I just completed one of the messiest same-name research projects I have ever worked on. Researching an individual who shares the name with others in the community is something I feel I’ve become a bit expert at doing. If you’ve done any measurable amount of research in Scandinavia, then you have also had to determine which person belongs in your tree and which person is the neighbor.
As a quick summary, my subject’s name in this project was Johanne Marie Jensdatter. She lived in the most northern tip of the Jylland Peninsula of Denmark, just a few kilometers from Frederikshavn. Her community was small, and she lived at a time with great records, so this project should have been rather straightforward. The joke’s on me—it was not! The public tree I started with showed Johanne with children from three different fathers, none of whom she married. A quick bit of census work showed four different Johanne Marie Jensdatters in the parish, all having children at the same time. Two of these women were quickly eliminated from my probable list of ancestors just due to the make-up of their families in the census records. The other two households were very similar, and children from the public tree appeared in both of these households. So, how did I solve it? And what do you do in these situations?
There are a few tips that I give everyone when confronted with same-name research. And I took these to heart when solving this problem. It was great to see that I’m giving out sound advice because these are the same steps I took, and it worked!
- Remember linking patterns. These include naming patterns, siblings, geography, chronology, social status and property. I wrote a series of posts about these concepts that can be found with the links above.
- Use census records as a guide. Like I mentioned, I found the households with a possible Johanne Marie Jensdatter. And while that helped, it didn’t solve all of my problems. Those records did provide a roadmap for my next steps.
- Find christening records for every possible child born to the parents. In this case, I had two women with the same name, four years apart in age, both having several illegitimate children. This part got a little overwhelming, but I wrote down the name of each child, the birth year and the father’s name.
- Using the christening records, look closely at the witnesses. This was the magic step for me this time around because these Johanne Marie Jensdatters pulled a crazy move—both had a child (or a few children) with a man named Thomas Christensen of Elling. When I looked at the witnesses to the christenings, it was clear which children belonged to the same family group because I had repeat witnesses at the christenings for each mother.
- Take good notes, color code, and think! You have a brain, so use it. I looked for patterns in these records, and I was able to use the census record groups in conjunction with the information from the christening records. It became clear who belonged to which Johanne Marie Jensdatter.
- Document the heck out of the public trees. Cleaning up this tree mess was a challenge. I included every record for each family member. I put alerts on each Johanne Marie Jensdatter to state that thorough research proves the family groups as they currently sit. I also included a chunk of my research notes to show why I am right. I can only hope that other individuals will pay attention to these notes and follow my suggestions.
I’m planning to present a full class about same-name research at RootsTech in March. You can absolutely bet that these Johanne Marie Jensdatters and all of the children will be featured. It’s fun to do hard projects sometimes. And it’s always really fun to prove to yourself that you have good critical thinking skills.