{"id":8291,"date":"2025-09-15T00:15:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T04:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogyservices.com\/?p=8291"},"modified":"2025-09-15T00:15:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T04:15:58","slug":"untangling-ancestry-when-two-people-share-the-same-name-and-year-of-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/15\/untangling-ancestry-when-two-people-share-the-same-name-and-year-of-birth\/","title":{"rendered":"Untangling Ancestry: When Two People Share the Same Name and Year of Birth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black
Black Boy and White Boy, 1880
Source: Vintage Photos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While researching for an African Diaspora family, I ran into special challenges that many beginners and novice ancestral story seekers may also face: l<\/p>\n

The enslaver\u2019s son and an enslaved man were born the same year and had the same name. <\/strong>The enslaver owned plantations in two different states \u2014 North Carolina and Louisiana.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both of these situations can slow down research and make the puzzle pieces harder to fit together.<\/p>\n

My \u201cCheck It Twice\u201d Approach<\/h2>\n

When this happens, I do what I call my \u201cSt. Nick\u201d and \u201cShow Me State\u201d review.\u00a0 <\/strong>Like Santa Claus I make a list and check it twice (sometimes more!). Like Missouri, the \u201cShow Me State,\u201d I make sure the documents prove<\/em> the story before I connect the dots.<\/p>\n

This means I don\u2019t rely only on census records. I dig deeper into:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • \n

    Newspapers<\/strong> (for sales, obituaries, or runaway notices),<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Church records<\/strong> (baptisms, marriages, funerals),<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Plantation diaries and letters<\/strong>,<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Probate records<\/strong> (wills and estate inventories), and<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Slave Schedules from 1850 and 1860<\/strong> (which list only age and gender, not names).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    These extra sources help me separate individuals who at first glance might look like the same person.<\/p>\n

    Why the Mix-Ups Happen<\/h2>\n

    On large plantations, it was very common<\/strong> for children \u2014 both enslaved and free \u2014 to be born in the same year, and sometimes even given the same name. Wealthy enslavers often had more than one home or plantation. Many families in the Upper South (like North Carolina)<\/strong> also invested in property in the Deep South (like Louisiana)<\/strong>, where cotton and sugar plantations brought bigger profits.<\/p>\n

    So, it\u2019s no surprise when family trees overlap or records get tangled together.<\/p>\n

    What It Means for Family Researchers<\/h2>\n

    Some online genealogy sites automatically merge people with the same name and birth year, even if they were two separate individuals. That\u2019s why it\u2019s up to us<\/em> as researchers to slow down, double-check, and make sense of the data.<\/p>\n

    For African Diaspora families, this work often involves extra layers of investigation compared to white counterparts, because records for enslaved people were limited, scattered, or deliberately obscured.<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s Next<\/h2>\n

    In a follow-up blog, I\u2019ll walk through the exact steps I used to tell apart the two men in this case \u2014 one the enslaver\u2019s son, and the other an enslaved man \u2014 who happened to share both the same name and birth year.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    While researching for an African Diaspora family, I ran into special challenges that many beginners and novice ancestral story seekers may also face: l The enslaver\u2019s son and an enslaved man were born the same year and had the same name. The enslaver owned plantations in two different states \u2014 North Carolina and Louisiana. Both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,215,252],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-diaspora-history-searches","category-research-tips","category-white-ancestors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodgenesgenealogy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}