Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Those of you who have been reading this site for a while may well recognise the image I shared a few days ago of the Seven steps of a One-Name Study. The third step is Synthesis and today we are going to explore what that means.

Synthesis is essentially taking the results of analysis and going a stage further, by giving some substance to your data, drawing conclusions about your surname.

You can do this by

• Exploring the meaning of your surname.
• Looking at the geographical origin of your surname – you might look at surname distribution maps for this stage.
• How and where possible variants to your surname came from.
• Looking at patterns of distribution – considering patterns of emigration and immigration, what caused those patterns of migration and was the migration permanent.

All these are discussed in the Pharos introduction to One-Name Studies course and in the Guild publication, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of a One-Name Study, available from the Guild.

Over the next two days we are going to be thinking and understanding surnames in more depth, so I do hope you will continue to read along and perhaps share any instances that you have come across and your thoughts.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Material is coming online at a phenomenal rate and yet what is online is only a fraction of what is available. Just as with our own genealogical research, with a One-Name study you should review material:

• What material you already have
  • Including what the material tells you in terms of
    • other people
    • their address
    • their relationship to your ancestor
• What you are requiring
• Has the material you are requiring, but do not have yet been made available?
• Is there any new material that might help you confirm or disprove what you are hypothesising?

I keep an active workbook which has two worksheets:

• Research Log
  • What I looked at and where I looked at it
  • What did I find and what did I NOT find which is just as important
• To Do List
  • What do I need to look at next
  • Who does the material relate to. There is not point saying to look for Salvatore Orlando in New Orleans in 1930 if he has a son also called Salvatore, so I usually put the year of birth in brackets so I can distinguish one from other.
• As part of this workbook I also keep a notes sheet. This is where I might write a note, perhaps which does not relate to what or who I am looking for, but I want to capture the thought before it vanishes!

How often you review data will be up to you, perhaps you do it:

• When you see an announcement of the release of a data set online.
• Perhaps when you are working through your to do list.
• Perhaps as a result of an enquiry from another researcher.
• Perhaps in preparation of a pending research trip.

There is no hard and fast rule and I would recommend that you record when you search for material on your log, because it could be the case that you have searched over a period to time to find the material is not online, anywhere despite multiple searches and you perhaps need to engage the services of a genealogist to assist you. It might also be the case that the material you seek is simply not available and has been destroyed either as a deliberate act or it was created (or not) too long ago. There is also the possibility that the material is in an unsuspecting place.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Every member of the Guild of One-Name Studies with a registered study has a profile page on the main Guild website.

The advantage of this is that when someone searches for the surname, if it is registered, the profile page is displayed. Some members have added lots of information about their study, the origins of the surname, the geographical spread. There are links to the website of the study and DNA project, if applicable.

I have written profiles for both of my studies, Orlando and Butcher both profiles are different in terms of content and depth. The Butcher profile is more of a work in progress and I should get this just how I want it sometime later this month (hopefully!).

The profile page is the shop window to your study. It enables people researching your surname to find you and the more details you add to your profile the more chance you have of receiving contact from others. To assist members I have provided this paper which can be downloaded

The webmaster gave a presentation at the February 2017 Guild seminar, which as titled a walk run around the website and there was time given to explaining how easy it was to produce and use member’s benefit. Members will find the recording in the members area under seminars and those undertaking the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies will see the link in their course material.

Once you have searched for a surname, using the search box on the right hand side of the Guild website and profile appears (if the surname is registered), if you look towards the bottom the website also lists the instances where the surname appears in the Guild indexes. Try doing a search for Butcher and see how many instances there are.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

I love the image below of the Seven Steps of a One-Name Study. The reason I like it so much is that it shows the seven key principles of a study and today’s post is about analysing material and what we observe.

One of the key elements as you commence or think of commencing a study is to look at the numbers. How big is your study going to be?

