It may amaze you to learn that almost all of us have Smiths or Jones or Williams ancestors. Depending on how significant they are to your family line, you may have struggled to identify them – or thrown up your hands in frustration. Here are some tips that might help clear up the confusion.
Carol Darrow
1. Use available identifiers. Note their birthplace as well as their birth date. Note their occupation — especially if it is NOT farmer. A blacksmith, printer, carpenter all have skills that they used throughout their lives.
2. Follow the geography. Most people move through climate zones that are similar to their native home. They often settle in areas that are ‘like home,’ whether it’s mountainous land suitable only for raising sheep or snow-packed territory where people get around on skis and sleighs.
3. Compare and analyze the information you gather. Compare birth, marriage and death dates. Could she have had a child at age 8? Would he have married at age 12? Would they have moved from Georgia to New Hampshire in 1860?
4. Use the process of elimination. If she could not have had a child at age 8, then someone else did. If he was not the bridegroom at age 12, was it someone with the same or similar name?
5. Make the most of family, associates and friends – the FAN club. Note who witnessed his will. Who witnessed his land deeds, especially when he was selling land. Look for unusual first names to differentiate among the many Smith’s or Jones’s.
Even when common given names are repeated in each generation, each one of these people has a specific year of birth, a specific year of death, and a specific family group that you can use to tell common-named individuals apart and track them throughout their lives.
~ Carol Cooke Darrow teaches beginning genealogy at the Central Denver Public Library on the second Saturday of each month.