people if you come down here to the bottom you'll see I've got deaf information well I know that this particular Daniel Jones shows up later in Jefferson County Missouri and I think he dies around 1875 this Daniel Jones dies around 1880 in Adair County Missouri so again are these the same person and I just looked at multiple sets of information that report different things or these indeed two entirely different people so another one of the things that you can look at is the children in each family now that gets a little trickier for a couple of reasons remember prior to 1880 the census does not list the relationships of the people in any household it just lists the people in the household and so you can have a household 1850 1860 1870 you could have a household of people that could be parents and their children or it could be grandparents with some of their children and some of their grandchildren or it could be and I have one case where it's a single uncle and his sister so an aunt and uncle and they have nieces and nephews from three of their siblings families living with them and helping them work the family farm and so it looks like at first glance oh look it's a husband and a wife and a bunch of children because they all have the same last name except one of the kids because it's a child of a sister they all have the same last name they're all about the right age to be but it's not you know further investigation showed that this was actually a family era an aunt and uncle with some nieces and nephews working the family farm so don't assume from 1850 1860 and 1870 just because you have children in a household that those children belong to that couple okay you have to do further investigation you have to go look at each of those children and follow them through their lives and see if their parents show up in later census records listed as parents to them or look follow them through to their death records or their obituaries to see if those lists the names of their parents follow some of these men to their deaths see if there's a will or any kind of probate record or file that will list who their inheritors are who their children are all of that is necessary in order to put these family groups together and only once you put these family groups together can you definitively say that you've got the right person okay because if your ancestor was you know if you're looking for the damn Jones that is the father of your great-grandfather Samuel is that gonna be this Dan Jones who has a son named Samuel or is that gonna be this Dan Jones who has a son named Samuel again you're gonna have to be able to sort out these families so that you know who these particular groups of people are who these children belong to okay is there really only one Samuel or are there two Samuels you know are these two Samuels cousins are these two Daniel's cousins and their children you know migrated around or lived with different family members at different times that happened far more than you might think it did particularly in some of these close-knit tight-knit families who lived in isolated areas who migrated together from you know different parts of the country across the country into places like Missouri and Arkansas and Alabama okay so I have been gone through and over time I have added information about the children in each of these families and that was what finally enabled me to look at this information and know that I did in fact have five different Daniel Jones's that these were not two or three men who had been confused or mixed up or that you know that these were unique individuals that I was able to make sure that they were married to the right people in this case several of the children in this family listed their mother's maiden name I actually have some property records between this Daniel Jones and some of Elizabeth's and their family members with the same last name as her maiden name this Daniel Jones again several of the children have their mother's name listed turns out she's actually a Jones that's not a mistake Daniel this Daniel and this Margaret are actually second cousins and so again we have a potential for some really mixed up tangled up information if we don't keep it really clear you know in these cases I haven't discovered the maiden names yet of these women but I've been able to positively identify these children as belonging to these particular families so this is how I choose to do and I just start a spreadsheet with life events down the left-hand side of the page names across the top you'll see every once in a while there are name variants this particular guy has shown up in two or three different records with a middle initial of K haven't yet determined what that K stands for but none of these other guys ever showed up with a middle initial okay that's another way to keep track of some of those variants I have documentation to back up all of this information as I've collected it I just keep it in a file folder an electronic file folder on my computer I don't put stuff out I don't even write stuff up anymore I just use word processing actually I use OneNote and then spreadsheets and so I keep all of this straight until I'm sure I have it all figured out and then once I have it all figured out then I enter the information into my family tree and that's important that's okay once you get it figured out then you can enter the information into your family tree however that you're not done okay I would strongly strongly strongly encourage you to take the next step this is actually the final step in the Jenni illogical proof standard which is to write up right what you've discovered it doesn't have to be you don't have to be a novelist you don't have to make it too fancy you're not writing for a genealogical journal unless of course you want to but make some notes make some notes about how you came to your conclusions and then include those notes or attach those notes to each of those people in your tree so I would go into each one of those Daniel Jones and I would write up notes about why I know this Daniel Jones is this Daniel Jones why I know this is his wife why I know these are his children why I know this is where he lived so talk about why they are the person you think they are what makes them unique out of all of the other Daniel Jones and usually it's those relationships okay sometimes it's an occupation sometimes I didn't include that on this particular spreadsheet because all of these gentlemen were farmers but sometimes you can tell the difference between similarly named men because one was a blacksmith and one was a teacher and one was a farmer you know or whatever the circumstances may be so talk about why they are the person you think they are what is it that makes them unique from all the other people who has this who have the same name and then maybe even include some notes about why they're not the other person okay and you do that for yourself as much as for anybody else you do that so that you know four years five years from now when you come back or when somebody asks you a question you can go back to your notes and you can say here's why I came to that conclusion and that's important because sometimes new information comes to light sometimes you've done your reasonably exhaustive search and you've come to a conclusion and the new information that was not available before comes to light and you can go back to your conclude your conclusion and you can say oh well with this new information I can see that my original conclusion is not exactly accurate so I can alter it now based on this new information but if you don't have any notes or any recollection of how you came to that conclusion to begin with you might be a little bit at the whims of other researchers or it other records that come along you want to be able to make soundly reasoned conclusions about why the people in your tree or in your tree because of course we know that the what we're trying to do is climb our own family tree not someone else's I hope that that makes sense I hope that that has sparked your imagination about the possibilities that you have for doing really good reasonably exhaustive searches with the tools that you have available to you I hope you'll broaden your understanding of what records are available broaden your understanding a little bit about what search possibilities exist for you to see what kinds of records even just exist online at ancestry.com and then I hope that you've had some ideas come to you about ways in which you can correlate that information so that you can analyze it better so that you can look for those patterns so that you can make good decisions about who to include in your tree and who not to include in your tree and then I hope hope hope that you will just write up information and I just put it straight into the notes there are person notes on every person in family tree maker and in your online tree right up those notes about why you came to that conclusion so that you can defend that conclusion if you need to you can alter that conclusion if new evidence comes to light that is all I have for you today if you're watching this at our regularly scheduled time I will be on chat immediately following the presentation to answer any additional questions you might have until next time this is Krista Cowen have fun climbing your family tree