Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

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Having decided to work on a One-Name or surname study you will want to be as well informed as possible in terms of methodology, ideas, hints, tips, tricks and everything in between.

The Guild offers seminars to members and non-members alike for a reasonable fee. In the main they are recorded with those being available to members only. We have just launched a webinar series and you read about those at the website. They will be available to non-members for a short period before becoming a members only benefit.

Each year there is a Guild conference and again the sessions are generally recorded and made available to members only.

There is a book that I hearterly recommend, The Surnames Handbook by Guild member Debbie Kennett and is available from the Guild and Amazon. There is also the Guild publication, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: Art of a One-Name Study,again available from Guild and Amazon.

Also the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course which runs usually twice a year and lasts for five weeks. It is totally offered online and global members are encouraged.

I will be back with other One-Name and surname research posts in the future and if you did find this series useful,or would like me to cover a particular topic, then please leave a comment.

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The ability to publicise a study, publish material and preserve a study are very much entwined.

The best way of advertising your study is to share information and talk about the fascinating characters we meet as we build our studies. We can share information in a variety of ways, from writing articles, comments on social media and even with a DNA project.

The Guild has a wonderful project called the Members’ Website Project (MWP) – this is the ability for those members of the Guild with a registered study to host a website on the Guild’s website. The study can continue to be worked on and at the same type is preserved. You can see a full list of studies that are currently within the MWP here

In addition to a website blogs are a common feature of a number of One-Name researchers  and the ability to reach others as it shares across social media. Over the years this blog has been in existence I have shared elements of my own genealogical research and of my studies, and currently I have a blog for each of my studies. Over the coming months I may rethink that approach and share snippets here or I may elect to keep things as they are, there are pros and cons for both approaches.

A number of members, me included have published articles about their study in broad terms, individuals within their study as articles with some going a step further and publishing a book about their study. The Guild offers the option to archive a set of papers, files, Gedcom’s, certificates within the Guild’s library, of which there are two. One size does not fit all and members can choose which service to use and they can use more than one. Being a belts and braces kind of girl, that is my preferred option and I also have an archive of material myself. It is even possible to preserve a blog, and at that is one of the benefits for retaining a blog for each study because the blog can be exported and deposited with the Guild library.

Whether you have been working on your study for a number of years or are new to the concept, do take time to consider how you might publish & preserve your work. There can be nothing more sad than to hear that someone spent a lifetime on research and after their demise the entire lot was simply discarded. Whilst it would be possible for someone else to reconstruct the same study there would most certainly be elements that could not be gathered again. With the issues around Data Protection countries like New Zealand have changed the access to some documents and the same has happened in some States in the US.

A number of these elements are covered in both the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course and the book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of One-Name Studies published by the Guild of One-Name Studies.

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One of the Guild commitments expected of study registrants is to respond to all enquires received. In fact study holders like nothing more than talking about their study and sharing the gems they have discovered. They too, welcome submissions to the study.

All registered studies with the Guild have a profile page and I always encourage fellow members and those at the beginning of their study to set up the profile. I shared a number of them a little earlier in this series, and you can read that post here. The profile page sits on the Guild website and the profile will be displayed if the surname searched for is registered. Profiles can be updated at anytime. On the profile page is a link to a website, should the study have one, the Surname DNA project and the means to contact the study holder.

If a member has not registered their study they may list their surname interests and these are where the member has substantial work on a surname in either a particular place or perhaps they are not at the point of wanting to register. However, registration of the surname does yield certain benefits, such as Study Profile page, access to the Guild’s Members Website Project and participation in the Guild’s Marriages challenges. Essentially, a Profile page is the shop window of your study and without registration and the profile page how will people know you are beginning your One-Name and surname research journey?

Without sounding fanatical, you need to work your study, by that I mean advertise it, share information from the study with the wider genealogical community. Take advantage of the Guild’s offering, a website and profile page, write articles and blog posts. The power of social media is tremendous, so please do not overlook it. Over the years I have talked and written about my studies and have had a number of articles published in both the Journal of One-Name Studies and Family Tree Magazine (UK).

