Civil War Relatives With The Same Name

rbortega

Corporal
Joined
May 4, 2013
While doing research on relatives who served in the Civil War, did anybody discover that a relative with the same name and age was not the person you thought they were? For example, in my early years of Civil War ancestry research, I thought my 3x Great Grandfather Archibald McLaren had a younger brother named Charles McLaren who served in 16th Ohio Infantry. However, when doing recent research on additional Civil War relatives, I found that Charles was in fact Archibald's cousin rather brother. Where I got confused was that both Charles' were born in 1842 and lived in the same area of Ohio, brother Charles in Coshocton County and cousin Charles in Muskingum County. I have since updated my research to acknowledge this.
 
People with the same name as your subject often pop up and cause confusion in genealogical research. Sometimes the doubles are call doppelgangers. Whether the name is common or unusual, there always can be others with the same exact name and around the same age.

In some family traditions, German, Dutch and Scottish that I know of, naming conventions were followed which drive researchers crazy. The first son of the marriage is named after the father's father, the second son after the mother's father, the first daughter after the mother's mother and the second daughter after the father's mother and the remaining children are also given pre-existing family names of aunts and uncles, etc. In the male line this can result in 4 or 5 families of boys whose fathers were brothers all named, for example, Alexander Montgomery, John Montgomery, William Montgomery and Michael Montgomery (speaking of my own ancestors here). In real life, they all had different nicknames if they lived near each other, but that doesn't help the researcher. You need to verify as many peripheral facts as possible as you go along to make sure you have the person you are looking for and not their doppelganger.
 
While doing research on relatives who served in the Civil War, did anybody discover that a relative with the same name and age was not the person you thought they were? For example, in my early years of Civil War ancestry research, I thought my 3x Great Grandfather Archibald McLaren had a younger brother named Charles McLaren who served in 16th Ohio Infantry. However, when doing recent research on additional Civil War relatives, I found that Charles was in fact Archibald's cousin rather brother. Where I got confused was that both Charles' were born in 1842 and lived in the same area of Ohio, brother Charles in Coshocton County and cousin Charles in Muskingum County. I have since updated my research to acknowledge this.


I have run into similar confusion with a gg grandfather. He, a cousin and an uncle all had the same name - two of them had the same middle name, their birth dates were similar and they both fought in the Civil War in the same regiment for a while in Georgia. The cousin with the same name died about twenty years after the Civil War ended but my gg grandfather lived many, many years afterward. Their military records were mingled together over time. It took me years to get it all straightened out. As you have discovered, it sometimes takes persistence and patience to get to right information. Sometimes it pops up unexpectedly while researching something - or someone else. Congratulations on sticking with it and putting it together the best you can. I've had to put notes on some portions of the family tree, like you did, when there are still unanswered questions.
 
I haven't had that problem with Civil War military records.
However, my paternal grandmother's lineage includes a three(3) Jesse Pritchards followed by one female Jessie Pritchard. And the one of the Jesse's died before his father did.
 
My ancestor Dr William Thomas Landrum had a cousin Dr Thomas William Landrum, both Civil War surgeons in Georgia. I have had to learn to tell their handwriting apart, as both wrote letters to various officials, and they signed their names interchangeably "WT" and "TW," since it was common in that era to swap which name came first over time.

In my own family we followed the Scottish tradition of the first born son being named after his father but with a different middle name, which can also be confusing.
 
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