Finding the right name in a genealogy record is exciting.
Finding the right person is a different matter.
This becomes especially important when you’re researching a common name. If your ancestor was named John Brown, William Smith, or even William Logan, there may have been several men with that name living in the same general area at the same time.
Sometimes they were even close to the same age.
That’s when things can get messy.
The Name Matches. What Else Matches?
Suppose you’re researching a William Logan who lived in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s.
You find a tax record for William Logan in the correct county. Then you find a land record for William Logan. A marriage appears. So does a census record.
It would be very easy to attach all four records to your William.
But before doing that, you need to know whether there was more than one William Logan in the area.
The tax record may belong to one man and the land record to another. The William who married in 1812 may not be the William who appears with your family in the 1820 census.
A matching name gets my attention, but I want more before I decide where the record belongs.
Build the Timeline First
One of the simplest ways to sort out people with the same name is to build a timeline.
Put every record you find in chronological order, including the ones you’re not sure about.
Add the date, location, occupation, spouse, children, neighbors, witnesses, land descriptions, church affiliation, and anything else that might help identify the person.
Once everything is lined up, problems often become easier to see.
Your John Brown is documented in Virginia in March 1810, but another John Brown is buying land in Kentucky two weeks later. Could they be the same man? Possibly, depending on the circumstances.
But now you have a question that needs answering instead of two records quietly sitting in the same family tree.
Give Them Separate Identities
When I suspect I’m dealing with two people who share a name, I separate them while I work.
William Logan #1 might be the farmer living near Mill Creek.
William Logan #2 might be the blacksmith whose wife was Margaret.
Those aren’t permanent names. They’re simply a way to keep the evidence from getting mixed together before I’ve figured out who is who.
This is especially useful when several records could reasonably belong to either man.
It also keeps me from deciding too early that every William Logan in the search results must be mine.
Look at the People Around Them
The people connected to a record can be more useful than the name you’re searching.
Who witnessed the marriage?
Who lived next door?
Who served as bondsman?
Who witnessed the deed?
Who appeared with the family at church?
Who administered the estate?
If the same group of people keeps appearing around one William Logan, you’ve started building a network around him. Another William Logan may have an entirely different set of associates.
Family, friends, neighbors, witnesses, and business associates can help separate two men whose names alone cannot.
Pay Attention to the Small Differences
Occupation can help. So can land ownership, tax status, military service, church membership, and the names of wives and children.
Even the way a man is described in a record may matter.
One record might identify William Logan as “Sr.” Another might call someone “William Logan, blacksmith.” A deed may include a residence or the name of adjoining landowners.
Those details are easy to skim past when you’re focused on finding a name, but they may be exactly what you need to tell two people apart.
Record Hints Can Make This Worse
Online record hints are useful, but they don’t know your ancestor.
A hint is usually telling you that something about the record resembles information already in your tree. It isn’t telling you that the identity has been proved.
If there are three John Browns of roughly the same age in the same county, the computer has the same problem you do.
Except it doesn’t have to clean up your tree afterward.
Before accepting a hint, I want to know why I believe that record belongs to my person. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes it takes more work.
It’s Okay to Leave a Record Unassigned
This is probably one of the most useful habits I’ve developed. If I find a record that might belong to my ancestor but I can’t prove it yet, I don’t have to attach it.
I can save it. I can cite it in my research notes. I can put it in the timeline with a question mark. I can come back to it later when I’ve learned more.
There is nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know which William Logan this is yet.” That’s much easier than discovering six months later that you’ve built part of your family around the wrong William.
I’ve become much less excited when I see the right name in a search result. Now I want to know whether he is the right person.
That takes a little longer, but it saves a tremendous amount of cleanup later.
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