We delve into this element of advertising and promoting your study in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course and there are a number of sections in the book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of One-Name Studies published by the Guild of One-Name Studies.

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One of the elements of drawing conclusions is understanding the meaning of the surname.

Surname are typically formed from the following, withe those in bold the most common:

• Patronymic – based on the given name of a male ancestor and is the male equivalent of a Matronymic surname.
  • Jones, Erickson, Williams
• Matronymic – based on the given name of a female ancestor and is the female equivalent of Patronymic. These are less common that the male equivalent.
  • Megson, Babbs,Parnell
• Genitive –
  • Manners, Squires,
• Locative – based on a place or area
  • Redhill, Newton
• Occupational
  • Butcher, Baker, Thatcher
• Nicknames
  • Redhead, Toogood, Fox

Surname with multiple origins may well have multiple meanings. Other considerations are that language, French and Latin has influenced English surnames.

Italian surnames are different again and can be broken down into these core groups:

Pet names, Botanical names, those reflecting kinship, geographical, names relating to animals, insects, fish, birds, occupational, objects, those reflecting desirable or undesirable traits and Compound names, which are surname made up of more than one word. I will come back to Italian surnames in another post at a later date, after this initial series has finished.

In this section too you can look at events that might affect families, such as illegitimacy and foundlings. One thing you might also seek to understand is how much more work you have to do in a particular country or record set. By using a spreadsheet to track marriages for example for England and Wales you will be able to see how many marriages you still need to access.

If your surname is one that is generally speaking common in one or more regions, then you may choose to analyse the stray examples.

Further elements are covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course as well as reading Seven Pillars: The Art of a One-Name Study published by the Guild of One-Name Studies.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back tomorrow talking about communications linked to our studies.

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Having downloaded and acquired data you need to do something with it. Not every member of the Guild does family reconstruction, and that might depend on the size of your study and your personal preference.

Personally I do reconstruct families and with a large study that is time consuming, but worthwhile.

Remember though, this is YOUR study so as long as you meet the requirements of the Guild of One-Name studies, you can make your own rules!

Reconstruction, in the main, can be started from either of two points:

• Census
• Marriage Records

However, it does depend on how you have decided to maintain your database. You might have elected to

• include every person in which case you will have random references
• only include family groups and keep others in spreadsheets.

I know Guild members who use both methods and there is no right or wrong answer here. I personally start from marriages and keep a spreadsheet of marriages devised by Country, so England and Wales from a mixture of FreeBMD and the GRO, Scotland and so forth. I add a number of fields into the spreadsheet, which are mainly for my benefit – have I the marriage certificate or a faux certificate from a Guild marriage challenge, have I entered the details into the Guild indexes and have I uploaded a copy of the certificate to the website.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to the Guild Chairman, Paul Howes in which Paul explained that he also starts from a marriage and the details of his spreadsheet. After our conversation I pulled up my spreadsheet and could see an real advantage to adding the extra fields – the date of the marriage and the church.

For readers outside of England and Wales or unfamiliar with the GRO and FreeBMD. The indexes merely tell you the marriage, the registration district and which volume and page. So in order to gain the details such as occupations, father of bride and groom, witnesses you need to send for the certificate which depending, on availability and time frame will between £6 and £9.25. Those of us who have purchased certificates and provided the information to the indexes help others and the marriage information populates into Marriage Locator. Of course, an alternative to the GRO certificate the marriage from the Parish Registers will also provide the relevant details.

Another element to looking at the data you have is spellings of the surnames – Surnames have changed over time caused by a variety of things, language, accents, unfamiliarity to the name, in the case of some, the alphabet changes and the ability of reading & writing.

We look at the topic of variants and deviants in the course and the differences between them. It is not necessary to register a variant and they can be added over time and research.

