ONE-NAME STUDIES

‘For rare surnames it may be that everyone can be linked into one tree’

A one-name study is an interesting and popular extension of family history research. Most people do not start their research by deciding to do a one-name study; instead they end up doing it without even realising. Many family historians find that they spend more time researching one or two of the more interesting surnames in their tree. It may be that their surname interest is sparked by a desire to verify family stories about a connection to royalty or a link with a famous person. As the research progresses back in time it becomes necessary to collect all of the references to a surname in a particular county or location, and to reconstruct the families by matching up the baptism, marriage and burial records in order to correctly assign the events to their own direct line. By this stage they have already