Many times when I have trouble linking a person with a name, such as Pat mentioned , I find the crucial piece of information in obituaries. When searching for old obituaries you may need to tweak the name i.e. John David Jones could be J.D. Jones, John D Jones, J. David Jones and the wife is listed as Mrs. J.D. Jones, etc. Obituaries for son/daughter of said parents can be useful as well. These obituaries can also help you differentiate a child Susan Jones from another Susan Jones by providing their current residence, married name and husband.

In some states like California when a woman changes her name there can be 2 birth & marriage certificates, one with the birth name and another with the adopted or married name. This was the key to one a finished a couple weeks ago. The woman was given her mothers maiden name at birth and later took on her mothers husband name. There were 2 marriage records, one with the birth name and one with the adopted name, DOB and Date of marriage were the same.

Middle names?? Most of my dad's relatives, including some of the ladies, use their middle names exclusively,,

Another curveball,, about 1/4 my aunts used names that did not derive from their given name. My #1 favorite grand Aunt Peggy,, was Georgina or Georgena or Georgiana,,

A Royal PITA :mad:


I b having fun :D

I had a bunch of relatives that totally erased all traces of their origin in the old country once they arrived. Changed their names etc. No way to trace them back. They burnt their boats.

With this, and the mention of middle names, something about Grant got me thinking. Ol' Hiram Ulysses got to be who he was on the $50 bill simply by the guy who nominated him & greased the skids into his USMA appointment screwing up his name. Used his middle, and then added a maternal family-side Simpson in the (new) middle. He ran with it, not wanting to upset the USMA apple cart and no one ever came back later, taking him or anyone to task over it.

My point is that it seems that even that recently many weren't all that concerned about exactly what the name was and, especially, in what order it was arranged.

One of the biggest issues is that once you go back a few generations (in my case, only one or two), most of our ancestors were farmers. So the further you go back, the fewer records there are. And, of course, the stories are far less dramatic.

Also, the further you try to go back, you run into a few other problems. Going back about 20 generations, or 400 to 500 years, gives you theoretically over 2 million ancestors. That's a bit hard to fit into a family tree, but don't worry! You don't actually have that many ancestors, because you are all inbred to some degree. Far more of your ancestors married their cousins than married a princess or a knight. It was unavoidable when most people were born, lived and died in the same village or parish.

I suppose the parish churches aspired to keep the most meticulous records possible just to ensure that you didn't marry too close of a cousin, and they were probably a bit more successful as the royal families of Europe infamously were. Though no doubt a good deal more successful than the sibling-marrying Egyptian pharaohs. As long as they kept to 3rd, 4th or 5th cousins, or lesser degrees of consanguinity, the risk of genetic issues was minimal. Hell, 1st-cousin marriage is legal in New York to this day (or at least it was when I took the bar exam).

I found this program to be very insightful regarding history and the context of the history we are taught. Some fascinating new techniques which bring new details to life were very interesting. At the 15 minute mark they cover a magnetic survey that brings hidden details to life. At the 25 minute mark another way science is unraveling DNA and the origins of populations.
Turns out things were very different than the historical narration.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ErA2hDJwWVY