Doing genealogy 'backwards'

[Grayman]

I can relate to the repetitive names. One side of my family is heavily Irish and the other over 90% German. Jacob appears on both sides for several generations. Also Johann/John, James, George. It gets confusing, especially when uncles and cousins also have the same names.

 

[seabird]

Honestly this is just how historical research works, I'm sure plenty of people have already made that point though. If bottom up sources tracing you back towards whomever don't work or you hit a brick wall you don't really have a choice but to go wide and lateral, which includes top down (although that's a huge lift generally and super full of pitfalls, worth remembering that before the mid 1800s basically 95% of people weren't notable enough to be recorded in any fashion besides a nondescript tick on a census box or a family bible if you're insanely lucky).

My strategy is usually to flesh out everything I possibly can bottom up towards whatever ancestor or person in question, then flesh out all of their immediate family, their kids, intermarriages, places they lived, who else lived there etc and try to glean something out of the big pattern that ends up emerging once you research enough. If that doesn't work start fleshing out the entire trees of the associated families, the history of everywhere you know they lived, etc and figure out where the pattern is. Eventually things start to click even if there might literally not be enough extant information for you to get a reliable conclusion.

Top down is pretty tough because unless your surname is Zanzibarticus or something there's about 200 years of amateur American genealogy that "proves" you're directly related to the guy the on Mayflower, or an ACW general or whatever with a vaguely phonetically similar last name. Particularly if you trust public trees lol.

 

[legalbeagle05]

If you think the Irish are bad, you should try working with Germans! They do the same thing, using a very small pool of names. In one large, early 19th century German family, I have Jacob Sr., Jacob Jr. - who is not Jacob Sr.'s son but his nephew, Jacob II who is his son, Jacob Jr.'s son who is Jacob III, and also Jacob II's son who is another Jacob III. And some of them are pretty close in age. And of course all of them have the first (generally unused) name Johann. Thank heaven they all married women with different names!

I AM working with Germans - on the other side! I had to go and marry one. *Sigh* So I totally feel your pain. Between Jacob and Johann and John and Jonathan having the same exact names, then Katherine and Kathryn and Kate and Mutter (all the same person), it's maddening. My husband just last week decided to set up his own Family Tree on familytree.org. He was all excited when he found his great-grandfather, Jacob. We had to have a discussion about how he might want to consult with me to save time and frustration. I already know Jacob and his parents and their great grandparents. (And have a REALLY grumpy photo of Jacob, Sr. It's awesome.)

 

[Story]

I AM working with Germans - on the other side! I had to go and marry one. *Sigh* So I totally feel your pain. Between Jacob and Johann and John and Jonathan having the same exact names, then Katherine and Kathryn and Kate and Mutter (all the same person), it's maddening. My husband just last week decided to set up his own Family Tree on familytree.org. He was all excited when he found his great-grandfather, Jacob. We had to have a discussion about how he might want to consult with me to save time and frustration. I already know Jacob and his parents and their great grandparents. (And have a REALLY grumpy photo of Jacob, Sr. It's awesome.)

My own line of Germans were dirt poor. My proof is that my first and middle names were recycled down through every generation since the 1850s.

Can only conclude they were too destitute to afford any other names.

I'll be in town all week. Try the schnitzel.

 

[dfostermem]

It is definitely a challenge. I have a 1753 Bible with names of a family that lived in Baltimore in late 1700s and early 1800's. Half the male names were documented as being at Ft McHenry. Two were officers in the first Navy and Coast Guard. So I have been able to document very well the individuals using historical documents. I was more successful identifying their ancestors than the descendants. I was only able to track one branch into modern times. What makes it most difficult is that it appears that many moved out of area or didn't have children. So without a well documented family history that was generated by early generations or a tree that someone has developed working back the normal way, it is almost impossible unless it is a very rare family name.

The one recommended approach (as others have stated) would be to check the name of the individual against Ancestry, Family Search, Gedmatch or other family tree databases and if you are lucky you might get a match. Its not authoritative, but it would be a good starting point.

 

[lupaglupa]

So far I have worked on two projects. One was a man with no documented wife or children. So I can tell some about him but cannot link him to anyone else. The second was a woman with two children. With the woman I have only first names for her and the children. I could not find them after the original mentions, which were in a will. I'm not tremendously surprised by either outcome.