Re: Gone back to 1841, what next?


"John Hill" <nemo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1j5vt2j.ovsew1ktcfcaN%nemo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Daniel Morgan <daniel.f.morgan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 10, 4:37 pm, "tim....." <tims_new_h...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,

I have however discovered that my GGGGF/M and GGGF/M lived in a town
where
in every census there are a further 20 people with my surname. I have
an
uncommon name and as this is out of a national total of less than 200,
it
seems inconceivable that there isn't a link somewhere, either via a
brother
of my GGGGF or perhaps, as he was 15 years older than my GGGGM, from an
earlier wife (who died before '39).

tim

p.s. With such an uncommon surname, you may eventually find it
attractive to pursue *everyone* with that name, on the assumption that
most or all of them will eventually turn out to be related, even if
you don't yet know how. This is known as a one-name study, and there
is a very helpful society called the Guild of One-Name Studies (one-
name.org) to which several members of this newsgroup belong.

As a member of the Guild, I would like to second this advice - but check
first to find out if your name is already registered!
To do this, go to <http://www.one-name.org/> and put the name in the
search box. It's quick and easy.

If your name is NOT registered, you are eligible to register it; if it
is, you will be able to contact the sponsor of the name and may get a
wealth of information from him or her. Provided you ask by e-mail or
provide a SAE if enquiring by post, the Guild member is bound by the
Guild rules to reply.

I joined after a similar discovery - my registered name is a very
uncommon one (all the people bar six of that name born after about 1800
are blood relations). I mentioned this once on this group, and a
well-known member of the group (and frequent contributor to this board)
suggested I join.

Which I did.

John.
--
Please reply to john at yclept dot wanadoo dot co dot uk.

Well thanks for the advice everybody. I now have some more to go on.

Answers to some points.

I have gone to the sites as recommended. The county in question is Somerset
so I have found the arrangements for viewing their archive. I couldn't see
anything that suggested they would supply information other than to
visitors. But Taunton is not an impossible place to visit. It's a very
full day trip, nothing more difficult than that.

I'm reluctant to post my name. I sometimes use this moniker to post on
groups pertaining to my profession where I occasionally make disparaging
comments about my employer(s).

I'm not convinced by the "one name" possibility. I understand that my name
comes about as a misspelling of a more common name, at some point in the
past. It seems likely that this misspelling was created more than once. The
number of people with my name that I can find is not ridiculously small. I
did visit the site and no-one has previously registered my name.

As to the idea that I might be swamped with information. I may be new to
genealogy, I'm not new to computers. I wont suffer information overload.

I found nothing on IGI

One of the sites pointed me to http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/ so that
I could see what the distribution of my name is (I have seen this map before
but I lost the link) Does anyone know how this is formed, it doesn't seem
to correspond to the '81 census for my name. Is there any way that it is
possible to find out the numbers associated with each colour? (Could this
possibly be based upon household size? In '81 one of my relations was an
"officer" in the workhouse and another in a prison. Consequently they are
part of a very large household. Could this skew the figures?)

Thanks again

tim




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