Analysing death and burial records might lead you to believe that there was an epidemic or alike of illness such as Cholera. Other analysing of London parishes might lead you to Charles Booths study of London

It is during this stage that you will draw a conclusion which might change over time as more research is done, or you might form a hypothesis .

You might find that during this phase that the evidence and tells you one thing, but you get a sense of X, and that can be determined by a DNA project.

We talk more about a number of these points in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.  Meanwhile, I’ll be back tomorrow talking about drawing conclusions from Data

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Any One-Name and surname research project will involve the collection of material, what I refer to as raw data.

Regardless of where your surname originated from or where you reside, to undertake a One-Name Study and register this with the Guild the study should be global and there is no pressure on how soon you go global.

So what follows below, in no particular order, are some global quick wins. Sites where you can acquire material from without a paying subscription, even if you acquire the material and do not process it immediately – there are some real gems and my Orlando study has benefited greatly by several of the sites.

• FreeBMD – General Registrars Office (GRO) of Birth, Marriage and Death indexes.
• Marriage Locator  – for Marriages England & Wales 1837-1911
• The National Archives (Kew, London)  – This site has made material available in some of the main subscription based sites in addition to their own site, with the availability to download a CSV file of the records in a particular data set, for example wills (1384-1858). The data sets online can be found here but there is significant amounts of data at TNA that can be found in the catalogue. Also the catalogue has links to material at other archives
• FreeReg & FreeCen – both volunteer sites and therefore not complete, variable amounts of data and continually being updated. FreeReg is for Parish Records and FreeCen is Census
• National Archives of Australia – This is an excellent site and whilst some records are available to be digitised upon payment of a fee, if others have already paid that fee the digitised record is available to view and download
• FamilySearch
• Trove – a fantastic resource of Australian newspaper material
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)
• FindAGrave – a volunteer project continually being updated
• Collection at Library of Virginia
• West Virginia records online
• Reclaim the Records
• Antenati (Ancestors for Personal Data Research) – a total gem for Italian genealogical records
• Newfoundland Grand Banks
• British Home Children Database Database up as far as IG and work is continuing
• Modern Newspaper Index

We talk more about Collecting data in the in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course. Meanwhile, I’ll be back tomorrow talking about what to do with the data once you have collected it.

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Undertaking a One-Name Study and surname research should be fun, so it is worth taking time to think about the way forward.

It doesn’t matter if you change systems, I did three times before I proceeded with what I have now and I wish that someone had said that to me when I started all those years ago with reams of paper!

There is no right or wrong  way to proceed, you need to select the option that works for you. If you don’t, the study won’t proceed and it will stop being fun!

What follows below are a few considerations:

• Create your Study Profile – If you are a Guild member with a registered One-Name Study you will have one set up for you. This is the shop window of your study. It alerts others to the study and encourages interaction. The profile can evolve as the study does. Here are a few profile examples:
  • Orlando
  • Howes
  • Eastlake
  • Baldacchino
  • Keough
  • Chandler
  • To see others insert a name into the search box on the right hand side of the website
• Decide how to keep your study
  • Raw data into spreadsheets
  • Database using a Family History programme. – The most popular amongst Guild members are Roots Magic, Legacy and Family Historian
  • I personally keep spreadsheets of vital records and once I have started family reconstruction the individuals are added to the database, I use RootsMagic
• Website – We touch on this a little later in the series, but do give this some consideration, especially if you decide you will want to join the Guild’s Members Website Project and use TNG – A good example of a site using TNG is the Howes Study.
• Methodology 
  • Be organised – where are you going to keep your archive of material? Material to be processed? Consider Evernote or One-Note and files in Dropbox.
  • Use the Guild Library to archive your records, even if you have a website
  • Consider paper versus electronic or both
• Data Overload – It is easy to get bogged down in material as data sets are released. By all means download the material as you find it, but process it into your study in a methodical way. If you need to, write out a research flow chart that explains your data process method.
• Keep a ONS Log – This does not need to be grand.
  • word document, spreadsheet, your genealogy programme or notebook
  • Record where you search and what you find. Include a date and the URL if it is a website.
  • Record include nil results so that you know that you have searched
  • You can revisit sites as data is continually being uploaded to websites and in some cases records offices may switch providers
  • As you search you might find you want to create your to do list
• Citations for your work – this is really important, if you need to revisit a database, document or archive this will help you and will save time. It also means that others can follow your research and know where the information came from.
• Talk to others – Guild members are amongst the friendliest genealogists I know. Sharing of hints, tips and advice is readily available. A One-Name study is not a case of one size fits all, every study is different, just as every researcher is different.

