Genealogy Chat

On a recent trip to the graveyard to look for one relative in particular, I decided to take photos of all the headstones of my family name (GARDNER) in the hope that I could slot them in one day, or help someone else out.

Well, one of the 'random' graves that I took a photo of belongs to my gg aunt! I am SO pleased that I took those photos.

Well done!!

Christine

It's a bit like noting all the bmd refs, you might not use all of them but it saves going back and looking through the same records over and over again.

Be warned though - that's how I ended up doing a One Name Study!!

Mind you, it's good fun and makes a change from just sticking to my tree when I'm stuck!

Jill

I have thought about it, and even attempted it for about 5 minutes... If I had a really unusual surname, I would have done it, but its so common, though not on the level of Smith, was too much like hard work. Maybe one day....

Jill - out of interest what exactly do you record in a one name study? Do you look for relationships or just name details?

One I'm familiar with is:
http://www.mutches.com/index.php
but they're very variable

Has anyone used:

Interment.net ?

This has transcriptions from graveyards all over the world and if you have made a list or taken photos of a few or all graves in a graveyard, you can add your transcription to the site.

It is well worth a look,

Vicky X

Hi Neil

You collect every mention of that name - worldwide ultimately.

I try to put them into family groups and sometimes it's fairly obvious. I track them through the censuses and it is amazing how much grouping you can do.

They all have at least one piece of paper to their name and a lot of them have family group sheets too.

One thing it has taught me is to blanket search a name. For example in my ONS I have 3 George Mococks - all born around 1860 - if I'd just picked on the first one I'd come across as being my grandfather's brother I would not have been correct. It's only because I knew about the other two that I had to eliminate two of them. So that's useful when you're tracking commoner names. Sometimes it's as useful to eliminate as to find. Particularly when you have an odd-ish name like Mocock which is often mistranscribed.

You tend to fall into One Name Studies though - simply because you start noting every mention of that name. Until you reach a point where you think - if anything happened to me all that info would go to waste - so that's when I joined the Guild of One Name Studies.

Jill

Jill, am thinking of doing a one-name study on Neehams in and around Tideswell in Derbyshire. There are thousands of them even though the town and surriounding areas appeared to have only few inhabitants, they must have bred like rabbits. So how do I got about a one-name study? Does this Guild of One-Name Studies tell me?

Regards

Margaret

Here's a link to the G.O.O.N.S. site

http://www.one-name.org/

I'm another one who was 'drawn in' to a one name study because I logged all the instances of a surname in a particular area ' just in case '

I'm not the registered researcher though, just helping to collect information.

Gwyn

Had a somewhat traumatic experience with the One Name Study group last year.

There is a study group for my maiden name

I tried contacting the leader several times from about 2003 to 2005, with no response from him.

Last year I needed to contact him ................. I obtained a cd produced by the group that showed my father had disappeared (nowhere to be found), and my brother was my father. Obviously I wanted to put that right!

No response again

I ended with a lengthy email correspondence with the Registrar, who also couldn't get any response. I was finally told that said registered leader was going to be removed from ONS

I later discovered that I was in the middle of a family row that I knew nothing about ............... the researcher was actually my second cousin (as I did indeed suspect), but he wasn't speaking to any other members of the family!

Having left England in 1967, and having had very little contact with his family since about 1955 ...... I knew nothing of all this!



Still ....... it was unprofessional not to respond to me. I even had to send him 3 International Reply Coupons which cost me a total of $30 (or about £15) to cover postage.



sylvia

Oh yes


I also discovered that said leader may have pinched most of the stuff he posted on ONS from his brother ..... and never acknowledged it!

It also seems that I have the evidence that shows that said brother had done all the research back in the 80s and early 90s (in the days before the internet).

I also told the leader this, several times .......... 'cos I was trying to establish the relationship between us and I thought he might be the same person (never could remember names!!)!!


It has been suggested that this may be why he never responded to me!!


What do you think??



sylvia