* One Name Studies

[joanchop]

Not sure if this is the right place to discuss this but I have recently joined the Guild of One Name Studies and registered a surname. Am wondering if anyone on the forum uses Family Historian to record their study and how easy it is or if another software is used eg. Custodian or Clooz? If Family Historian is used how do you copy the surname, sources, citations, etc from one project to another? Advice and help would be grateful . Thank you.

[Valkrider]

I use Family Historian for my Lefever Surname Study.

Others have all their entries in one project. I do it slightly differently as I have one project per country and export / import individuals if the emigrate / immigrate.

I do not copy sources or citations from one project to another other than with my import / export individuals. I am lucky in that my research so far has only a few who move countries.

[tatewise]

See fhugdownloads:contents:service_one-name_study_techniques|> Service ~ One-Name Study Techniques and contact the author.

I get the impression that he and others prefer to use a single Project, so your problem does not arise, and unexpected family relationships are easier to resolve. See Merging Trees in Project Window (13935) and Pools (13731) and One Name Study (12880).

It is not straightforward to copy database fragments from Project to Project, and often involves a complex process of exporting and merging.

[joanchop]

Many thanks, Mike. Have printed off Roger's 'Firth' web pages, which look interesting and have a look at the links you have given and go from there.
Thanks all for your help!!

[gwilym'smum]

Hello, I don't have a one name study but I also use Custodian 4. I must admit I only use it infrequently as it takes me all my time to get my head round FH! Custodian requires 2 different ids one to be allocated to individuals and one to families so that individuals can be allocated to the correct families. I can see how this would be very helpful to a One Name Study, but might take some preparation to compose the ids. My ids are quite complex as one of my families has lots of children in each generation, all using the same names.
I believe it is possible to make trees but I use my FH for that. There used to be a support forum but that is not, I was told, open to new users. The developers are very helpful but there isn't anything like the support of this group and program. I'm not technical so these are just thoughts of an average user.
Ann

[gwilym'smum]

PS, Just thinking about Custodian and allocating ids and One Name Study; if you have a parish register for example with several instances of a name, you don't necessarily know which family they belong to so you can't allocate a family id so you still have lots of instances of a name. In FH you can add unrelated individuals and link them as research progresses.
Ann

[Valkrider]

The Find Duplicates plugin is invaluable for a Surname Study as well as customisation of the Records window.

I add Dates and Places for the BMD events to the records window and then sort to order usually on the dates to see if I have some details of the individual already in Family Historian. If not I create a new entry for them. Every so often I then run the Find Duplicates plugin to see if there are any candidates for merging.

I cannot see the value in using Custodian as well as Family Historian.

[SunnyLady]

Not used Clooz, but used the other two.

I think FHn and Custodian serve slightly different purposes. For me Custodian (version 3) was brilliant for holding census information of an entire place, over time... and generally keeping track of a place/ house over time. What I did not find easy on that was keeping/linking the myriad bits of personal/eclectic information it's possible to hold within FHn for people/ families. I have rather abandoned Custodian ... it's more like a dedicated flat spreadsheet...whereas FHn is more like a dedicated multilevel database. (Very simplistic analogy! Sorry Mike, as I suspect you would say both are sophisticated multilevel spreadsheets) . Printing out information was not easy for my purposes from Custodian, and I never cracked printing a family tree (but to be fair wasn't using it for that purpose)... If I was choosing only one (in effect I am!) it's FHn even tho not yet leapt up to version 6 with all its additional bells and whistles!

[joanchop]

Just wanted to let you all know I have made a start by importing a GEDCOM of the surname required, plus spouses, etc into a new FH project, thankfully not as huge as Roger's and using his Research Recommendations as a guide have been deleting media and sources that are no longer required. I am on my way!! Thank you all for your thoughts and help, special thanks to Mike. Don't know where you find the time to sort out all our problems, Mike, but I am glad you do!!

[chstevenson]

I use Family Historian for both my ONSs for reconstructed families, 'unattached' data I keep in Custodian. I also have Guild TNG websites (cavie.one-name.net and monnington.one-name.net) but I update these using a FH generated GEDCOMs. Any specific questions get in touch.

[Valkrider]

My approach to conducting a Surname Study is different to Rogers.

You may like to read how I do my Surname Study research at https://le-fever.org/how-i-research-my-surname-study/

As I say at the start of the article there is no right or wrong way just the way that works best for you.

[dahliarose]

I use Family Historian for my one-name study as do a lot of other Guild members. I've never seen any need to use Custodian or Clooz. I do maintain spreadsheets for things like my BMD extractions (England and Wales 1837-2005). Wherever possible I now add family groups direct to Family Historian even if I only have a small family group of parents and children from a census.

If you've not already done so, do check out the Guild Wiki pages. There's a very useful page on spreadsheets for one-name studies (you'll need to be logged into the Guild website to see this page):

http://one-name.org/wiki/guild-wiki/sof ... e-studies/

You might also like to ask the same question in our Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/GuildOneName/

or on our Rootsweb Forum:

http://one-name.org/rootsweb-mailing-list/

Everyone has their own way of doing a one-name/surname study but it can be helpful to see what other people do.

Debbie Kennett

[joanchop]

Thank you all for your replies. Have signed up with Pharos for their Beginners One Name Study Course which starts in August, which will give me more food for thought. Lots to think about and keep me busy and quiet.
Enjoyed your talk Debbie at the WDYTYA show.

[Valkrider]

Joan

There is another organisation for studying single surnames:

The Surname Society

They also have a presence on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/905667519498834/

[dahliarose]

Joan

I'm glad you enjoyed my talk. I haven't actually taken the Pharos course myself but I know many people who have and it is highly recommended. I think you will enjoy it.