Courtesy of the Guild of One-Name Studies –  one-name.org

It is not simply a case of how big the study is, but how big the study is going to be in a specific genealogical location. My Orlando study is small in the UK, but across the English Channel and head to Italy and the surname is common. The surname occurs in other areas of Europe also. Then look to other locations, South America, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

As we analyse the numbers I consider the driving factors of why the number might be higher in one country over another. I expected my Italian distribution map to show Orlando “everywhere” and I was not disappointed. I wrote about this earlier and you can read that post HERE the third map on the page shows the spread of Orlando’s.

When I compare the map to similar maps, such as for the United States, I can see the increase of the surname in certain states and then when I look at the history of Italy and in particular the south of the country I can see what perhaps drove the migration from those areas to the United States.

As part of analysing and observing, I could draw an initial conclusion that:

• Migration from a financially poor Italy, especially in the south was because there there was the hope of a better life in the USA.
• Some states, such as Alabama and Louisiana might have a surge in migrant populations because of the decrease in enslaved people and a deficit of people to do menial and hard labour work.
• Religion might also draw an increase in migration, so those from a devout Catholic country might choose to migrate to similar countries, Argentina and Brazil for example.
• The reduction in availability of migration to the United States might have driven an increase to other countries such as England and Australia.
• Sicily was famous for the incredibly hard work of sulphur mining, in fact in the 19th Century, 90% of the world’s sulphur mining came from Sicily. As the work decreased did this influence where the Sicilians migrated to?

All of these elements bring together our thought processes as we observe our findings and analyse them. If we give some context to the size of the study that builds a sounder approach to a study and adds a dimension to it.

For those who want to read more on the size of a study you could read this earlier post  here and I promise to write a post about some of my observations and see if my hypothesis holds water!

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

I had to be a little creative with this one and instead of citations went with notations and citations.

Google gives this definition for notations:

“annotation, jotting, inscription, comment, footnote, entry, minute, record, item, memo, gloss, explanation, explication, elucidation, marginalia, exegesis, rare scholium“

We cite our sources so that we can:

• Document our research
• Show our research has credence. The research is sound and integrity as it’s base
• As a way of supporting our theory and assertions
• To show our sources are reliable
• To enable us and others to follow the research pathway

It is important to have consistent citations, but any citation is better than no citation. If your citations are not perfect, go back and correct them at some point. As long as you provide a trail for someone else to follow that will be sufficient in the short term.

A good source citation will tell you the answer to these questions:

• Who – Who is the source referring to?
• What- What does the source document?
• When – When was the event, and when was the source created?
• Where – Where is the source located (which repository or archive)
• Where – Where did you access it? (On Ancestry.com, online, at the library, etc.)

• Citations (Evidence Style) at Family Search Wiki
• Citations (Footnotes) at Family Search Wiki

My personal view with citations for my One-Name study is to document where the information came from. So for a US Census I would cite it as NARA and then say where I accessed the material.

For material from The National Archives (TNA) at Kew I would give the Census year, the RG reference and then say where I accessed the information. I do this because most organisations who enter into an arrangement with Ancestry, FindmyPast or The Genealogists will do so for a period of time. That means that at some point, material on Ancestry, or other providers might switch to another provider. There are documents in my files where I saw the material at a repository which no longer exists as a single establishment, but is now part of another, large organisation and I have subsequently seem the same material in more than one place.

An example of this is the image below, the 1881 Census for my Great Grandmother, Annie Prudence Harris, then aged 1 year and living in Puttenham Surrey with her parents and siblings.

• I first saw the document on a microfilm in the summer of 1989 at Guildford local studies library
• I later saw the document on a microfilm in 2003 at the Surrey History Centre, Woking
• I have a complete set of the Census material in my filing cabinet in my office as part of my Puttenham and Wanborough One-Place Study
• I have seen the image via Ancestry
• The source citation is actually Class: RG11; Piece: 780; Folio: 91; Page: 6; GSU roll: 1341183

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The best way to proceed with a Surname Project is to have given some thought to the approach of your study. It won’t always be a perfect method and it may change over time depending on a variety of factors and I touched on methodology briefly here and here.