More about Organisation of a study is covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

Last week, when I launched this One-Name Studies and surname research series I mentioned the website Surname Profiler and included the map which detailed the occurrences relating to the surname of Orlando.

As I was writing that post, which you can read here I noticed that there appeared to be instance of the surname in India, which I can only assume that I had overlooked previously.

The region highlighted is Maharastra and this is a great example of what I said yesterday when I commented that a map can prompt thought, discussion and research.

Maharastra came under British rule from 1818, first under East India Company and then from 1858, the Crown. Not getting very far, I turned to FamilySearch

Searching for Orlando in India revealed four results, one Orlando which was a death in 1869 in Barrackpore, Bengal, India,  two of the results related to the surname of Orland which I discounted and the other Urlando which I find curious, for no particular reason.

I then put the surname of Urlando through the map at Surname Profiler and was surprised at the results.

Low results in Australia, United States, Europe, India and China, Low results in Canada, but more than the United States, and Italy had a high concentration.

From just this one action of looking at the frequency of the surname, I have found an instance of the surname in India, been surprised by another surname, which may or not be a variant, revisited the map for the output of the surprise surname. I have a hunch that I might explore the surprise surname a little more and explore records in China. Not to mention I still need to explore the Orlando & Italian connection to Maharastra.

With a One-Name study, you need never be genealogically bored again!

More details and information is covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

Surname distribution maps add a new and different dimension to a One-Name study.

A surname may well have it’s origins in one Country, and a map can provide an interesting insight to how migration can influence the geographic spread of a surname. Going a step further, historical events can influence migration which in turn can be identified using a distribution map.

Especially those of us researching European surnames, a map can be used to identify where to start. In Europe, excluding UK and Ireland, events are recorded in the town & village in which they occur. If you are researching and find a Census or passenger list which simply lists the Country of origin as the place of birth, that is helpful, but not going to break those brick walls down.

courtesy of Gens.info

In my Italian family I have the surname of Virciglio. This map from Gens.info shows where the surname appears in Italy and the Islands. As you can see it is not a name that is widespread, although it is reasonably popular in “my” bit of Sicily.

We know, because history tells us, that there was significant peaks of migration from Italy and in particular south of the mainland and the islands. Famine was widespread, the only way of having a reasonable life was to migrate to other Countries and one of those countries was the United States.

Courtesy of Gens.info

Using another map from the same site shows the distribution for the same surname across the United States. This is especially helpful for the United States because, like Italy, records are held at local level, so I can discount all the states where there is no colour, at least initially.

Do surname distribution maps provide all the answers? – No, but they do provide scope for further research and considerations.

Courtesy of Gens.info

That said, when I insert my Italian study surname into the Gens.info website, the map looks like this which does not tell you anything beyond it is a popular surname and especially in the South and in Sicily.

There are a number of other surname distribution sites covering a number of other European Countries and there is a very useful Facebook Group too.

Don’t think that this site is not worth exploring if you are researching British surnames, a quick search of two Guild registered surnames, Butcher and Howes both produced a map, and whilst not the colour explosion of the Orlando map, certainly of interest nonetheless.

More details and information is covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.