Putting together your family tree can be confusing. I think this is one of the reasons why many people who are new to genealogy become frustrated. Sometimes, it can be like trying to put together a puzzle. Except, you don’t actually have all the pieces to this particular puzzle. You haven’t seen the full picture of what it should look like after it all comes together. This might be your very first time attempting to put together a puzzle of this type, and there are no instructions to be found. It’s no wonder that this confuses people!
Your family tree holds much more information than just the names of your ancestors. It puts together the “big picture” of your family, and shows how everyone is connected to each other. Many genealogists find that the act of researching their family tree is addicting in and of itself, even when they don’t immediately find the information they are looking for. Perhaps it is the effort involved in tracking down lost ancestors that makes the whole project even more valuable to the genealogist. Having to struggle in order to reach your goal somehow makes that goal even more special when you finally achieve it.
Most genealogists, myself included, struggle with research. I’ve gone to several different online genealogy search websites, and hunted around for hours. I have yet to even find one piece of the puzzle that is my family tree. Many genealogists run into some confusion when trying to go through old documents.
If your surname is Smith, you are going to need to sift through a lot more data than a genealogist with an unusual last name will need to, in order to put together your family tree. There is potential that your ancestor was named Smythe before he immigrated, and this will make things even more confusing.
The country your family originated from might have a completely different system of recording names than what you are expecting. Spanish ancestors will use the surname of both parents, one tacked on right behind the other. Scandinavia used a patronymic system of naming, until the 1800s. This meant that a child’s first name came from his or her father’s surname. If your ancestors came to America from Vietnam, it is entirely possible that their first name and surname were transposed on official school records. These are just a few examples.
My family has had several relatives with the first name James, or Jim, or Jimmy, on both my mother’s and father’s sides of my family. Future genealogists are going to have to spend some time unraveling them all. It would be easy to confuse one ancestor with another one who had the same first name, especially if they also had the same surname as well. Often, a genealogist won’t find a full set of information. Instead, they learn that there once was an ancestor named Pat, for example. Is Pat a shortened form of Patricia, or Patrick? Could it be a nickname? Your guess is as good as mine, until someone finds official documents that make things clearer.
Image by Horia Varlan on Flickr