I have changed my method during the time I have been a Guild of One-Name Studies member several times and did this as I changed my aims and developed the idea of using the Members Website Project (MWP) which is a Guild members benefit.

The method that you will use to collect material will vary depending on:

• The material you are collecting – which data set
• How easy it is to obtain the material?
  • Are you taking a research trip?
  • Are you grabbing a day to research whilst on a family holiday or with limited time?
  • Are you downloading a data set from an online resource with an access time frame? (it is free for a limited time ?)
• The way you are storing material that you download.

All of these considerations should enable you to establish a working plan. That way you should have a less cluttered approached to collecting material. Whatever you do, if you need to shelf one data set and work another because of any of the reasons mentioned here or others, record where you got up to and always record nil results. 

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

There are several ways you can learn about the concept of a One-Name Study or Surname Research.

The first is the Guild of One-Name Studies website, the second is the Introduction to One-Name Studies offered by Pharos for which I am the tutor and Thirdly, the Guild publication, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom – the art of a One-Name Study which is available from the Guild Shop.

The next opportunity is to join the Guild and take advantage of the many benefits offered to Members, the knowledge of around 2,500 members and by just beginning your study. Truth be told, you are possibly already underway with your study, you might not realise just yet.

On the Guild website there is some key pages that you might find very useful and these are:

• About the Guild
• About One-Name Studies
• Getting Started with One-Name Study

The Guild offers a range of educational opportunities, from monthly webinars and quarterly seminars. Most of the talks are recorded and available to members in a suite of educational offerings.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

I am almost too embarrassed to tell you where I keep my One-Name study material. I once had a boss who said “there are filers and pilers and which one of you?” It was a rhetorical question and I just gave a kind of smile instead of an answer.

In almost despair I bought a rather nice Curver box from Hobby Craft which takes A4 sheets and has some space over and have one for each of my studies. I then have several drawers and files in the filing cabinet relating to my One-Name Studies specifically and plan to make the entire website the home of my study material. Dumping all the paper and only retaining photographs, certificates and documents.

The website is backed up weekly and I hold a separate archive of material which is located in the cloud, on a USB stick, and an external hard drive. I will be also deposit a complete set of material in the library of the Guild of One-Name Studies – I am a belts and braces kind of girl, what can I say!

The key thing is to stop collecting material and process what you have, but every now and again I do gather material, a case in point is the material of the Orlando references that I found relating to those that perished in Dachau Concentration Camp and more on them, another time.

There is a section on organising a One-Name Study in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

As we research, we go on this fascinating journey. Gathering materials of individuals who may connect to our family, or just share the surname, either through birth, marriage or perhaps for some other reason.

If we look at a surname distribution map we can we can gain an idea of where people were at a particular point in  time. We can then wonder:

• Why they were there
• When did they get there
• Who were they with
• How long have they been with the people they are with
• How did they get there

All valid questions and these are just a few of the many questions that could be asked. One of my Pharos students is researching the Irish name of GLASSETT. I was a little curious.

I had a quick look at S & N’s website called The Genealogist – if you don’t have a subscription you can still do the search of a surname for each of the census decades. As it gives the result you can select to see the results in the form of a map, which is an excellent provision from S & N, sadly they don’t have maps for the Irish census, but they do for Great Britain, across the Census years, including what is described as a 1921 substitute.

The journey of following where individuals came from and went to is great for our studies, but what about the journey we go on as researchers? We need to record not just our positive outcomes, but also our negative ones. Track your thoughts of where you can look to research, expand your knowledge and create an understanding of the context of the lives of people that share the same name. What do we hope to find?

Document your journey, and that recording will become part of the history of your study.