Last Names, Middle Names, Don’t Let Ancestry.com Decide–Think for Yourself

Names can create all sorts of problems for the genealogist.

The first illustration in this post is from a search of the  ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) records at Ancestry.com that was conducted for the name of Sartorius in the location of Carthage, Hancock County, Illinois. The search interface will bring a result as long as the name Sartorius is anywhere in the record. That’s not the issue. Ancestry.com only indexed the names of the child and the parents when creating this database. Godparents were not indexed and that’s one limitation to this index.

I was already familiar with the names that came back as my results. Based on my ancestral background and the number of years I’ve researched these families, I’m reasonably aware of most of the families who were members of the congregation from which these matches came. The first five results were familiar to me. The first four were for individuals whose last name was actually Sartorius and the fifth was for an individual whose mother was a Sartorius. Because the mother’s maiden name was a part of the record, the entry for Kathrina Margaretha Adams was returned. That’s easy enough to figure out.

Trientje Bruns’ entry was for a marriage to Ulfert Sartorius.

The last two confused me. No one in the Sartorius family married a Dirks or a Gerdes. Since the godparents are not indexed as a part of the “record” at Ancestry.com that’s not the reason why the items came up.

What Ancestry.com sees as the individual’s last name has been underlined in the first illustration. And that’s where the problem comes into play.

elca-names

The child listed as Heinrich Dirks did not have the last name of Dirks. The individual listed as Ubbe Gordes[sic] did not have that last name either. Viewing the images from the actual records made the problem a little more clear.

Heinrich Dirks was actually Heinrich Dirks Sartorius. In reviewing the other entries on the same page, the pastor apparently never put the child’s last name in the first column. That column was reserved for the child’s first and middle name (if any). Apparently when Ancestry.com made the index, if a middle name was something that also could be used as a middle name, Ancestry.com just assumed it was the last name. That’s not the case.

 

christening1897

Many of the congregants of the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Hancock County, Illinois (actually located in Harmony Township) were Ostfriesian. It was a common Ostfriesian practice at this point in time to use an ancestral surname as a middle name. That’s what happened in these two cases.

Apparently Ancestry.com was selective in choosing to enter in the second name as a last name. The last entry in the first image is for Lina Saarkea. She is indexed correctly with the last name of her father: Huls.

lindahuls

The same issue is the case with the 1893 entry for Ubbe Gordes. He is actually Ubbe Gerdes Sartorius, son of Ulfert Sartorius and Trientje Bruns. Gerdes is his middle name.

There’s a variety of lessons here:

  • read the original record
  • be aware of naming practices
  • view entries in the context of other entries–don’t just make conclusions based on one entry
  • consider what mistakes an indexer may have made
  • never use the indexer’s transcription as the one for your records–read the item yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Informed users of databases are always better equipped to use the database more effectively than those who simply enter names willy-nilly.

 

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One thought on “Last Names, Middle Names, Don’t Let Ancestry.com Decide–Think for Yourself

  1. Carola Gay Knutson says:

    I realize this was posted a long time ago, but just took a chance that you may still be able to connect to/read this message. The family Ancestry tried to connect you to, somewhat erroneously it looks like, seems to be my family as I have many Dirks/Gerdes/Post/Bruns/Janssen/Arends/Ubbens/Poppens and more, all intermarried from centuries-at least into the 1600’s-all living in and around Wiesens, Lower Saxony. Sometimes Wiesens is “converted” to Aurich by computers as the small town is a part of the Aurich area of Lower Saxony.

    My great grandmother, whom I knew as a child and whose wedding ring I’ve worn since I was 16, was also named
    Trientje Bruns. EVERYONE only knew her as Tena and her maiden name was often mis-spelled to Burns in various sources. I FINALLY tracked down the CORRECT Trientje/Tena in church documents in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, where she first lived before moving to Burwell, NE, where she spent the rest of her life. I had looked many times through Plattsmouth school, court, and other records and could never come up with anything that “worked.” Her obituary said she was confirmed “in the Lutheran faith at age 14” in Plattsmouth, so, of course I was looking in Lutheran records. Zilch. One night I found her in an Evangelical Presbyterian Church….turns out that the services here were offered in German so…..anyway, I found her confirmation, death records of her mom, baptism of a sibling, etc….I’m thinking there is SOME connection between our families as Trientje turns up over and over..but?

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