Created by Julie Goucher – Feb 2020 Using Wordclouds.com

One of the most frequent questions I am asked by Introduction to One-Name Studies students is HOW do you use family tree software, or HOW do you keep One-Name Study information?

It takes a while to find your rhythm in how you can retain information for a One-Name Study, the same also applies to One-Place Studies or anything else which relates to a gathering of genealogical data where the individuals could very well be unrelated, or some related, but others not.

I had a mental block of how these people who did not connect to each other could be retained within a genealogical software, and at the beginning I did a test case, just by creating one project, called Butcher test case and entered six different John Butcher’s – one was mine and the others were unrelated to my family, actually they came from a different county completely. I did not add lots of data, name, parents name and baptism dates. I then closed down the file.

Three days later I opened the Butcher test case file and did a search within the database itself. There listed, were six individuals bearing the same name, each had a unique reference number, this is generated by the software itself. I then made two additions to the file.

In our usual family tree software we have a root person, this is someone who is always the starting point when you open your software. In the case of my own family tree that root person is my late Mum, who is individual 04.

As I said, I added two individuals, myself who I made the root person and then my husband. I did a search of the database, there listed was an alphabetical list of everyone in the database, now 8 individuals, everyone unconnected from each other, apart from myself and my husband. I could now begin to see how the database would look. I then selected one other individual that had lots of information. I made that person the new root person and added the bear bones of three facts. I closed the database and left it for a few days.

The next time I opened the file up, the root person was the last person I added, I added one more fact, then added a new individual, making that person the root individual.

I then set about writing my methodology out, which is essentially what I have written here. I then created my actual database project called Butcher One-Name Study and selected my first individual….. I am going to pause here and come back to this thread (Advent 19).