Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Before the internet those researching a specific study largely did so via a series of written methods. As we entered into a digital modern age websites were for large organisations. Over time the scope for websites and online presence expanded and expanded and as a result a good many Guild of One-Name Studies members have some form of online presence.

Initially, those that joined the Guild could have a profile page and that was akin to a website presence. It enabled members to have a platform that advertised and shared information about their study. Profile pages, like studies themselves come in all shapes and sizes. Some members have very detailed profiles, such as this one for the Baldacchino Study and personally I would like to see all members aspire to this level of detail, myself included! The Orlando Profile is HERE and the Butcher Profile is HERE.

Members are limited by only their imaginations for the scope of the material that can be included on the surname profile. If you look at both of my profile pages above you will see there is a difference between my own studies. At some point in the coming weeks I will write a few posts about creating a Profile page and how those profile pages will evolve over time.

The Members’ Website Project is one of the Guild benefit’s that I adore! These sites are hosted on the Guild website, as a way of preserving, publishing and sharing information about a study. Anyone who has undertaken the Pharos course in the last few years will know that I love the benefit offered to Guild members, at no cost (unless a member opts for a TNG site in which case the licence is around $33 USD) providing a website and yet still enabling the member to work upon their study and achieve the material at the same time. It does not matter how much material you have already, in fact I personally think it is better to have little rather than be in my position and have almost three decades of material to digitise.

Other options are for Facebook groups and pages for a study, or a Twitter feed. Some members opt for a blog structure and a number of members have all of the above! Whatever method you choose be sure to consider all the options. Top Tip – Don’t leave it until the last minute to start a website. The more paper and files you have the harder it will be to get going!

Surnames are curious things, despite us all having one. A variant is deviation from the surname you are interested in. A number of members of the Guild of One-Name Studies have relatively few variants, others have a phenomenal amount.

For my studies, I have relatively few variants:

• Orlando – variants are Orlanda and Orlande
• Butcher – variant is Butchers

For those that heard me speak last week at #FamilyTreeLive will perhaps recall my mentioning the surname of Urlando. I have certainly mentioned it here previously and I have not made a further decisions on whether this a likely variant or not. I expect to though in the coming year.

Variants likely occur because of accents, the inability to know whether a name was spelt incorrectly or not.

I go into detail more during the Pharos introduction to One-Name Studies course and I also discuss the concept of a deviant surname.

Whenever I teach the Pharos course in One-Name Studies one of the things that comes up either via email or via the online discussion forum is the concern of being global with a study.

One of the principles of a Guild of One-Name Studies registered study is that the study should AIM to be global.  No one expects a member to register a surname with material from every Country on the planet!

When the Guild first started, back in 1979 the phrase was a “substantial body of data” and even that means something quite different in the internet age. A substantial body of data is very easily achieved in the modern internet age, compared to when the founder members of the Guild were working on their study. I took three years to extract the index references for the birth, marriages & deaths in England and Wales for the surname of Orlando, compared to about three minutes using FreeBMD. Times change. Nor do we have the volunteers to check when your study went global or when you plan to do so!

The commitment is to aim to be global. If you are living in the United States and you want to undertake a One-Name study you likely start on home turf – you might choose to start with the State you reside in, the state where you know your ancestors lived, the state that has the most occurrences of the surname, or you may choose to work though each State, alphabetically, extracting and gathering what material you can, depending on the availability of records. Whatever your choice, it might, depending on surname take you a decade to leave the United States. That does not mean you are not global, just that you are working on your plan. Very few of us can spend every waking moment on our studies,even if it appears that we do or we want to!

What is the point of global?

We live in a world where migration, short and long term is easily achieved and that is not new; migration has been going on for centuries. All that has changed is the speed in which the migration takes place. Migration from England to Australia or Botany Bay took months in the transportation era, yet the last time I flew it was, from my former home in south west England to mid New South Wales a mere 39 hours (inclusive of waiting for the various checks, boarding, or other tedious matters).

