Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

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. Will touch more on this element in the next few days.

Those who are a members of the Guild will see an article in the Journal on the the subject of Methodology in the next few months, but do take the time to devise a working “action” plan.

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 or from Amazon.

The next opportunity is to join the Guild and take advantage of the many benefits offered to Members, the knowledge of around 3,000 members and by just beginning your study. Truth be told, you are possibly already underway with your study, you might not realise just yet.

There are on the Guild website 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 monthly webinars, which for the current year are about the stages of the Seven Pillars. You can read about them HERE.

If you are in the UK, you could attend one of our seminars, these are round every quarter and the location varies across the country. The next one is in Sunderland with others scheduled – you can see the list of presenters for the Sunderland seminar and the list of forthcoming seminars HERE.

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 and I have submitted an article to the Journal of One-Name Studies, based upon a response to a question that I received the last time the course ran.

We associate the word Jubilee with an anniversary typically 25 or 50 so I am stretching this Jubilee post, but only a little.

The Guild of One-Name Studies was founded in 1979 and will be 40 years old in 2019.  As a way of commemorating the Guild, the spirit of surname research on a global scale and our global membership, we endeavoured to find a project that could commemorate our organisational achievement and one that could act as a way of those members without a study cutting their teeth on one.

Let me introduce you to the Ruby One-Name Study which is a collaborative study. The Ruby study has a Blog which you subscribe to and keep up to date with. In the meantime there is a team of Guild members working on the project and making contributions. In the meantime, I have searched my Butcher database and will be submit my Butcher & Ruby marriages to the project and reconstruct the family lines. There are also some Ruby references in a variety of Italian records which I will also submit to the project at some point. If you want to contribute to the project, do drop the project leader an email.

There are a few other things planned to celebrate the Guild’s 40th birthday and for that announcements will be made via the Guild website.

We are all individuals and our studies are just like us, totally individual. One of the great things I love about the Guild is the is the ethos of sharing with others, members and non-members alike, and encouragement for others to follow others great ideas.

A great example of this came from the Sennett One-Name Study A while ago Corinne shared the concept of a virtual cemetery on Find A Grave. Essentially a study holder creates a virtual cemetery on the Find A Grave website and rather than the cemetery be a location, the common theme is the surname. Here is the Virtual cemetery I created for the Butcher surname. It is not anywhere near complete and may never be so, but it is in existence and not only enables me to add individuals to the virtual cemetery, but also to “advertise” the Butcher study – thanks Corinne!

In a similar vein I have shared my methodology as a way of highlighting a possible way that another might do their study. We all read material written by others and reflect upon that and perhaps adopt an element of what we have read into our own lives or existence. Why should our One-Name studies be any different.

Issac Newton is known for his quote “Standing on the shoulders of Giants” and that is what this about.

The Guild of One-Name Studies is one of the most progressive genealogical organisations that I know, certainly in the UK at least. Firstly, full disclaimer, I am a Trustee and an Officer, so I am bound think positive things. Do we always get it right, no we don’t and I say that as a Trustee with integrity and a realist. We try and always seek to improve and give members value for money.

I also belong to a substantial genealogical group in the UK whose membership fees are more than the Guild’s. They, in my personal view give me less value for money than the Guild and the question of. is that important is perhaps a topic for another day and fair warning, that day may never come! It comes down to what is important to us as individual genealogists.

So why is H for Help? The Guild is one of the most helpful and knowledgeable group of people that I know. There is always a member who knows the answer to any question asked, whether that is asked via the Members only Facebook group, the members only email mailing list or via the Web Forum which is in the members room. We also have a Facebook page and non-members can use that ask questions. There too, is more than knowledge.

There are the Guild services, such as those folks who are part of the infrastructure of the Members’ Website Project or those members who keep the website going and remain migrating the material from the old part of the site to the shiny new one. Members who operate what is called a Marriage Challenge and I promise to write more about that in the future. (For those of you who have been reading along, I have kept a list of my future promised posts! – the challenge is not loosing the list!). Members who do the Webinars offered by the Guild or the seminars which are held quarterly. Members who work on the journal, those who write the articles, the editor or the proof readers.

The Guild offers all those services and member benefits totally on the work of volunteers – there is NO paid staff, and that is what I find remarkable – Members helping Members.

Courtesy of the Guild and the work of two former webmasters who made various adaptions.

Of course those shown in the above image are just the volunteer run member benefits, that does not include all the other volunteers who work behind the scenes making sure the wheels turn and don’t fall off! Anyone who has contacted the Guild telephone help desk by telephone would have likely to have spoken to Roy in England who answers the calls made to the UK or US free (toll) number or Karen who answers the Australian free (toll) number and that is just one example.

So whatever the question, there is a chance that one of our almost 3,000 members knows the answer or knows someone who does! And that is before we even consider what each member with a registered surname knows about the individuals in their respective studies. How could H have been for anything else but Help?

All Guild members with a registered study sign up to aiming to make their study global. Over recent years a number of people have expressed concern about the global aspect & commitment. There is no pressure to be global and never has been. Members simply have to agree that they will be global at some point.

Depending on the surname and the geographical spread of the surname being studied, some members will be more global quicker than others. As I have already talked about my Italian Orlando study was global from the beginning and the Butcher study too is already global, although I have not finished the UK. If you are in the US and the same is European, perhaps German or Italian in origin then you are going to be global from the beginning, but it could take you, depending on your initial State focus ten years to leave the US and that is fine.

Most of us start our One-Name study from our own research, in the case of the Butcher study I had individuals in my own ancestry who had migrated to Australia and Canada, so those individuals were my catalyst into those respective Countries. I talked about focus points of the Italian study just recently.

All our studies are individuals, sure there will be overlap with others who are researching large studies or Italian studies but the structure of my studies will be different to others, despite there being similarities.

So if you are concerned about the globalisation of your One-Name and surname research don’t be. Register and establish your aims, focus, methodology and then decide where geographically you are going to start. Beginning is the hardest part and then the rest is easy!