Interested in more details?
This section is written for people who want to get into the details to understand what care has been
taken to correctly identify common ancestors. Perhaps you have taken the fun step of verifying my
work by matching the name of the notable person's common ancestor with the corresponding one in my
tree, and have some questions. Let's get into the details of the matching process and answer some of your questions.
Process to identify a Cousin
I scan the list of ancestors of the famous person's ahnentafel starting at Generation 1 and scan back in time.
(See short video explanation of ahnentafel.)
I'm looking for names that I recognize from my work in the 1980s! And I have the list of
Parrish surnames to consult to refresh my memory.
Clicking on a surname gives a list of the individuals with that surname on my website.
Clearly the more I do this matching work the easier it gets.
I can find Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, her parents, or Richard Warren or not in less than a minute in a scan of a famous person's ahnentafel. Then it is fun to check for other common ancestors. There are 20 or 30 surnames where most of the matches occur. You can scan the surnames in the "Our Common Ancestors" column above to see these surnames.
Once I locate a possible common ancestor I have to determine if it is a match, I check the dates and the name of the wife to help confirm the match or not. Dates are often flagged different ways to indicated they are approximate. And there are a number of other factors to consider which I discuss in the next 4 sections which help to determine if there is a common ancestor or not. My goal is to do careful work and only accept matches that are genuine.
Spelling of Surnames may have variations
A good way to demonstrate this is to scroll thru the generations in
Lee Marvin's ahnentafel.
Notice that the first line of each generation is spelled Marvin until generation 13.
There both the historic spelling of Mervyn and the modern spelling of Marvin is shown.
At generation 14 it is Mervyn. Also Reinhold Mervin or Mervyn with a date of c1512 or c1514 is the same person.
Rev. John Lathrop is the modern spelling, but when he lived he was Rev. John Lothrop or other variations.
He and his wife Hannah House (Howse) have many descendants in America. You will see their names many times as the common ancestors on this page. I have visited the cemetery where he is buried and saw this historical plaque.
Another common example is "Wilcoxson" became "Wilcox". Ralph Hemmenway is the immigrant, but his descendants are "Hemingway" -- e.g., Ernest Hemingway. I have ensured that regardless of spelling differences, it is the same person being referred to as the common ancestor.
Names are Repeated Generation to Generation
Care must be excercised when matching names. For example, in my tree there are men 5 generations in a row
named "John Meigs". Try it: click here and click on the child
in each generation named John Meigs. To make a match between the notable person ahnentafel and my family tree, I check the dates of the person and the name of the wife to ensure that, for example, "John Meigs" is the correct "John Meigs".
Remember many dates are approximate and marked with "c" or "abt".
Surname of Wife is Missing or Different
In England in the 1500s the maiden name of the wife was not recorded in some cases.
For example, a woman named "Mary" with an unknown surname I refer to as "Mary X". Genealogists over time have figured out the name of Mary X in some cases. For example, the maiden name of the wife of famous Mayflower passenger Richard Warren was not known for sure until 2002. Read the explanation.
There is often a circumstantial case for picking/matching a surname for the wife in the cases of partial information. These surnames are usually described as "probable", and have been done in old histories.
In the few cases where the name of the wife is different between my tree and the notable person's tree, the reason is typically due to remarriage. If I am convinced the husband is a correct match, then I have a common ancestor.
Common Ancestor Maybe in England
When I worked on my family tree in the 1980s, I started tracing my tree back to the immigrant ancestors and generally stopped there or perhaps one generation back in England or Holland. I had already identified over 600 ancestors and this was a practical point to stop. Also I was tracing the direct ancestral lines back and did not record all of the children in the family at each generation, only my direct ancestors. Otherwise, I would have had several thousand names.
However, FamousKin.com goes back 16 or more generations. So if I fail to prove in some notable people as distant cousins because I need another few generations to find the common ancestor, I use WikiTree.com. This is a very detailed website with geographical locations, lists of the the brothers and sisters, etc.
In one common case I demonstrate that Reinhold Mervyn is the grandfather of Reinhold Marvin. I use this line of text:
"Grandfather of Namesake Reinhold Marvin".
To get the relevant diagram, you need to click on button for "ancestor" on the WikiTree page.
Concluding Remarks
The organization of this webpage allows every visitor to check my work on every famous cousin. My goal is to prove each of these famous cousins is in fact a famous cousin. And everything is transparent and my information can be verified other places.
There is often more than one couple in common between the ahnenetafel of the famous person and my family tree. For example, former Governor Weld, and I share at least a dozen couples who are common ancestors. He, like me, has deep family roots in New England.
It was a coincidence that I spoke to him twice in 2016 before knowing our connection.
Final observation: using FamousKin.com is a very convenient way to find famous or notable cousins, but many of their trees are flagged as "in progress". So using Famouskin.com understates the actual number of famous/notable ancestors because it is missing many of their ancestors at this point in time. I use
WikiTree.com to find common ancestors to some famous people, who I know from reading Gary Boyd Robert's authoritative books, are in fact cousins. One example, is First Lady Beth Truman. Since her common ancestors are missing on FamousKin.com, I cannot use it yet.
|