{"id":1211,"date":"2013-10-08T20:46:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T03:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/?p=1211"},"modified":"2013-10-08T20:46:49","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T03:46:49","slug":"october-is-the-month-of-goblins-and-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/08\/october-is-the-month-of-goblins-and-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"October is the Month of Goblins and Ghosts…"},"content":{"rendered":"

October is the Month of Goblins and Ghosts.<\/b>\u00a0 Already the corn maze is open every evening, each one attempting to out-do the others.\u00a0 Flyers are posted on city message boards and discount maze tickets are offered as bribes to sign up for the local newspaper. Front-page photos invite all to enjoy Fright Night at the High School Halloween Dance; Or, at the local amusement park.<\/p>\n

What of October and your genealogy?<\/strong>\u00a0 Let me share a few genealogy ghosts.\u00a0 And how to avoid them.<\/p>\n

Well meaning government clerks, book and index editors, and genealogists combine evidence in separate documents for persons of similar and \u201csoundexed\u201d names\u2014sometimes creating a false genealogy.\u00a0 Genealogy ghosts<\/b>\u2013that\u2019s what they are.\u00a0 And when you innocently grab these ghosts in both original<\/b> and transcribed<\/b> records, then blissfully\u00a0build new pedigrees that have no basis in reality, you create genealogy ghosts.\u00a0 Although they may seem real, they are figments of your creativity.<\/p>\n

Some examples from my own research experience:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Duncan\/Dungan.<\/b>\u00a0 These are both separate surnames found in the same legal documents in Southwestern Pennsylvania.\u00a0 A well-meaning editor combined them into one index\u2013which is rather common\u00a0as genealogy indexes go.\u00a0 The index was a product of his combining the will of John Dungan<\/span> with the probate accounts of the estate of John Duncan<\/span>.\u00a0 So John Dungan, an unmarried man who left extensive real estate in PA and KY to his brother Joseph Dungan and \u201ccompensation\u201d undefined to a relative Levi Dungan for taking care of John in his final illness\u2013the real man, becomes a married man with a wife and seven children\u2013a ghost.\u00a0 And John Duncan, whose\u00a0administration is \u00a0unaccounted for, is lost forever.\u00a0 UNLESS you read\u00a0the<\/b> original documents<\/b> and keep them separate<\/b> in your own genealogy.<\/li>\n
  2. Kelley\/Kettey.<\/b>\u00a0 The Bishop\u2019s Transcripts in Warwickshire England include a Lawley-Kettey marriage entry.\u00a0 The typed transcript of the parish register entry includes a Lawley-Kelley<\/span> marriage.\u00a0 These are copies made from the original register.\u00a0 It would seem an easy task to locate and read the original to see how the clerk wrote the entry.\u00a0 The original register is not at the Family History Library.\u00a0 It could be in the local Museum or in the archives of the nearby technical College or preserved in the County Record Office or\u00a0still among the records in the parish itself.\u00a0 Doable, rather than easy.\u00a0 You can request a photocopy or photograph of the original entry to study it.\u00a0 Just to complicate the problem a little: \u00a0the first clerk, who copied the Bishop\u2019s Transcripts of the register in the late 1500\u2032s,\u00a0crossed double ll\u2019s<\/b> in each name.\u00a0 The next clerk self-crossed each t.<\/b>\u00a0 The third clerk drew a line through double tt\u2019s.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0 You know how the Bishop\u2019s Transcripts are written.\u00a0 Now, order the original document.<\/li>\n
  3. Pool(e)\/Pettypool.<\/b>\u00a0 The county recorder indexed\u00a0the Pools, Pooles,\u00a0P\u2019pools, and the Pettypools all together.\u00a0 Deeds.\u00a0 Marriages.\u00a0 Wills.\u00a0 I read and copied the index entries.\u00a0 Then I went to the original documents to separate them out so I could study each entry and match them for fit.\u00a0 Are the Pools and the Pettypools the same family?\u00a0 \u00a0In the printed Pettypool Genealogy<\/strong>,<\/em>\u00a0marriages were given in an alpha list\u00a0in the\u00a0Appendix.\u00a0 There were marriages printed in that Appendix that do not appear in the county records.\u00a0 WOW!\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 Took me a long time to find those marriages.\u00a0 They were recorded in the Dinwoodey Distillery Accounts<\/i>\u2013an original business ledger now available at the Virginia Library.\u00a0 Question:<\/b>\u00a0 Why were they recorded in such a strange source?\u00a0 Answer:<\/b>\u00a0 Business accounts are legal documents admissible in a court of law should there be any need to verify the information.\u00a0\u00a0Today the Pool(es) and Pettypools are related by both blood and marriage as a result of living in proximity to each other.\u00a0 The Pool family members were transplants into the county, they did not originate there.\u00a0 And there is no evidence that the Pool(es) were related to the Pettypools.\u00a0 Soundexes were designed to find these anomalies by mixing the spelling variants together, not to prove they are the same families.\u00a0 Do not merge them together.\u00a0 Keep them separate so they can be examined and fit into their own families.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Each of these examples was not meant to mislead or to build a pedigree ghost.\u00a0 The creators of the\u00a0misread and merged ancestors were trying to make genealogy faster and easier for those who came after.\u00a0 Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle.\u00a0 http:\/\/arleneeakle.com<\/a><\/p>\n

    PS Research strategies focus your attention on the evidence needed to prove your family tree–stay tuned!\u00a0 I have a brand new book on Genealogy Strategies<\/strong> which I’ll tell you about shortly.\u00a0 You will want your own copy of this companion to our best-selling Family History for Fun and Profit.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    October is the Month of Goblins and Ghosts.\u00a0 Already the corn maze is open every evening, each one attempting to out-do the others.\u00a0 Flyers are posted on city message boards and discount maze tickets are offered as bribes to sign … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1212,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions\/1212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arleneeakle.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}