Global, allows us as researchers to find people we actually did not know we had “lost”. Looking at my own paternal Grandmother’s family. She was the youngest of four and the only one to remain living in Sutera, Sicily. Her brother and two sisters migrated to the United States and thanks to the amount of material online and the enumerator who listened and wrote what he heard and the individual being specific, I was able to trace the brother with ease.

Now, I am not studying Licata as a One-Name Study, but if I was I would be able to identify the family and look to what happened to them in the future. I could then focus on our Countries too, such as Canada as getting into the United States from Canada was often easier. Alternatively Australia, because when the United States began restricting migration in 1919 following the First World War and then later with the  financial crash in the early 1930’s migrants began looking to other options. There were only two. Stay where you were which for some was not an option or to look to migrate somewhere that was taking in those from other countries.

So whatever the surname, the chances are there are folk who have migrated as a way of avoiding persecution on the grounds of politics or religion, Displacement following war. Transportation to the United States or later Australia, or ten pound Poms as a plan to populate other parts of the “Empire”. Or perhaps due to working in the military, or East India Company.

Of course, there are plenty of people who work on a study in small segments. I was talking to a Guild member recently, who is working on a surname that is very common and happens to appear in my family. I promised to send them some material and during the course of the discussion we talked about where we started our research, how we kept it, both in terms of spreadsheets &/or genealogical software and also did we have more than one tree on our TNG sites. For those of us working on big studies, especially those with a huge presence in England and Wales it makes sense to start by County or by groups of counties, but sooner or later there will be migration whether that is from Cornwall to Cumbria, Devon to Derbyshire, Surrey to Sterling, Perthshire to Powys or anywhere else that takes your fancy on a global scale!

Whatever surname you are working on, go global at some point, otherwise how will you be able to reconstruct family groups or know what happened to someone in your study?

Every member of the Guild of One-Name Studies structures their studies differently. Some members enter their data straight into a genealogical database, others extract data from various sources and they analyse the data. Some collect data and have done since the concept of a study was first considered and is entirely paper based with the thought of making the data available electronically overwhelming because of the need to enter the data into a programme.

There is no right or wrong way to work on a study, merely your way. There is always scope for “improvement” or change. I personally changed my way at least three times before I found the way that was comfortable for me. It is really akin to buying a car, none of us buy the first we see, we take them for a spin first then evaluate. Working on a study is no different.

What I would always recommend is evaluate what you want to do with your study. Do you want a website and to exhibit family reconstructions? Do you want to “collect” and gather material and go no further?

The internet age enables so much more of our studies. It enables us to connect with others quicker on a global scale. It enables us to gather data quicker on a global scale and to display that data for all to see.

As someone who gathered the indexes from St Catherine’s decades ago which took three years to achieve for a “foreign” surname I was able to download the material from FreeBMD in a matter of minutes. I then cut and pasted the data into a workbook in Excel.

The internet has enabled me to create a website and to share the material on that site in almost piecemeal fashion using the marriage index from FreeBMD. I described that process a bit earlier in this series. I also used the Guild indexes which are typically a members’ benefit; that works especially well for a common typically English surname and enables me to at least identify spouses for some of the 37,000 Butcher marriages from 1837-1983 in England and Wales. Having identified the individuals from the marriage, including the names of the respective father’s I can build the family group, their children and their subsequent marriages, the parents and siblings. I use the Census and record every factor as an event as that enables me to build a timeline in the life of an individual.

However you use choose to do your study, enjoy it, use the benefits the Guild offers to it’s members (and the public in the cases of two indexes). Connect with members and engage with them, whether that it sharing information on a marriage between your studies or at a seminar.

One thing I would stress is don’t get into data overload! If you download material have a file in the cloud where you can put the information, record it in your research log and then come back to it in the future.

Do what you enjoy!